You Must Be Perfect

Perfectionism -- the word has shades of meaning. We've all known perfectionists, people who want everything to be perfect. They can be annoying because, on one hand, nothing is ever good enough while, on the other hand, they are not perfect either. There are treatments in psychology for what is viewed as a disorder. Most people who are perfectionists see it as a problem and would like to change.

There is another form of perfectionism that is not viewed by its adherents as a problem. In fact, they view it as mandatory. This form is found in Christian doctrine. There are those who would argue that at some point after conversion but before death a true believer will arrive at complete sanctification -- moral perfection. This perfectionism holds that all true believers eventually die completely to sin and that this condition is the only way to end up in heaven.

One of the best known teachers of this concept was John Wesley, the originator of the Methodist Church. It was a popular theme with Charles Finney, and it has also been taken up by certain Pentecostals, often referred to as "the Holiness Movement", who consider this perfectionism part of a "second blessing". And it is based on Scripture. We all know, for instance, that God told His people, "You shall be holy: for I the LORD your God am holy" (Lev. 19:2). Jesus repeated something very similar: "You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect" (Matt. 5:48). And how else would you interpret John when he wrote, "Whosoever is born of God does not commit sin; for His seed remains in him: and he cannot sin, because he is born of God" (1 John 3:9)?

Now, this perfectionism doesn't hold that a person becomes physically perfect, free from temptation, or infallible in judgment. The idea is that you become sinless -- not sinless in the same sense that Jesus was sinless, but sinless in the sense of ceasing to sin. Wesley said it was perfection in love. Nor did he argue that it obtained salvation, but simply that true believers would obtain it or they couldn't be saved.

So ... what could possibly be the objection to this perspective? I mean, you can clearly see it in the Bible, and big names are behind it. Why would anyone object? To be quite honest, I suspect the first reason is that no one seems to ever find such a thing in experience. Sure, sure, there are those who claim it -- I've met them -- but to maintain the claim you have to redefine sin. If you change it from a violation of God's commands to "mistakes", perhaps you can get away with it. That doesn't work. Worse, in my experience the godliest people I've known are the ones who are acutely aware of their own imperfection. I've never met a single person that can claim and support the claim of living sinlessly. Experience cries out for an answer.

Of course, experience is usually not a good way to interpret Scripture. So the counter position to perfectionism has to come from Scripture. And it's in there. Paul juxtaposes the two positions as if both are true. In his famous prayer about his longing to know Christ to the exclusion of everything else, he prays:

... that I may know Him and the power of His resurrection, and may share His sufferings, becoming like Him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead. Not that I have already obtained this or am already perfect, but I press on to make it my own, because Christ Jesus has made me His own. Brothers, I do not consider that I have made it my own. But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus. Let those of us who are perfect think this way, and if in anything you think otherwise, God will reveal that also to you (Phil. 3:10-15).

Paul is likely the most obvious example of a sanctified person in the Bible. Still, here, near the end of his life, Paul says, "Not that I ... am already perfect." He affirms, "I do not consider that I have made it my own." Although Paul claims that he is not perfect, he throws this into the mix: "Let those of us who are perfect think this way." So, he's not perfect in some sense but he's perfect in another sense. Of course, there's always 1 John 1:8 -- "If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us."

I know. It's a lengthy debate. There are other questions and other answers. There are objections and objections to the objections. And I'm not likely to settle the matter for everyone here and now. (Picture that. "Oh, thanks, Stan, that cleared everything up. What were we thinking?") But if perfectionism is supposed to be the norm for Christians, I have to say that I have yet to meet a Christian ... including the one who wrote the majority of the New Testament -- Paul.