Sermon On The Mount – Week 12

Jesus closes out his long excursus he started in v. 17 with just one statement, “You therefore must be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect.”

This statement of being teleios as your heavenly Father is teleios has much to say about the kind of righteousness the he’s been calling his disciples to up to this point. This righteousness, according to Jesus, is whole-person behavior that accords with Gods’s nature, will, and coming kingdom. To say that disciples must be teleios as God is teleios is to say that they must be whole or virtuous — singular in who they are — not one thing on the outside but another on the inside.