In Matthew 5 (the first chapter in the New Testament Sermon on the Mount) and 3 Nephi 12 (part of the Book of Mormon Sermon at the Temple), Jesus is speaking to disciples who may be considered to have reached a gospel plateau. He invites them to continue upward: “Therefore I would that ye should be perfect.” (3 Ne. 12:48.) The word therefore marks a transition in the sermon. On the one hand, it looks back over the instruction given thus far. On the other, it looks forward to what will be required if the people are to become “perfect.”
It is possible that the word perfect has only a straightforward ethical or religious meaning here, 8 reflecting perfect or “undivided in obedience to God” and “unlimited love.” 9 But it is possible that the word perfect, as used here, also indicates advancement from one level to a next level, going on to become “perfect,” “finished,” or “completed” in an individual’s instruction and endowment. Several facts support this understanding.
First, the Greek word translated into English in Matt. 5:48 as perfect is teleios. This word is used in Greek religious literature to describe the person who has become fully initiated in the rituals of a religion. 10 The word is used in Heb. 5:14–6:1 to distinguish between the initial teachings and the full instruction. Generally in the epistle to the Hebrews, the term follows a “special use” of Hellenistic Judaism, with the word teleioo meaning “to put someone in the position in which he can come, or stand, before God.” 11 Early Christians continued to use this word in this way in connection with their sacraments and ordinances. 12
With regard to this idea, an intriguing letter by Clement of Alexandria describes the existence (around A.D. 200) of a second Gospel of Mark; it reports the Lord’s doings as recounted by Peter and goes beyond the public Gospel of Mark now found in the New Testament. This gospel contained things, according to Clement, “for the use of those who were being perfected [teleioumenon]. Nevertheless, he [Mark] did not divulge the things not to be uttered, nor did he write down the hierophantic [initiatory] teaching [hierophantiken didaskalian] of the Lord, but … brought in certain sayings of which he knew the interpretation would … lead the hearers into the innermost sanctuary of … truth.” 13 The copy of this text was read “only to those who are being initiated [tous muoumenous] into the great mysteries [ta megala mysteria].” 14 Almost nothing more is known about these sacred teachings of Jesus mentioned by Clement (who died in A.D. 215), but there can be little doubt that these teachings existed in Alexandria and that some early Christians had been “perfected” by learning them.
Moreover, use of the Hebrew term shalom may provide a concrete link between the Israelites and the Christian use of teleios. Biblical scholar John Durham has explored the fundamental meanings of shalom, usually translated as “peace,” especially in Numbers 6:26 and in certain of the Psalms, and concludes that it referred to a gift or endowment to or of God that “can be received only in his Presence.” 15 [Num. 6:26] Baruch Levine saw the Israelite shelamim (peace offering) sacrifices as intended to produce “complete,” or perfect, “harmony with the deity … characteristic of the covenant relationship as well as of the ritual experience of communion.” 16
Durham, along with several others, sees this Israelite concept also reflected in the word teleios in Matt. 5:48. 17 “Matthew does not use teleios in the Greek sense of the perfect ethical personality, but in the Old Testament sense of the wholeness of consecration to God.” 18 An LDS scholar points out that the word teleios tends toward the meaning of “living up to an agreement or covenant without fault: as the Father keeps the covenants he makes with us … the completely initiated who has both qualified for initiation and completed it is teleios, lit. ‘gone all the way,’ fulfilling all requirements, every last provision of God’s command. The hardest rules are those which will decide the teletios, the final test—the Law of Consecration.” 19
Accordingly, in Matthew 5:48 and 3 Nephi 12:48, it seems that Jesus may have had several things in mind as he invited the people to become perfect. Above all, this involves becoming like God (“even as I or your Father who is in heaven”). Those who do this will have the opportunity to see God and become like him (see 1 Jn. 3:2) and to know God, which is life eternal (see John 17:3).
Gospel topics: languages, New Testament
1. These were selected from short word studies in BYU’s Religious Studies Center newsletter beginning in 1987; the collection is available from F.A.R.M.S.
2. Walter Bauer, William F. Arndt, and F. Wilbur Gingrich, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), p. 92.
3. Gerhard Kittel, ed., Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, 10 vols. (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 1967), 1:389–90.
4. Charles L. Brenton, The Septuagint with Apocrypha: Greek and English (London: Samuel Bagster & Sons, 1851; reprinted by Zondervan, 1978), p. 1130.
5. The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), 1:863.
6. Dean C. Jessee, ed., The Personal Writings of Joseph Smith (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1984), p. 105.
7. Bauer et al., Greek-English Lexicon, p. 263.
8. On perfection as our eternal goal, having the flaws and errors removed, see Gerald N. Lund, Ensign, Aug. 1986, pp. 39–41. Elder James E. Talmage, in Jesus the Christ (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1973), p. 248, note 5, explains that we can achieve “relative perfection” in this life. See also Bauer et al., Greek-English Lexicon, pp. 816–17, giving the meanings of teleios as “having attained the end or purpose, complete, perfect,” “full-grown, mature, adult,” “complete,” and “fully developed in a moral sense.”
9. This is the preferred meaning suggested in the Protestant view. See Kittel, Theological Dictionary, 8:73, 75.
10. Bauer et al., Greek-English Lexicon, p. 817, citing sources; referring also to Philip. 3:15; Col. 1:28. See also Demosthenes, De Corona 259, in C. A. Vince, tr., Demosthenes (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1971), pp. 190–91, where telousei is translated as “initiations,” and Kittel, Theological Dictionary, 8:69, 10:1. For further discussion, see John W. Welch, The Sermon at the Temple and the Sermon on the Mount (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book Co., 1990), pp. 57–62.
11. Kittel, Theological Dictionary, 8:82; citing Heb. 7:19; Heb. 10:1.
12. H. Stephanus, Thesaurus Graecae Lingue (Graz: Akademische Druck- und Verlaganstalt, 1954), 8:1961, “gradibus ad sacramentorum participationem, ton hagiasmaton metochen, admittebantur.”
13. Morton Smith, Clement of Alexandria and a Secret Gospel of Mark (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1973), p. 446.
14. Ibid.
15. John I. Durham, “Shalom and the Presence of God,” in Proclamation and Presence (Richmond, Va: John Knox, 1970), p. 292.
16. Baruch A. Levine, In the Presence of the Lord (Leiden: Brill, 1974), pp. 35–36.
17. Durham, “Shalom and the Presence of God,” p. 293, note 135.
18. G. Bornkamm, G. Barth, and H. Held, Tradition and Interpretation in Matthew (London: SCM, 1963), p. 101. See also Hermann L. Strack and Paul Billerbeck, Kommentar zum neuen Testament (Munich: Beck, 1922), 1:386.
19. Hugh Nibley, unpublished notes from his Sunday School class on the New Testament, commentary on Matt. 5:48, in the Hugh Nibley Archive, Foundation for Ancient Research and Mormon Studies, Provo, Utah.