Perfection: A major roadblock in our journey is the command to love our enemies. Our enemies are people who are malicious, intend to harm us, harass us, stalk us, oppress us, and in general make our life miserable. Most of us have probably never had a no-holds-barred enemy. But what Jesus expects is that we do a better job loving those people with whom we do not get along. While they do not want to kill us, they do sometimes try our patience.
Unfortunately, hatred seems to be a basic instinct. We do not have to turn back to the Jewish Scriptures to find evidence for that: our times give easy examples every day. But holiness—which is not just otherworldly—precludes any spirit of enmity, revenge, and grudge-bearing.
Jesus sums it all up by saying that we should be perfect, just as our heavenly Father is perfect. The definition of the perfection that God expects has been argued from the beginning. It is not to be confused with the ancient Greek notion of perfection, which is to arrive at a moral peak point and become changeless. Through history, the perfectibility of people has meant many other possibilities: that we are capable of wholly subordinating ourselves to God’s will; that we can attain to our natural end; that we can become like self-regulating machines.
Jesus’ followers, of course, reject those naturalistic kinds of perfectionism. We see, as the apex of God’s kind of perfection, compassion—a willingness to suffer with others—the object of which is always changing. Jesus practiced his own advice to love one’s enemies. He called his betrayer Judas a friend and willingly offered himself to his executioners to whom Judas had handed him over. Those who love in Jesus’ unconditional and non-selective way are true children of the God of limitless love.