This previously appeared in my blog (2018).

In the NIV (1984) Paul instructs the Corinthians, “Aim for perfection” (2 Cor 13:11).[1]  This set me thinking about the ways in which perfection has been misunderstood by Christians over time and what it truly means.

In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus said, “Be perfect, therefore, as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt 5:48).[2]  God’s perfection has often been understood through the lens of Greek philosophy.  Thomas Aquinas put it like this: “Since God is infinite, comprehending in Himself all the plenitude of perfection of all being, He cannot acquire anything new, nor extend Himself to anything whereto He was not extended previously.  Hence movement in no way belongs to Him.”[3]  If God is perfect then he cannot change, because any change would either be away from or towards perfection.  Either way, change brings God’s perfection into doubt.  But what if the Bible does not understand God’s perfection in this way?

God is unchanging in his character.  The Bible affirms this repeatedly.  “God is not human, that he should lie, not a human being, that he should change his mind.  Does he speak and then not act?  Does he promise and not fulfil?” (Num 23:19; see also 1 Sam 15:29).  “I the LORD do not change.  So you, the descendants of Jacob, are not destroyed” (Mal 3:6).  But there are reasons to believe that God can do something new, which is change in a sense.

T.F. Torrance explains how God can change while remaining the same.  There are three particular events that demonstrate this point.  Creation was something which was always in God’s mind but creating the world was an action which God graciously willed.  God was always able to become a human being and yet chose to do so “in the fullness of time” (Gal 4:4).  Pentecost involves a radical change in how God is present in the world.  These three events,

tell us that far from being a static or inertial Deity like some ‘unmoved mover’, the mighty living God who reveals himself to us through his Son and in his Spirit is absolutely free to do what he had never done before, and free to be other than he was eternally; to be Almighty Creator, and even to become incarnate as a creature within his creation, while nevertheless remaining eternally the God that he always was.  His ever-living acting Being is always new while always remaining what it ever was and is and ever will be.  By his very nature, in the unlimited, uninhibited overflow of his love and grace, God always takes us by surprise.”[4]

Let’s consider this a little further.  “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth” (Gen 1:1).  Creation had a beginning but God did not.  Eternally God is God.  Yet he did something new by creating the world.  The choice that God made to create the world is one that came with huge vulnerability.  God made humans because he desired a creature who would reflect his own being, his freedom, love and holiness.  Yet these things require a capacity to choose God.  Humans were not made to sin, but as the God-who-knows he knew that creating people left sin as a possibility.  Yet he loved so much that he allowed that possibility and planned redemption before time began (Rev 13:8).

The second immense change for God is the incarnation, the fact that the Son of God became a human being, born of a virgin and subject to a broken world and sinful humans.  The incarnation made the Son of God enormously vulnerable.  As the eternal Son he was not subject to any pain, sorrow, weakness or death.  Yet as Jesus Christ of Nazareth, he experienced cold and heat, opposition and murderous threats even as a child, being a refugee, hunger and thirst, sadness and grief, rejection and loneliness, betrayal by a close friend, and finally a torturous and shameful death.  These are things that God had never before experienced.  Yet God willingly became that vulnerable to what humanity would do.

As a card-carrying perfectionist, this kind of vulnerability is exactly the reason that I do not want to do things unless they can be perfect.  What if I write a blog post and I am wrong?  What if no one reads my blog post?  What if someone reads it and hates it or gets angry with what I said?  Once it is out there and not perfect, all kinds of things might happen.

But what if being perfect like our heavenly Father is perfect involves allowing myself to be vulnerable?  What if my perfectionism is nothing more than an idol that prevents me from being obedient to God?

The Son of God could be vulnerable because he trusted in the absolute unchanging faithfulness of the Father.  Jesus could go to the cross because his desire to obedient was greater than his need to be safe.  He knew that he is loved by the Father and this allowed him to embrace weakness and seeming “failure” by dying.

So, then, what if I trust my heavenly Father instead of relying on my own attempts at perfection?  Perhaps by giving up my perfectionism and embracing vulnerability I might come closer to being perfect as my heavenly Father is perfect.