ARE YOU A perfectionist? By that, I don’t mean simply that you’re a highly conscientious person who strives for excellence in all you do (or at least the things that are important to you). There’s nothing wrong with holding high standards and striving toward them. The question is whether the standards are unreasonably high, and whether you’d feel like a failure or loser if you fell short of your goal. It’s one thing to take pride in your work, to enjoy the satisfaction of a job well done. It’s another to live with the anxious sense that your work will be rendered worthless or meaningless if it’s not up to your exacting standards.

But is it possible to reach for perfection without being a perfectionist? Even in the moral and spiritual realm?

Think of the people listening to Jesus preach. I imagine that many of them would have considered the Pharisees to be the gold standard of righteousness, at least righteousness understood from the standpoint of scrupulous obedience to the Law of Moses. But Jesus tells them that if they want to enter God’s kingdom, they’ll have to do better. Again and again, he gives an example of something they had already been taught, then seems to set the bar higher.

And he saves the best for last. In the past, they’ve been taught to love their neighbor, which is clearly in the Law of Moses. But somewhere along the way, they were also taught to hate their enemy, which is not in the Law of Moses. Contradicting what the people have learned, Jesus insists that loving your neighbor includes loving your enemy. What true righteousness, godly righteousness, looks like is praying for those who harass or persecute them. And his words suggest that this is the kind of behavior that will set them apart:

If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect. (Matt 5:46-48, NIV)

Read one way, Jesus seems to say: You consider yourself righteous because you love your neighbor in obedience to the Law, right? But really, all you’re doing is loving people that love you back. Big deal. Even the tax collectors that you despise do that. Or you think you’re a good and loving person because you give a hearty “Shalom” to every fellow Jew you meet. Again, how do you deserve any credit for that? Even people who don’t believe in God greet their friends. If you really want to be righteous, you have to do better. In fact, you have to be perfect, as perfect as the Father himself is. Nothing else will do. Nothing else counts.

And, furthermore, lest anyone accuse Jesus of not practicing what he preaches, he will later pray for his enemies with ragged, painful breaths as he hangs on a cross, dying. He will ask God to forgive the people who put him there, even though he’s innocent and they’re not.

Talk about a hard act to follow.

THROUGH THE CENTURIES, many people have read the Sermon on the Mount and despaired of its seemingly impossible teaching. The ethic Jesus teaches seems too unrealistic, too lofty for mere mortals like us. And then he tops it all by insisting that we be perfect. It’s pass or fail, folks — and if you aren’t perfect, too bad for you. You fail.

Is that what Jesus is saying? If we read the sermon through the eyes of a legalist or a perfectionist, then yes. And there’s no question that Jesus is holding the faithful to a high standard. But as I’ve suggested before, Jesus isn’t saying that we need to out-Pharisee the Pharisees, to beat them at their own rigorous game. That game, after all, is already a bit rigged, allowing the people to feel self-righteous in their disdain toward their Gentile neighbors.

Put differently: where righteousness is concerned, Jesus isn’t telling people to try harder to reach the goal of legalistic righteousness, of trying to check off as many moral boxes as possible. That’s the wrong goal. Rather, he’s trying to give people a different vision of righteousness, one which embodies the humility, compassion, and longing for shalom he’s already expressed through the Beatitudes.

EARLIER, IN THE Beatitudes, Jesus blessed the peacemakers, those who strive to bring moments of wholeness and shalom to this broken world. And what was the blessing? That “they will be called children of God” (Matt 5:9). Similarly, in his final “You have heard, but I tell you” antithesis, Jesus tells his hearers to love and pray for their enemies, that they may be…what? Children of their Father in heaven (vs. 45). Then at the end of the chapter, as translated in the New International Version, he says, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (vs. 48).

That is, of course, the highest standard imaginable. But he is not issuing a command for people to be morally and spiritually flawless. Indeed, later in the sermon, in what we know as the Lord’s Prayer, he will teach his followers to regularly ask the Father to forgive their sins. That’s realistic.

No, the word “perfect” here doesn’t mean “flawless” the way a perfectionist might hear it. Rather, it describes a state of completeness, of reaching a state of full maturity. That’s why the Common English Bible, for example, renders verse 48 this way:

Therefore, just as your heavenly Father is complete in showing love to everyone, so also you must be complete.

Or if you like, consider Eugene Peterson’s more colloquial translation in The Message:

In a word, what I’m saying is, Grow up. You’re kingdom subjects. Now live like it. Live out your God-created identity. Live generously and graciously toward others, the way God lives toward you.

Moreover — for you grammar-lovers out there — the verb that the NIV translates as “be” in the phrase “Be perfect” is not a command, or what grammarians call an imperative. It’s an indicative, a regular statement of fact or opinion, and it’s in the future tense. Putting all of this together, then, we might translate Jesus’ words as “You will be complete.”

Jesus, in other words, is giving his hearers a vision of righteousness as a lifetime of growing up to be more and more like God the Father. He’s not saying, “Do this, or you’re a failure in God’s eyes.” He’s saying, “Do this to become more like your Father, and keep doing it to become more and more mature.”

Do what, exactly? Love your enemy. Does that still sound like too big of an ask? Then start by praying for them. It may be a faltering prayer at first; that’s okay. But if we do it with an honest desire to grow in righteousness, God will transform us from the inside out.

Of course, praying for our enemies isn’t the only thing Jesus suggested for people who want to grow in righteousness. So before we move on to Matthew 6, let’s recap the vision of righteousness he’s already given us in chapter 5.