Most of us read verse 48 and feel the sermon collapse on top of us. Perfect? That settles it. I am out. But the commentators are unified here. The Greek teleos does not mean sinless. It means whole, complete, mature, undivided. France traces it back to the Hebrew tamim, used of sacrificial animals without blemish and of people wholeheartedly devoted to God. Jesus is not setting a flawless bar; he is calling for a whole love. Not a flower with three petals, but the entire bloom.
Step back and survey the week. Monday, we saw that the law itself was a mercy meant to restrain evil. Tuesday, we faced the wrath inside us. On Wednesday, we learned that meekness, not weakness, is the only true freedom. Thursday, we were pried open from honor to wallet. Friday, we were sent to pray for the very people who hate us. All of it was leading here, to a standard that none of us can meet on our own.
And that is exactly the point. The man who preached this sermon is the only one who has ever lived it. They slapped him; he did not slap back. They sued him; he gave them his robe. They compelled him to a mile he never owed; he carried his cross. They cursed him; he prayed, “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.” The cycle of evil for evil that has spun since Cain finally stopped at Golgotha. Alfred Plummer wrote, “To return evil for good is devilish. To return good for good is human. To return good for evil is divine.” The cross is the moment the divine answer to evil was given once for all.
Ortolan said it like this: our heaven through his hell. Our entrance into love through his loss of it. If you belong to Christ this morning, you are not the enemy he turned away. You are the enemy he died for. While we were still sinners, Christ died for us, Paul writes in Romans 5:8. That is the gospel, and it is also the engine of this whole sermon. The disciple of Jesus does not break the cycle by trying harder. The disciple breaks the cycle by living from the cycle that has already been broken on his behalf. Go into next week not aiming at perfection by willpower, but resting in the perfect One whose love has already won.