Be perfect

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As your heavenly father is perfect. Did Jesus mean sinless? If so is it possible?
 
spencer2 said:
As your heavenly father is perfect. Did Jesus mean sinless? If so is it possible?
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Has to happen before we can enter heaven.
That’s what Purgatory is for. To cleanse those who are saved but have not achieved the state of perfection (sinlessness) before death.
 
He’s also setting the gold standard. Christ is that standard. None of us may quite live up to it, but you don’t lower the bar.
 
The sense of “perfection” in the Judaism of Jesus’ world is often associated with the word shalom as signifying not only “peace” but wholeness or completion. When one is fully integrated within relationship to God, one experiences peace; it’s a mutual dynamic. The explanation below refers alternatively to tamim.
To describe the type of perfection Jesus is trying to convey in both 5:48 and 19:21, Matthew uses the Greek word teleios, an adjective which defines something as being complete, something which is “whole,” “fully grown,” “final.” Teleios may itself be a translation of the Semitic word tamim, which also conveys something which has become “whole” and “complete.”
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It is significant that Jesus’ exhortation to “be perfect” comes within the context of the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus teaches us the virtues essential to the Christian life: the necessity of prayer, the absence of anxiety over material things, and the incompatibility of hypocrisy, self-righteousness, and selfishness with philanthropy. But the Sermon cannot be limited to the status of a “how-to” guide for clean living. Here Jesus is offering us the opportunity to participate in something much greater than our human selves, something more vast than what we can know in the here and now.
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This special moment of teaching by Christ is on par with the dramatic revelations of the Old Testament. Jesus, ascending a mountain before he begins to reveal his teaching, imitates Moses, who also ascended a mountain to receive the law revealed from God. Jesus’ words, drawn from the Old Covenant then interpreted more deeply and reborn as the New Covenant, are uttered as a prophetic vision of another world, astonishing those who hear them. Viewed in the eschatological light in which Matthew intended, the Sermon on the Mount becomes then not simply a lecture on morals by a benevolent philosopher-it becomes epiphany straight from the mouth of God.
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catholic.com/thisrock/1999/9909fea1.asp
 
As with all interpretations, I am not absolutely sure if my understanding is totally correct.

I believe He means to be merciful and loving.

I believe He means to be complete/perfect, that is, when we are merciful.

I believe He means that when God speaks His words, they create!

He is the One that makes us love and grow.

He is the One that makes us complete/perfect.

As it says in the second Eucharistic Prayer: Make us grow in love.

He Word makes us new creations.
 
spencer2 said:
As your heavenly father is perfect. Did Jesus mean sinless? If so is it possible?
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Jesus told us what perfection consisted of. It’s always been the same, in fact-to fulfill the greatest commandments-to love God with ones whole heart, soul, mind, and strength and one’s neighbor as themselves. This is man’s justice-what makes us* just*. And the purpose of the New Covenant is to help us accomplish this.
 
Elizabeth502 said:
The sense of “perfection” in the Judaism of Jesus’ world is often associated with the word shalom as signifying not only “peace” but wholeness or completion. When one is fully integrated within relationship to God, one experiences peace; it’s a mutual dynamic. The explanation below refers alternatively to tamim.

catholic.com/thisrock/1999/9909fea1.asp
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Wonderful. Thank you for the link.

-Tim-
 
You’re quite welcome, Tim. 🙂

I tip my hat also to Jim, above, who reminds us obliquely here that Jesus elsewhere exhorts us to be “merciful as our Heavenly Father is merciful,” thus providing a link between mercy and “perfection.”
 
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