The Pulpit Commentary on Matthew 5:48

The Pulpit Commentary · Joseph S. Exell and contributors · Public domain

Our standard of perfection.

"Even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." Though fittingly employed at the close of this chapter, the word "perfect" is more immediately connected with the last few verses. Dealing with that strange inference of the Pharisees, that because we are commanded to love our neighbours, we are therefore required to hate our enemies, Christ presents the true idea of love, the perfect conception of love. He demands such a love as can make what is opposite to it, as well as what is akin to it, its object. The apostles teach that perfection is the idea, the aim, to be kept in the soul of the Christian, there to work as a perpetual inspiration to the seeking of perfection in the life and conduct. St. Paul presents the distinction between full-grown men and little children. The full-grown men are the perfect; they have reached the fulness, the standard, of Christian manhood. A man "perfect" is one who has attained his moral end, the standard according to which he was made; one in whom every Christian grace has reached its ripeness and maturity.

I. CHRISTIANITY PRESENTS A PERFECT STANDARD OF HUMANITY. Christ is the realized thought of God, when he designed the being man. The Christ is to be so set before men, that they may get from his story the idea of a perfect human being. We may be able to form an idea of perfect virtue, perfect duty, perfect purity. What we wholly fail to conceive is a perfect man. That must be shown us, revealed to us. And when we see him, behold he is "God manifest in the flesh." For, after all, God himself is the standard perfection; and it is only because we see him in Christ that we are satisfied with Christ.

II. THE CHRISTIAN STANDARD OF THE PERFECT IS THE NOBLEST INSPIRATION TO MAN. To be like God is the sublimest human possibility. We know what being like God means when we look on Christ. He has at once revealed our distance from the "perfect;" for we are not like him. He inspires us to seek after the perfect; for we may be "made like unto him in all things."—R.T.

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