“Be ye as perfect as ye can” …?

 

  PROBABLY the most frustrating of all commandments from God in this life is to be “perfect.”

  It could be wagered that this one commandment weighs heavily on most Latter-day Saints and causes plenty of stress and concern, in the struggle to work out one’s exaltation.

“Therefore I would that ye should be perfect even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect.” (3 Nephi 12:48).

  A man can’t be “perfect” in this life and perhaps even Jesus Christ himself was not “perfect,” when he was in mortality.

  Jesus Christ was certainly and without question the only sinless person to have ever lived on Earth, but “perfection” seems to go beyond that lofty quality.

  “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” (Matthew 5:48).

  Note that when speaking in mortality, Christ did NOT imply that he was perfect, just that his Father in Heaven was.

  Does this mean that “perfection” can only come AFTER the resurrection? So, it would seem, as Christ was resurrected when he visited the Nephites and gave the sermon that is recorded in 3 Nephi.

  So, what have some of the Church leaders stated about perfection?

 

                                     President Brigham Young.

  -"… Be ye as perfect, as ye can," for that is all we can do …” Brigham Young stated in Journal of Discourses 2:129 on December 18, 1853.

  -“There are no perfect individuals. … We all have some disadvantages. Now if you do not want your life to be spoiled by your disadvantages, you will look at the advantages that you have, and make benefit of those.

“It’s like a glass of water—it’s half full or half empty. You can regret and bemoan the fact that you have only half a glass of water or you can be extremely pleased by the fact that you are blessed with as much as half a glass of water.” -From James Womack, a stake patriarch in Winnfield, Louisiana, quoted in Ensign Magazine, July 1979, p. 13.

  -From Elder David A. Bednar, on a Facebook post, May 30, 2024: “When we read or hear the admonition ‘be ye therefore perfect’ (Matthew 5:48), we may think it means to make no mistakes. But such a level of performance simply is not possible.”

  So, what is possible then?

 

                                                Elder David A. Bednar.                                                                                 Photo from Wikipedia and The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

  Elder Bednar in that Facebook post then shared this quote from President Russell M. Nelson’s conference address: “Perfection Pending”:

  “In Matt. 5:48, the term perfect was translated from the Greek teleios, which means 'complete.' Teleios is an adjective derived from the noun telos, which means 'end.' The infinitive form of the verb is teleiono, which means 'to reach a distant end, to be fully developed, to consummate, or to finish.'

  “Please note that the word does not imply 'freedom from error'; it implies 'achieving a distant objective.’ . . . The perfection that the Savior envisions for us is much more than errorless performance. It is the eternal expectation as expressed by the Lord in his great intercessory prayer to his Father—that we might be made perfect and be able to dwell with them in the eternities ahead.”

  Elder Bednar noted that we should rely on God’s grace to help us be “just a little better today than we were yesterday, and a little better tomorrow than we are today.”

  Elder Bednar also compared this concept of “complete” to an apple growing on a tree. It begins in the spring as a blossom on the tree and then grows into a small bud, then a small apple and then in the fall, it is a large apple and then it is “complete.”

 NOTE: This article and all of the NighUntoKolob blog are NOT an official website of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They are the author's conclusions and opinions only.