Matthew 5:48 – “Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect.”
Jesus came to turn upside-down traditional thoughts and behaviors that had existed for thousands of years. In the preceding verse, He was teaching an entirely new concept of love. The kind that extends love to the very people that have harmed us: our enemies.
Is not this very hard to comprehend? Of course, it is much easier and natural to love the people who we also love and with whom we have very little conflict. It is easier to love our pleasant family, church members, as well as our selected group of friends.
But try loving your enemy and looking upon them with compassion. Weird concept, right? But this is what God does and wants us to do. The good thing is that, according to this verse, we “shall be perfect”; it is a process and is ongoing. We shall be perfect in “love”; we shall be sincere and upright.
So, we shall remain with our eyes fixed on Jesus, the perfecter of our faith; the One who is faithful to complete in us what He called us to do; The One whom we need to imitate, and who enables us to love one another just as He has loved us. Only then we shall be perfect. Amen!
