Be Perfect with Agape

Because I’ve heard many people complain about the way Christian doctrines make people think they have to “be perfect,” I began to wonder what “perfect” really means. Over the years of searching, I’ve finally concluded that such opinions seem to come from a misinterpretation of the actual teachings of Jesus. Especially when we read about his actions, we can see he was trying to relieve people’s anxieties about living and about relating to God.

When we remember that the only group he ever criticized -- the Pharisees -- were the ones trying to make people think they had to practice a huge amount of rules and regulations in order to “be perfect,” we see that Jesus was reacting against that approach to religion. So today, those religious groups who make people think that only strict rules make people “perfect” are just modern-day Pharisees. And so Jesus would be just as upset with today’s groups as he was with the Pharisees of his day. He wouldn't try to get people to act like some ideal.

So what was meaning? My conclusion is Jesus had a different idea about "being" and about what “perfect” was, and about what life was? We saw evidence of that in Luke 6:35-36 -- "[agapan] your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because God is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful." So something else was going on in the new meaning that Jesus was bringing into being.

What I’m learning about the spiritual power called “agape” is that it’s a gift from God to help us. Agape doesn’t cause us to be more anxious, but it brings us a way to ease out of being anxious. One way it helps us is with the strength to BE what we were created to be. So what does agape show us about being perfect?

Now, we’re ready to ask: what did Jesus mean when he said, after a long discussion about how to treat our enemies, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect”? (Matthew 5:48) The struggles with those words for centuries have caused all kinds of problems. But I think Jesus seemed to be trying to get his followers to deeply comprehend that they were ALREADY PERFECT because of the presence of God with them. That’s what agape helps us see, even in relation to enemies. So he was saying something more like, “You are already perfect, so just BE perfect.” (The meaning changes when all the emphasis is on "be" and not on "perfect.")

So with the spiritual gift of agape -- it is meant not only to help us see we are already perfect, but also to help us be. In a sense, when we truly, profoundly accept the gift of agape as a spiritual power into the center of our being, we are able to relax into being what we were created to be. We don’t need to get all worked up and frustrated trying to act according to some ieal we’re not. As St. Paul said, “Agape is patient and kind.”

Jesus was trying to point out that it wasn’t something for us to intellectually understand, because the reality went so much more profoundly deeper that mere intellect. And it wasn’t something we have to make ourselves believe, because there is no point in making ourselves “become” something we already are. It was more a case of being -- (and being fully aware of our present reality) -- so he said, “Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect.”