“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
I read this statement Jesus made in Matthew 19, his statement in the Sermon on the Mount came to mind: “be perfect as the Father in Heaven is perfect.” I realized as I looked into it that the context in the Sermon on the Mount in which the statement made is similar. Both texts focus on the Ten Commandments, but Jesus takes them in a direction his audience likely did not anticipate.
In Matthew 19, 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. Jesus didn’t really answer the 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 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 of them. 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 that in a moment, but I want to see how this passage ties back to 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. Jesus upped the ante on people focused on keeping the commandments. Her 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, according to Jesus. (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, according to Jesus.
I think that these two things are going on. First, the real point of the rules is to focus us on 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.
Second, the rules are intended to show us we don’t measure up. If we think that we are ok because we keep the rules, we are missing the point of the rules – that something is amiss, we don’t measure up, and we need help. As Jesus said to the Pharisees, “Those who are healthy have no need for a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners….” (Mark 2:17)
Actually, both of those points are really the same point, and the truth is that we are all sick (even the Pharisees). We are never going to measure up because something is a mess. We are fallen. We fall short. We need help.
Jesus wrapped up the discourse on keeping the commandments in the Sermon on the Mount by talking about loving our neighbors – and even our enemies. It was in this context that Jesus told us to be perfect as our Father in heaven is perfect.
Similarly, Jesus set up the wealthy young man by telling him he lacked something (as if he really had kept all the commandments in the first place): that he should sell all he has, give it to the poor, and follow Jesus. Of course, he went away sad and didn’t hear what else Jesus had to say.
If he had stuck around he might have heard Jesus say things similar to what he said in the Sermon on the Mount. He is not looking for rule followers. He is looking for people whose hearts have the right orientation. It’s not about following the rules; it’s about knowing that God loves us, receiving that love and loving others.
Continue reading “What Does it mean to Be Perfect As the Father Is Perfect”
The story of the rich young ruler resonates with me today in the seeming impossibility of living without sin. I suspect that I am not alone in the experience of certain sinful inclinations that I just can’t seem to shake. Try as I might, I fall into the same traps of temptation over and over again. I get angry at myself. I ask for forgiveness. I renew my resolve, but I inevitably trip and fall. And sometimes I despair.
