Be Perfect

During Jesus’ famous Sermon on the Mount,[1] he makes this startling statement: “Therefore you shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”[2]

Is he serious? Didn’t Paul tell us that “all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God,”[3] and that we must rely on God’s grace rather than our own righteousness?[4]

So Jesus must have been joking, right?  Dietrich Bonhoeffer didn’t think so. In his most famous book, Discipleship (or The Cost of Discipleship, as it is known in the United States), he talked about the Sermon on the Mount as a goal for all Christians. As I explained in Chapter 28 of my most recent book, Christ’s Faithful Servants (copyright 2023):

For Bonhoeffer, this sermon was not a fanciful ideal for Christian behavior, but a goal toward which all Christians should strive. He contended that following Christ requires obedience, and criticized the idea that God’s grace allows us to continue our attachment to this world and its evil practices, calling it “theological error of the first magnitude.” To Bonhoeffer, faith and obedience were both essential. The abuse of God’s grace leads to “cheap grace,” by which Bonhoeffer meant:

grace sold on the market like cheapjacks’ wares. The sacraments, the forgiveness of sin, and the consolations of religion are thrown away at cut prices. Grace is represented as the Church’s inexhaustible treasury, from which she showers blessing with generous hands, without asking questions or fixing limits. Grace without price; grace without cost! . . . In such a Church the world finds a cheap covering for its sins; no contrition is required, still less any real desire to be delivered from sin.

Bonhoeffer lamented the laxity and worldliness that cheap grace encourages, for it condones all manner of disobedience to Christ. He decried those whose commitment to Christ doesn’t extend beyond the hours they spend in church each week. Here was a twentieth century Paul reminding us of what he told the Romans: “Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?” [Romans 6:1-2] For Bonhoeffer, following Christ required a willingness to endure what he endured—shame, rejection, suffering, and persecution. We forgive those who inflict such suffering upon us, and embrace the suffering of others by sharing it, relieving it, and speaking truth on their behalf—and we do so because Christ enables us to do it.

Do we too readily accept our flaws, our failings, and our sins? Do we too easily excuse our misbehavior, our cruelty, and our lack of empathy as “just the way it is”? I believe Jesus was telling us that we could be better than that, and that we have to be better than that. And with his help and the help of the Holy Spirit, we can be. 

So strive to “be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect,” by doing what Jesus told us to do—love God and love one another.

Merry Christmas, and may God bless you and yours this Christmas season.

[1]. Matthew chapters 5 through 7

[2]. Matthew 5:48

[3]. Romans 3:23

[4]. See, for example, Romans 3:24, Galatians 5:4, and Ephesians 2:8.