Perfection

You Have Been Perfected Once And For All

     What does God say about being perfect?

           Can I attain perfection?

                What is my role in becoming perfect?

                      Why do I feel guilty for not being perfect?

Do you remember the popular milk commercial that used the phrase, “Got Milk?” Since then, people have been inputting whatever word they want after “Got…” to convey their own message. It really means, “Aren’t you missing something?” The Got Milk commercial showed a young man who was just hit by a truck (or something), and finds himself in "heaven" surrounded by cookies. He stuffs his face with the yummy cookies and opens the refrigerator door expecting to find milk to drink. The fridge is full of milk containers. He reaches in desperation for the first container with hopes to wash down the cookies, but discovers that it’s empty! He quickly reaches for the second, and the third and fourth container. He suddenly realizes they are all empty, and that he is in hell, not heaven!

On a more serious note, my question to you is, “Got Perfection?” Do you have what it takes to be perfect? LDS prophet, Spencer W. Kimball, stated in his book The Miracle of Forgiveness that perfection is necessary in order to have Eternal Life. He said,

Eternal life hangs in the balance awaiting the works of men. This process toward eternal life is a matter of achieving perfection. Living all the commandments guarantees total forgiveness of sins and assures one of exaltation through the perfection which comes by complying with the formula the Lord gave us... Being perfect means to triumph over sin. This is a mandate from the Lord. He is just and wise and kind. He would never require anything from his children which was not for their benefit and which was not attainable. Perfection therefore is an achievable goal. (Miracle, 208).

This way to perfection is also outlined in Moroni 10:32 where it says,

Yea, come unto Christ, and be perfected in him, and deny yourselves of all ungodliness; and if ye shall deny yourselves of all ungodliness, and love God with all your might, mind and strength, then is his grace sufficient for you, that by his grace ye may be perfect in Christ; and if by the grace of God ye are perfect in Christ, ye can in nowise deny the power of God.

The Doctrine and Covenants brings additional clarity to the issue when it says,

Keep my commandments continually, and a crown of righteousness thou shalt receive. And except thou do this, where I am you cannot come (D&C 25:15).

Is the requirement of achieving perfection difficult to swallow, and make you feel disillusioned? President Joseph Fielding Smith wrote, “To enter the celestial and obtain exaltation it is necessary that the whole law be kept” (The way to Perfection, 206). Have you kept all the commandments? Both of these LDS prophets say that you must, or you will not enter the celestial kingdom. After all, “[God] would never require anything from his children which was... not attainable” (Miracle, 209, cf. 1 Nephi 3:7). Got Perfection?

The LDS prophets above teach that we can become perfect by complying with the formula of the law, but does the Bible say that the law can make us perfect? Lets explore the Bible to see what it has to say. In Matthew 5:48, God commands us to be perfect, even as our Father which is in heaven is perfect. So, God does require us to be perfect, but it’s the means by which we become perfect that matters. I will now use a visual illustration of a person's ability to obey the law perfectly. The straight line illustrates the Law, the jagged line illustrates a very bad person, and the wavy line illustrates the good person who has done their best to keep the law.

Compared to the jagged line, the wavy line looks pretty straight, but compared to the perfectly straight line, the others look very crooked. The point of the illustration is that no matter how hard we try we can never be perfect through our works. We always fail to measure up to the perfection of the law on one degree or another.

There are two reasons why God tells us to be perfect. 1) God is perfect, so His standards are too, and 2) He wants us to search for a righteousness that is not our own - a perfect righteousness which can only be found in Jesus Christ. The laws of God were created to act as a device to point us towards Christ by showing us how sinful we are, it was not designed to make us worthy (Galatians 3:24). For the apostle Paul once said, "I do not nullify the grace of God, for if righteousness comes through the Law, then Christ died needlessly" (Galatians 2:21, cf. James 2:10, Romans 10:3-4).

How then can we be perfect? The only way we can become perfect in the eyes of God is if the righteousness of Christ becomes our own. The wonderful truth is that He has met the requirement for perfection on our behalf. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “For he made Him who knew no sin to be sin for us, that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” 1 Corinthians 1:30 says Christ has become for us “ ...righteousness and sanctification and redemption.” Paul was considered to be a very righteous person according to the law, but even he considered all his works to be like trash in the sight of God. He professed, “Not having my own righteousness which is from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith” (Philippians 3:9). Christ’s righteousness replaces our unrighteousness. This is why Christ’s death on the cross is referred to as a substitutionary death. It’s as if Christ died our death, and is standing before the judge with his righteousness on our behalf. It's Christ’s righteousness alone that makes us perfect in the sight of God.

In the 22nd chapter of Matthew a king has a wedding feast. The king sends out servants to gather people to come to the feast the king has prepared. The wedding hall was filled with guests, "But when the king came in to see the guests, he saw a man there who did not have a wedding garment. So he said to him, 'Friend, how did you come in here without a wedding garment?' And he was speechless. Then the king said to the servants, 'Bind him hand and foot, take him away, and cast him into outer darkness; there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth." The interesting thing about this parable is that in the case where a guest did not have the proper attire, the king’s servants would have offered a garment for the guest to wear. So, this particular guest chose not to wear the proper wedding garments that were provided, and the king threw him into outer darkness. He did not have the proper attire to celebrate with the rest of the guests.

The only way that we can enter into the kingdom of heaven is if we are wearing the robe of salvation that God has provided for us through his Son, Jesus Christ. Isaiah 61:10 says,

I will greatly rejoice in the LORD, my soul shall be joyful in my God; for He has clothed me with the garments of salvation, He has covered me with the robe of righteousness, as a bridegroom decks himself with ornaments, and as a bride adorns herself with her jewels.

You see, God invites us to participate in the kingdom of heaven, but we must go with the garments that He has provided for us; the perfect righteousness that comes through Christ alone! People often try to enter heaven with their own garments of righteousness, but Isaiah calls those garments "filthy rags" (Isaiah 64:6), and the apostle Paul calls it ignorance (Romans 10). The Bible says that those people will be thrown into outer darkness.

The LDS prophets have lied to you by saying that you can be perfect by obeying the law. Jesus Christ didn't die to enable you to "comply with the formula" so you can "hopefully" enter the celestial kingdom, but He lived and died as a substitute so the righteous requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us by Him (Romans 8:4). This is the good news, believe in it! I encourage you to attend a healthy Christian church (non-Mormon), read your Bible daily, and pray that God will continue to guide you into the truth.