“Jesus said to him, ‘If you would be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; and come, follow me.'”
Matthew 19:21 ESV
Compare this to the statement in the Sermon on the Mount, in which Jesus says, “To be perfect as the Father in Heaven is perfect.” The context is the same as the Sermon on the Mount, and a wealthy young man had come to him and asked him what good deed must be done to earn eternal life. Jesus responded first by saying that no one is good but for the Father in heaven. Then he went on and said that a person should keep the commandments.
Jesus didn’t really answer his question to begin with. He needed to correct an assumption the young man was making, which is that people can be good enough to gain eternal life.
The young man wasn’t catching on, though. The man pressed Jesus further, asking which commandments must be kept to gain eternal life, as if there was some formula that would work. He wanted Jesus to boil it down to the right formula so he could do what he needs to do and get on with his life and check them off and get on with his life.
So Jesus played along and began to recite the commandments:
“And Jesus said, ‘You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness. Honor your father and mother, and, you shall love your neighbor as yourself.'”
Matthew 19:18-19 ESV
Notice that Jesus doesn’t go through all the Ten Commandments. If we are paying attention, we notice that Jesus started in the middle of the Ten Commandments, and he recited only five commandments. In fact he only recited the commandments on the horizontal plane – the commandments focusing on our relationship with others. He skips over the commandments, focusing on our relationship with God (love the Lord your God, keep the Sabbath, etc.)
I will come back to the fact that Jesus only focused on half the commandments, but I want to tie this passage back into the Sermon on the Mount first. The entirety of the Sermon on the Mount is a reflection on moving from the commandments as a list of rules to a heart attitude toward God and people.
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus upped the ante. Jesus repeatedly recited a rule, like you shall not murder, followed by a statement that goes to the heart. If you are angry with your brother, if you have contempt for him, if you call him a fool, you have violated the spirit of the rule. (Matt. 5:21-22)
If you do not commit adultery, that’s great: but if you lust after someone, you have violated the spirit of the rule about not committing adultery. In your heart you have violated the rule.
We can control our conduct so as not to violate the rules outwardly, but the real point of the rules gets at the attitude of our hearts. If our hearts are wrong we have violated the spirit of the rules. The rules are not what God ultimately wants us to master. He wants us to see the attitude of our hearts and recognize that something is amiss.
The whole point of the rules is to understand that God wants us to love each other. He is not looking for rule followers. He is looking for people whose hearts have the right orientation – to love each other.
Continue reading “What Does it mean to Be Perfect As the Father Is Perfect”
