2018-10-09. Be Perfect.
We Christians are no strangers to the Sermon on the Mount, which takes up Matthew chapters 5, 6, and 7. It’s about that blessed stuff at the beginning, then comes salt that may be good for nothing and cast out, then the light of the world on candlesticks and not under a bushel. There is much more to read and to understand, but one last verse in chapter 5 is this: “Be ye therefore perfect, even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect.” (Matt 5:48 KJV and UB 140:3.16)
What does this mean to us? This seems like a very tall order, doesn’t it? Where did this come from? Was Jesus just making it up? He might be perfect, you say, but what about the rest of us? How can we be perfect as God is?
One of the great things about The Urantia Book is that it is a revelatory book. That is, it brings to us, mankind, information that is not otherwise available to us by any other means. Those that get into to the book to any degree understand the truth of this statement. The UB authors know far more than we could ever know ourselves. Where, for example, there are instances in which the authors of our sacred Bible got confused, or forgot some key things, or left stuff out because they didn’t know the right answer, or even purposefully added or deleted stuff that more suited their beliefs, many of these instances are set aright in The Urantia Book.
This perfection request is one such item. But before you get excited that maybe we aren’t required to perfect after all; the statement is correct as it stands, … and true.
The question is, in what capacity of perfection are we being requested to be? Wouldn’t you think you had a good start with your having a perfect fragment of God indwelling you? And as Jesus spoke about this perfection, he was trying to tell his apostles that he, Jesus, “… did not expect his followers to achieve an impossible manifestation of brotherly love, but he did expect them to so strive to be like God—to be perfect even as the Father in heaven is perfect—that they could begin to look upon man as God looks upon his creatures and therefore could begin to love men as God loves them—to show forth the beginnings of a fatherly affection,” an affection that would apply to all relationships, culminating in his greatest commandment, “to love one another as I have loved you.” (John 13:34)
But, wait! There’s more. The UB tells us this: “Urantia mortals can hardly hope to be perfect in the infinite sense, but it is entirely possible for human beings, starting out as they do on this planet, to attain the supernal and divine goal which the infinite God has set for mortal man; and when they do achieve this destiny, they will, in all that pertains to self-realization and mind attainment, be just as replete in their sphere of divine perfection as God himself is in his sphere of infinity and eternity. Such perfection may not be universal in the material sense, unlimited in intellectual grasp, or final in spiritual experience, but it is final and complete in all finite aspects of divinity of will, perfection of personality motivation, and God-consciousness.” (UB 1:0.5)
This is the true meaning of that divine command, “Be you perfect, even as I am perfect.” (UB 1:0.5-6)
