JMJ
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The Readings for the 11th Tuesday, Tempus Per Annum (C2)
So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.
Matthew 5:48 (NABRE)
BE PERFECT JUST as Our Father is Perfect. Father’s Day is this coming Sunday. Are you able to be anything like your father? I mean in some ways, maybe. And in some ways you may be better, but are you able to be like your father? How much more can we be like our Heavenly Father? Look, I have never known my natural father – I’m asking these questions coming from that very dysfunctional family situation. How can I be like my father, whom I’ve never know. How can I be like God, my Heavenly Father, whom I cannot know at all like I could know my natural father – but I don’t. Wait. Jesus why are you giving us an impossible command?
Because that’s what salvation means.
The Greek word translated here as “perfect” is τέλειος teleios from the word, τέλος telos. It means not only to be “brought to completion” but also to achieve the perfect or intended end. The telos of a thing is determined by its nature – put there by God. The Greeks would look for the logoi of things which can bring us to the Logos of God. The Latins have us looking at essences and natures, but it’s the same process: the base of each person and thing is something created by God. Why was man created? To achieve our perfect end, our telos. What is our telos? Baltimore Catechism, Q6: Why did God make you? God made me to know Him, to love Him, and to serve Him in this world, and to be happy with Him for ever in heaven. That is our proper end, our proper telos: to know God, to love God, to serve Him and to be happy (blessed) with him for ever.
The real question is how? How are we to get to our perfect end and thus be like God? Jesus gives us that answer later, using the same word (τέλειος).
Jesus said unto him, If thou wilt be perfect (τέλειος), go and sell that thou hast, and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasure in heaven: and come and follow me.
Matthew 19:21
If you would be perfect… let’s step back a few verses… Jesus rehearses some of the ten Commandments – all the ones dealing with your neighbor: “Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not bear false witness, 19honor your father and mother, and love your neighbor as yourself.” (v. 18). He leaves out all the commands about God… or no he doesn’t. He adds, “Come follow me”. Loving your neighbor is not enough for perfection. We must follow Jesus (that is, God) in order to fulfill the rest of the covenant.
But we know the truth. We’re all sinners who have fallen short of the glory of God. (As an aside, does that mean we are trying to reach God in his Glory – but we miss. Or does that mean God wants to share his glory with us, but we keep falling short?)
Jesus uses this same word (telos) from the Cross in John 19:30. He announces “It is finished” by saying “It’s been telos-ed”. What has been finished? We have – humans. We have been perfected in Christ. I have an essay do in a week and a half on Atonement, so don’t expect me to go too far down that road. But I will say that Jesus – God-Man – is the one that makes it happen. And you can see it in his name. “Come follow me…” Let’s use the Bible as meditation literature.
My friend, Steve, reminds me of the Evangelical addage, there’s nothing more dangerous to the faith than an man with a Greek Dictionary and an interlinear Bible. I may be about to prove that in Hebrew as well.
In Hebrew Jesus Name, as you’ve probably heard, is “Yeshua.” Via Latin and Greek we can get to either Jesus or Joshua. So, you can think of all the ways the story of Joshua might foreshadow the story of Jesus. But I want to stick to the name itself.
Yeshua is linked to the meaning savior and salvation. Now salvation (in both Hebrew and Greek, as well as in Latin actually) has the meaning of “deliver” as well as “healing” and “making whole”. Please keep that in mind. Yeshua gets this meaning because the root of Yeshua is the Hebrew Word, “Yasha” meaning to save (deliver, rescue, etc) which is also linked to the meaning of “make whole” or “heal”. So, somehow, Jesus Yasha-s us: he makes us whole. Jesus name, via the root Yasha, is also linked with the word “Hosanna” which means “please save (us)”, It’s a word cried out to God and to the Kings of Israel. And because Yasha is linked with Hosanna, it’s also linked with two other important words: Moshiah (for example in Deuteronomy 22:27) which is a hominim for Moshiach, or Messiah. This last means “anointed” only, and has no direct link to Yasha or to “moshiah” but the words are within a breath of each other (moshiah and moshiach). They come together in meaning by way of homonymnity. And so “Jesus Christ” or “Messiah Yeshua” literally is the name of the Savior meaning the Saving One who is the Salvation of YHVH.
We are perfected (made whole) in following Jesus.
Doxos 
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