Perfection and the Christian Life

We are all mystified and entertained by magicians. We watch them do their tricks and we say, “That’s impossible! How did they do that??” 

And that’s what some people say about the Christian life. Consider Jesus’ challenge from Matthew 22:37: 

You shall love the Lord your God 

with all your heart, 

with all your soul, 

with all your mind, 

and with all your strength. 

And we might think, “That’s impossible! How can we do that?”

The First Greatest Commandment challenges us to make God the center of our lives. Difficult? Yes. Challenging? Yes. Impossible? No, because the Christian life is not the magic act that some people make it out to be. 

The Christian life seems impossible from two points of view. First, there’s the staunch believer, someone who has tried to be good all through life, or perhaps has had an emotional conversion experience and was moved to accept Jesus Christ as their personal Lord and Savior. The problem for such Christians is the failure to take into consideration one’s humanity: We will sometimes fail and disappoint. We will fall to sin. So the Christian life, at one time a matter of joy in finding Christ, becomes a life of guilt and disappointment in not living up to God’s and one’s own expectations. 

On the other side of the coin are the people who shy away from Jesus and anything that smacks of religion, which seems to be only for the goody-two-shoes. It means giving up all the fun and pleasurable and sinful things that one likes to do. “Make God the center of my life?” such a person might say. “Don’t make me laugh!” 

The problem lies in the perception of the Christian life as a life of perfection. If we think that being Christian means being perfect then we are doomed to failure. Like a magic trick, it’s a premise based on deception, however well intentioned. 

The idea that the Christian life is a life of perfection comes from a rigid translation and misinterpretation of Matthew 5:48, which is usually translated as "Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect." But if we go back to Greek, the earliest language of the New Testament, we find an alternative definition in that original Greek word teleoli:  to be COMPLETE, to be WHOLE. So the passage would be more openly understood as, "Be complete and be whole, as your heavenly Father is whole." 

What a difference! That understanding makes the Christian life more attainable because it means our relationship with Jesus is a process, a means of becoming, a lifetime of growth. It means allowing Jesus to work with me to reach my fullest potential. It means leaving room for the Holy Spirit when it comes to those aspects of my life that might seem wanting or inadequate. Or, as that popular 1970s button said: 

Please Be Patient. God Is Not Finished With Me Yet.