<p>5:48 See on 5:7.</p>
<p><em>You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect-&nbsp;</em>We are either seen as absolutely perfect, or totally wicked, due to God's imputation of righteousness or evil to us (Ps. 37:37). There is no third way. The pure in heart see God, their righteousness (to God) exceeds that of the Pharisees, no part of their body offends them or they pluck it out; they are perfect as their Father is (Mt. 5:8,20,29,48). Every one of the faithful will have a body even now completely full of light, with no part dark (Lk. 11:36); we will walk, even as the Lord walked (1 Jn. 2:6). These impossible standards were surely designed by the Lord to force us towards a real faith in the imputed righteousness which we can glory in; that the Father really does see us as this righteous. Men have risen up to this. David at the end of his life could say that he was upright and had kept himself from his iniquity (2 Sam. 22:21-24). He could only say this by a clear understanding of the concept of imputed righteousness. Paul's claim to have always lived in a pure conscience must be seen in the same way.</p>
<p>God makes concessions to human weakness; He sets an ideal standard, but will accept us achieving a lower level. &quot;Be ye therefore perfect,&nbsp;<em>as</em>&nbsp;your Father in heaven is perfect&quot; (Mt. 5:48) is proof enough of this. The standard is clear: absolute perfection. But our lower attainment is accepted, by grace. If God accepts our obvious failure to attain an ideal standard, we should be inspired to accept this in others. Daily Israel were taught this; for they were to offer totally unblemished animals. And yet there was no totally unblemished animal. We need to recognize that God sets an ultimately high standard, but is prepared to accept our achievement of a lower standard- i.e. God makes concessions. We all disobey the same commandments of Christ day by day and hour by hour. Yet we have a firm hope in salvation. Therefore obedience to commandments is not the only necessity for salvation. &quot;Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect&quot; (Mt. 5:48) goes unfulfilled by each of us- as far as our own obedience is concerned. It is possible to disobey Christ's commandments every day and be saved. If this statement is false, then salvation is only possible is we attain God's moral perfection, which is impossible. If disobedience to Christ's commands is tolerable by God (on account of our faith in the atonement), how can&nbsp;<em>we</em>&nbsp;decide&nbsp;<em>which&nbsp;</em>of those commandments we will tolerate being broken by our brethren, and which of them we will disfellowship for? If we cannot recognize degrees of sin, it is difficult to pronounce some commands to be more important than others.</p>
<p>There are times when Paul's inspired commentary opens up some of the Lord's more difficult sayings. On &quot;Be you therefore perfect&quot;, Paul's comment is: &quot;Be perfected&quot; (2 Cor. 13:11). This is quite different to how many may take it- 'Let God perfect you' is the message. Relatively late in his career Paul could comment: &ldquo;Not that I have already obtained, or am already made perfect&rdquo; (Phil. 3:12), alluding to the Lord&rsquo;s bidding to be perfect as our Father is (Mt. 5:48). Through this allusion to the Gospels, Paul is showing his own admission of failure to live up to the standard set. And yet we must compare &ldquo;Not as though I had already attained, either were already perfect&quot; with &ldquo;Let us therefore, as many as be perfect&hellip;&rdquo; (Phil. 3:12,15). In 1 Cor. 13:10, he considers he is &lsquo;perfect&rsquo;, and has put away the things of childhood. Thus he saw his spiritual maturity only on account of his being in Christ; for he himself was not &ldquo;already perfect&rdquo;, he admitted.<br />
Luke&rsquo;s account has &quot;be merciful, as your Father also is merciful&quot; (Lk. 6:36). Quite simply, who God is should inspire us to be like Him; to copy His characteristics [the things of His Name] in our personalities. We must be &quot;perfect&quot; as our Father is; &quot;be ye holy&quot;, because He is holy (1 Pet. 1:14-16); &quot;kind one to another, tender hearted, forgiving one another, even as God forgave&hellip; be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children&quot; (Eph. 4:32; 5:1); &quot;merciful, as your Father also is merciful&quot; (Lk. 6:36). Prov. 19:11RV uses language frequently applied to Yahweh Himself and applies it to the wise man: &quot;The discretion of a man maketh him slow to anger; and it is his glory to pass over a transgression&quot;. And thus Phinehas was commended for being &quot;jealous with my jealousy&quot; (Num. 25:11 RV)- his emotion at that time was a mirror of that of God Himself. Not only was language re-interpreted by the Christians. Whole concepts were reoriented. Holiness in the sense of separation from the unclean had been a major theme in the Mosaic Law, and it figured largely in the theology of the Pharisees. But the Lord quoted &ldquo;Be holy because I, Yahweh your God am holy&rdquo; (Lev. 19:2) as &ldquo;Be ye therefore merciful, even as your father in heaven is merciful&rdquo; (Lk. 6:36). To be merciful to those who sin is now the true holiness- not merely separation from them and condemnation of their ways. Note, too, how He invites us to interpret the Yahweh as &ldquo;father&rdquo;, rather than transliterating the Name.</p>
<p>The Lord&rsquo;s manifesto as recorded in the Sermon on the Mount was structured and set up by Him in some ways as a &lsquo;new law&rsquo; as opposed to the old law of Moses. And yet His law likewise proves impossible to keep. We cannot be perfect as our Father is. To a man and to a woman, we would admit that we cannot fully forgive our enemies from our hearts. And so, according to the Lord&rsquo;s law, we each stand unforgiven. We are to sell all that we have and give to the poor, or risk forfeiting the Kingdom because of our love of this world&rsquo;s goods (Mk. 10:17-22). An angry thought is murder, a passing lustful look becomes adultery- all mortal sins, which catch each of us within their net. Why was this? Surely yet again, the Lord wished to convict us of our guilt before Him, our inabilities, our desperation&hellip; so that we could come to appreciate the wonder of His character and His saving grace. For He was the one and only embodiment of His own teaching, to the point that the person who fulfilled all His teaching was in fact He Himself- and no other man. In knowing Him, we thus know our own desperation, and yet we likewise know- because we know Him- the certainty of our salvation by grace. Further, it becomes apparent that the Lord accepted with open arms those who were so very far from the ideals He laid down in the Sermon on the Mount. He convicted them of their guilt in such a way that with joy and peace they ran to His grace.</p>