"Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48)
I'm far from a perfectionist. While Michael, my husband, wasn't necessarily concerned with being perfect, he did believe that there was a "right" way to do something (that I affectionately called the "Michael way"). My step-dad Lee was like this as well - most often occasioned when we had to set up the chairs in our worship space at church. Using the tiles on the floor, each chair had to be a certain number os squares apart for each row (military precision, in other words) [note: they never met, yet somehow we're alike in a number of ways].
From the scripture above, "perfect" in Greek ( τέλειος, teleios) is less about having no faults, and more about a sense of completion, reaching an end goal. Perfection in terms of wholeness and a sense of being fully as God intended for us and the world. We could even see a sense of "shalom" which means not just peace, but wholeness and completeness.
Perfection as a way of faith is not about getting things "just so" for our own sakes, but seeking to live the perfect way of God. The passage from Matthew (above) comes at the end of a passage about loving our enemies. "If all you do is love the lovable, do you expect a bonus...Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously towards others, the way God lives toward you. " (Matthew 4:46, 48, The Message translation)
Our "perfection" is found in the fullness of God's love and grace that was poured out by Christ on the cross. God's perfection was realized in Christ's suffering and death and came to its completion/perfection when he rose from the dead.
It is this perfect love that shapes us and guides us in our daily lives.
Thanks be to God!
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