In the statement You … must be
perfect, the pronoun You is
strongly emphasized.
Perfect in the Greek has the meaning of having
come to completion or wholeness; it can refer to maturity or to moral and
ethical integrity, that is, to being flawless. Perfect is the rendering of most translations. But NEB attempts a
dynamic rendering: “There must be no limit to your goodness, as your heavenly
Father’s goodness knows no bounds.”
One scholar observes that perfect
is used in the Greek Old Testament “to translate a Hebrew concept that refers
to what is whole, intact, undivided.” The sect at Qumran used it in a somewhat
different sense. For them it became a description of their own community,
“referring to its way of life totally devoted to God’s Law, although of course
with the knowledge that this way of life is always a gift from the Lord himself
…” Matthew also uses it of devotion to God, rather than of flawlessness of
character. In his Gospel “such devotion means doing right,” and this is the
same sense it has in James 1:4; 3:2. Jesus refers to God as perfect, because he is “totally,
undividedly devoted to man; he is faithful to his covenant; he is totally given
to those he loves.”
Following this idea, then, translators could say “you must be perfect
(or, flawless or, completely faithful) in your devotion to the Lord, just as
God your heavenly Father is perfect (or, flawless or, completely faithful) in
loving you,” or “you must be completely devoted to doing what God requires in
the same way that God your Father in heaven is completely devoted to the people
he loves.” (Barclay Moon Newman and Philip C. Stine, A Handbook
on the Gospel of Matthew [UBS Handbook Series; New York: United Bible Societies,
1992], 156)
