{"id":899,"date":"2009-04-20T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2009-04-20T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/contentfeeds\/2009\/04\/bible-qa-for-december-31.html"},"modified":"2009-04-20T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2009-04-20T00:00:00","slug":"bible-qa-for-december-31","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/2009\/04\/bible-qa-for-december-31.html","title":{"rendered":"Bible Q&A for April 20"},"content":{"rendered":"

There is a scripture that says “be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect.” I know I am not perfect, and I don’t know anyone who is perfect. Please explain this. I do try to do right, but I cannot attain to what I want to be.<\/b>
\nYou are referring to the verse in Matthew 5:48, which needs to be read in light of Matthew 5:43-47. Jesus is referring to loving others as God the Father loves us–in other words, following God’s example and behavior, rather than that of others.
\nJesus is probably not referring here to inward moral perfection, or even perfect execution of all the good things we intend to do. He seems to be referring to our intent and attempt to emulate God’s love. Those things are attainable goals if we rely on God’s grace to help us.
\nSt. Augustine once said “give what you command, Lord, and then command whatever you will.” In this case, we should pray for God to fill us with his love, and then share it with others. This is the perfection Jesus had in mind.
\n—Ben Witherington III<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There is a scripture that says “be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect.” I know I am not perfect, and I don’t know anyone who is perfect. Please explain this. I do try to do right, but I cannot attain to what I want to be. You are referring to the verse in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":235,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-899","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bible-qa"],"yoast_head":"\nBible Q&A for April 20 - Content Feeds<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/2009\/04\/bible-qa-for-december-31.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Bible Q&A for April 20 - Content Feeds\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There is a scripture that says “be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect.” I know I am not perfect, and I don’t know anyone who is perfect. Please explain this. I do try to do right, but I cannot attain to what I want to be. You are referring to the verse in…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/2009\/04\/bible-qa-for-december-31.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Content Feeds\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2009-04-20T00:00:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Jana Melpolder\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Bible Q&A for April 20 - Content Feeds","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/2009\/04\/bible-qa-for-december-31.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Bible Q&A for April 20 - Content Feeds","og_description":"There is a scripture that says “be perfect as your father in heaven is perfect.” I know I am not perfect, and I don’t know anyone who is perfect. Please explain this. I do try to do right, but I cannot attain to what I want to be. You are referring to the verse in…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/2009\/04\/bible-qa-for-december-31.html","og_site_name":"Content Feeds","article_published_time":"2009-04-20T00:00:00+00:00","author":"Jana Melpolder","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/2009\/04\/bible-qa-for-december-31.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/2009\/04\/bible-qa-for-december-31.html","name":"Bible Q&A for April 20 - Content Feeds","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/#website"},"datePublished":"2009-04-20T00:00:00+00:00","dateModified":"2009-04-20T00:00:00+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/#\/schema\/person\/ed4df2f4c08a1cb26b9e488226ab83af"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/2009\/04\/bible-qa-for-december-31.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/2009\/04\/bible-qa-for-december-31.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/2009\/04\/bible-qa-for-december-31.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Bible Q&A for April 20"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/","name":"Content Feeds","description":"Beliefnet Content Feeds","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/#\/schema\/person\/ed4df2f4c08a1cb26b9e488226ab83af","name":"Jana Melpolder","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/7b0\/7b06445eb7242dad0695efa8bc034da4x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/7b0\/7b06445eb7242dad0695efa8bc034da4x96.jpg","caption":"Jana Melpolder"},"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/author\/jmelpolder"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/235"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=899"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/899\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=899"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=899"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/contentfeeds\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=899"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}