Complete as your Father
The high calling
Jesus ends his teaching on loving enemies with a line that can sound impossibly daunting: you therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Taken as a demand for flawless moral perfection, it would crush us. But the word translated perfect means complete, whole, mature, brought to its intended end — and in context, Jesus is speaking specifically about love. He has just said to love even our enemies, as the Father does, and then: be complete, as your Father is complete.
The Father's completeness, in this passage, is the all-embracing reach of his love — sun and rain given to the evil and the good alike, love that excludes no one. To be perfect or complete as the Father is, then, is to have a love that is whole, that does not stop at the boundary of those who love us back, that reaches even to enemies. It is completeness in love, not flawlessness in performance.
This reframes the daunting command as the high calling it is. We are called not to an anxious, impossible flawlessness, but to a love made complete — a love that, like the Father's, leaves no one out. That is still a high and stretching calling, the very summit of Christlike character, but it is a calling toward wholeness in love rather than a demand for perfection we could never meet. Is your love still partial, stopping at those who love you back, or is it growing complete, reaching even to those who do not?
“Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.”
— Jesus, in the Sermon on the Mount — Matthew 5:48 (WEB)
Hear be perfect as a call to completeness in love — a love like the Father's that leaves no one out — rather than a crushing demand for flawless performance.
“Because it is written, You shall be holy; for I am holy.”
The word perfect lands like a verdict we could never pass — flawless, spotless, impossible — so we either despair under it or strain to perform it, never noticing that the word actually means whole, and that Jesus is talking about love. The interior work is to reframe the command as the high calling it is: not a spotless record but a love grown mature, learning to extend to the difficult and the undeserving the same kindness the Father shows them. Stop measuring yourself against an impossible flawlessness, and start asking whether your love is widening toward the people it would rather skip.
This week, test your love for completeness rather than your behavior for flawlessness: find the boundary where your love stops — those who love you back — and deliberately extend it past that line, toward the wholeness of the Father's all-embracing love.
There is a quiet cruelty in how the word gets twisted into a bar for flawless behavior, leaving you either crushed or anxiously performing and deaf to the call. But a soul pursuing wholeness in love bears the Father's likeness most fully — its love reaching even enemies, breaking past the partial, boundaried affection it was once content to settle for.
Be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect — taken as a demand for flawless moral perfection, this line crushes us, and many have heard it that way, sinking under an impossible standard. But the word means complete, whole, mature, and Jesus speaks it specifically about love. He has just commanded love even of enemies, as the Father loves the evil and the good alike, and then says: be complete in that love, as your Father is.
This transforms a crushing demand into a high calling. We are not summoned to an anxious, unattainable flawlessness, but to a love made whole — a love that, like the Father's, stops at no boundary and leaves no one out. That is still the very summit of Christlike character, stretching us far beyond our natural reach, but it is a calling toward completeness in love, not perfectionism. So ask of your love what Jesus asks: is it still partial, reaching only those who love you back, or is it growing complete, like the Father's, reaching even those who do not?
- Have I heard be perfect as a crushing demand for flawlessness?
- Is my love complete, or does it stop at those who love me back?
- Where could I extend my love past its current boundary toward the Father's wholeness?
Lord, I hear be perfect as an impossible demand and sink under it. But you call me to completeness in love, like the Father whose love reaches the evil and the good alike. Make my love whole, stopping at no boundary, reaching even those who do not love me back. Amen.