One Measure of Perfection

Before I review Elder Holland's excellent General Conference talk, I think that now, while I'm still sick, would be a good time to point out a small distinction between the Bible and the Book of Mormon. The first time Jesus said "Be ye therefore perfect," it was during His mortal ministry, and He qualified it with "even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect" (Matt 5:48). However, after His death and resurrection, He visited the Nephites and also told them "Therefore I would that ye should be perfect," but this time, He followed it with "even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect" (3 Nephi 12:48). In both cases, Jesus invites or commands His followers to be perfect, but the first time, He only suggested that God was perfect, while the second time, He suggested that both He and the Father were perfect.

Now, we don't really know why Jesus said one thing the first time and a different thing the next time. Maybe He just didn't want to scare His mortal followers with the claim that He, a mortal, was perfect. But some have supposed that the reason Jesus didn't claim to be perfect at that time was because He wasn't perfect then, at least, not in every sense of the word. He was, and remained sinless, so He was "perfect" in that sense, but "perfect" can also mean "complete," and, having not been resurrected yet, I'm not sure that Christ, with a mortal body, was truly "complete."

I believe that resurrection is an essential part of our eternal progress. We can't be our best, most perfect self without a resurrected, perfected body. That is what I think Jesus meant when He included Himself as an example of a perfect being after His resurrection, but not before it. Maybe He needed a resurrected body to be "perfect," as do we. There are several traits we need in order to be perfect. Speaking only for myself, I know that there are many areas in which I could stand to improve before I would consider myself a perfect being, and getting over this dumb cold is one of those areas. Perfect beings, I would guess, are not subject to illness, and while I'm not sure if Christ, Himself, ever got sick, I believe that He could have as long as He was mortal and that He needed to overcome that limitation before He could call Himself "perfect."