5:48 “So then, you folks are going to be a
perfectly mature people, just as your heavenly Father is perfectly mature.”
The “you folks” (hymeis, plural) is
strongly emphasized in the text. Jesus promises hearers of the Sermon on the
Mount who want to do it that they are going to be a special people. The Greek future tense verb, “you shall be,” is first of all a promise!
“You disciples are going to be a perfectly mature people!” Disciples have
thrilling prospects. The verb then
becomes a command. (On the dual promise-command character of the future tense esesthe used here, cf. Schlatter, Der Evangelist, 197; Grundmann, 180;
Bonnard, 75.) “You shall be—and so you must be as soon as possible—a perfectly
mature people.”
The word
translated “perfectly mature”—teleioi—is
the Greek word that Jesus’ contemporary Josephus used to describe persons come
of age, the adult in contrast to the minor, the mature person as distinguished
from the child (Schlatter, Der Evangelist,
197). In the Commands, by way of explication and summary, we learn who these mature people are: they are people
who love to obey God’s Scriptures (C 1), zealously seek to keep communications
open with everyone around them by banishing a resentful spirit (C 2), fight off
lust like death (C 3) and infidelity like murder (C 4), seek to avoid oaths and
dramatic oath-like statements (C 5), are undefensive, nonviolent, and poised (C
6), and are enabled even to love
their enemies (C 7). Jesus’ Seven Commands define Christian maturity.
The word teleioi is usually translated “perfect.”
But the noun “perfect” seems to me too cold to carry the warmth, weight, width,
and humanity of teleioi. “Perfect” in
English seems often to mean “faultless,” “flawless,” and other superhuman or
semi-fanatical connotations that are neither pleasant for others nor true to
Jesus’ sense. Luke, in his version of this sermon, heard Jesus say, “Be merciful (oiktirmones) as your Father is
merciful” (Luke 6:36; Calvin, 1:200, prefers Luke’s rendering to Matthew’s).
The kind of perfection to which Matthew’s Jesus refers, as the context shows,
is the perfection of mercy, of wide- and whole-heartedness, not the “high”
perfection we associate with impeccability. (Thus the REB, e.g., renders
Matthew’s verse this way: “There must be no limit to your goodness, as your
heavenly Father’s goodness knows no bounds.”) Christian perfection is the width
with which disciples are corporately able to embrace others; it is not the
height to which they are able individually to climb. Jesus’ prophetic motto, “I
want mercy and not sacrifice,” might even be translated, “I want width, not
height,” or even, “I want social maturity, not individual perfection.” (For
good discussions of biblical perfection, cf. Bonnard, 76n.1; G. Barth, 101;
Grundmann, 180; Schweizer, 135.)
That Matthew’s
Jesus can promise this maturity (“you are
going to be”) might indicate what Matthew thinks about the much debated question
of the practical fulfillability of the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus expects that
his Word and his risen presence with his disciples will enable them to live—or to try to live—the way he directs in
his Seven Commands. Christian maturity is a bit like Huck Finn’s raft: “I was
powerful glad to get away from the feuds, and so was Jim to get away from the
swamp. We said there warn’t no home like a raft, after all. Other places do
seem so cramped up and smothery, but a raft don’t. You feel mighty free and easy
and comfortable on a raft.” (Frederick Dale Bruner, Matthew: A Commentary: The
Christbook, Matthew 1–12 (vol. 1, rev ed.; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans,
2007], 276-77)
