Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
First, you have to take context into account. This is the passage:
43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘Love your neighbor[i] and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 that you may be children of your Father in heaven. He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 If you love those who love you, what reward will you get? Are not even the tax collectors doing that? 47 And if you greet only your own people, what are you doing more than others? Do not even pagans do that? 48 Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Here Jesus is instructing about love and personal morality, specifically loving your enemy. In the passage's conclusion, He says to be "perfect" in terms of this aspect of God. And this leads to the second point...
You need to look at the original Greek word ["teleioi"[(https://biblehub.com/lexicon/matthew/5-48.htm) which is translated as "perfect". Teleioi does mean perfection, but its meaning alludes to moral completeness, as in "perfect or complete in a moral sense".
Looking back at the context of the passage, "moral perfection" seems to make more sense as opposed to total and utter perfection of being.
And of course God wants us to improve, but if one were to become totally perfect as God is totally perfect, it would place us at His same level, creating a situation where there is no longer "one true God".
You can't be as totally perfect as God and be below him at the same time, because if you were below Him then that would mean that there was something better or less flawed than you...and thus you would not be perfect.
Are you referring to Matthew 5:48?
First, you have to take context into account. This is the passage:
Here Jesus is instructing about love and personal morality, specifically loving your enemy. In the passage's conclusion, He says to be "perfect" in terms of this aspect of God. And this leads to the second point...
You need to look at the original Greek word ["teleioi"[(https://biblehub.com/lexicon/matthew/5-48.htm) which is translated as "perfect". Teleioi does mean perfection, but its meaning alludes to moral completeness, as in "perfect or complete in a moral sense".
Looking back at the context of the passage, "moral perfection" seems to make more sense as opposed to total and utter perfection of being.
And of course God wants us to improve, but if one were to become totally perfect as God is totally perfect, it would place us at His same level, creating a situation where there is no longer "one true God".
You can't be as totally perfect as God and be below him at the same time, because if you were below Him then that would mean that there was something better or less flawed than you...and thus you would not be perfect.
Only God is perfect in all ways.
Dang. Well said.