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“So I’m Incomplete!”

I recently found myself pondering over this verse above. It was spoken by Jesus near the end of the first chapter of what is usually called the Sermon on the Mount. The sermon is full of challenges. When I first became a Christian I went along to a little church in West London and found myself in a mid-week Bible Study where they were considering this sermon, and the people in the group decided that everything in it was too difficult to follow. As a young Christian I found that somewhat perplexing. So what was the point of Jesus saying it then? Since then I have come to realise that Jesus said these things as a mean to drive us into his Father’s arms. Of course that will only happen if you have a heart that is seeking the truth and you really want to know; only then will you go to God in prayer and listen.

So coming to this verse we might be forgiven for stuttering a bit when we are faced with Jesus’ challenge - be perfect! Well I might as well give up then! But when you start trying to be a bit clever and look up what it said in the original Greek, you find that the word ‘perfect’ here simply means ‘complete’.  A couple of things to note. First it says that God is complete and then, second, it gives me a target to work for, to become complete, or at least work towards that.

Perhaps to understand ‘complete’ in respect of God as being complete, we need first to consider ourselves as ‘incomplete’ beings.  If I apply the word ‘incomplete’ to myself (and it is valid to do so) I may think of my lack of knowledge. I cannot hope to grasp the enormity of what I don’t know. I don’t know what is going on in the house next door let alone the street, the town, the country and the world! I don’t have a true record of things that happened to me in the past, let alone what happened to you, and I certainly don’t know about the future.

I am also incomplete in terms of strength and energy – mental, physical and spiritual. I need constant replenishing and refreshing and rest. Even when I am fully charged and refreshed I need more grace, more wisdom, more insight, more everything else to cope with you, others, circumstances, difficulties, etc. etc. than I have got.  Therefore there are times when running on my own resources, which may be good at times, I still get it wrong and may react defensively, or with hostility. I may be unsure of myself and may therefore feel bad (guilty) about how I handle life, or feel hurt by your dealings with me.

In all these ways I indicate my incompleteness. If you consider the Greek and Roman gods from ancient history they seemed incomplete, lacking a lot of what we might hope for. They appear very human. But God is complete. He doesn’t lack or is not limited in any of the ways I have just considered. This is what Jesus means when he says God is ‘perfect’ or ‘complete’.    

Here are further points to ponder:

Do you start to see how significant this definition of ‘perfect’ is? He has no need to act with hostility towards us because we are not a threat to Him and He can never feel defensive. He is utterly capable of handling everything that ever happens.

When I compare myself to Him, I realise how far short my life is of ‘complete’. So does that make Jesus’ challenge unkind - I fall so far short of perfection that it just makes me feel bad! Well, no, because there is something else top be considered.

Let me try and give an illustration. It falls a bit far short but it may communicate something. Suppose I was a professor of mathematics and when my son was small, like all other children he had to learn maths. My knowledge as a professor is pretty big. His is pretty small. Do I love him any the less because his knowledge is much smaller than mine? Definitely not! In fact, because I love him, whenever he comes to ask for help with his maths I delight in helping him; that’s what being a father is all about.

And then we find that Jesus referred to God as “your heavenly Father”. But more than that he said he was perfect or complete (and we’ve thought a bit what that means) and that means He is different from our human dads who are like us – incomplete, lacking - and so, like us, sometimes get it wrong and sometimes very wrong. So God’s not like that, says Jesus. He’s worth knowing because He’s not like that. Because He is complete, as we thought about above, He has no reason to be negative about us in any way. He may be sad when He sees the mess we get ourselves in sometimes, but He understands us and is there for us. Someone recently shared with some of the problems they were dealing with in their life and I found myself replying, “And He understands.”  

So often people think God gets all stressed with us when we mess up but more often than not, when we reflect on some of the things above, He has no need to get stressed; He’s just concerned for us and wants to be like that dad I referred to above, and come alongside us and help us out of the mess we have. Of course we have to let Him do that and, of course, many of us don’t let Him do that, so we just struggle on our own and it gets worse and worse.

So can I invite you to scroll up to the beginning of this article and take in again some of the wonderful truths that are wrapped up in that simple and short verse. I am incomplete but He’s there wanting to act as my loving heavenly Father, if I will let Him, so that He can share some of His completeness to make up for my lack of it. Isn’t that great!