It is very significant that Jesus taught the people at the temple in Bountiful to be perfect even as he or his Father which is in Heaven is perfect. What Jesus actually said was, “I would that ye should be perfect.” Verbally, this was not so much a commandment, it was not an order, as it was a wish or an open invitation. That we could become as He and His Father are was the greatest, deepest desire of his heart, that we would go on to become fully perfected, fully completed, fully initiated and brought into a complete understanding of who we are and who He is, which can eventually be our great blessing.
At this point, the people had now gotten through the first stage of this instruction; they had gone through what we might call the Aaronic Priesthood part, what was said and written under the old law by those of former times. When we move to the next chapter, in 3 Nephi 13, Jesus gives the road map on the next stage in becoming perfect and finished.
Indeed, the Greek word in the New Testament for perfect is teleois, which means “complete, finished, or fully developed.” Nowadays, we think of the concept of perfect scientifically or mathematically. For us, something is perfect if it is one hundred percent. But this was a foreign concept in antiquity. In the ancient world, they could not even express a fraction with a numerator greater than one. They had terms for one half, one third, one fourth, one fifth, but if they wanted to say “three-fourths,” they had to say “one-half-plus-one-fourth.” How much less could they imagine the mathematical idea of ninty-five one-hundredths. The ancients did not have the zero either, so, they did not have either of these ideas, of perfection and nothingness, on a mathematical scale as we do.
Interestingly and instead, there are Greek texts from the mystery religions, such as the Orphics and the Pythagoreans, that all had initiation rituals. When people had been through the initiation, they were called teliotes, roughly equivalent to our word “completed.” We can finish a project and say that it is finished, but we are not saying that it is perfect.
Our modern impression of perfection is more related to a basic philosophical idea of Platonism. Plato posed questions such as, “Do you know what a chair is? How do you know what a chair is? Have you ever seen a perfect chair? Which chair in this room is the perfect chair?” He then could show that there was no such thing as the absolute chair in the material world. So, for them the concept of a chair only existed somewhere out there in the realm of pure forms and ideals. The essential or perfect idea of things thus became idealized and conceptualized. Christianity eventually adopted this idea of Platonism, and with it developed our modern perception of “perfection.” In Hebrew, however, the word that gets translated into “perfect” is shalom, which doesn’t mean perfect but means to be at peace and satisfied. And not just at peace with ourselves, but at peace with God. Shalom also describes the relationship that we have with God when we have been through the process of atonement, and we are reconciled and at peace with God.
Book of Mormon Central, “What Does It Mean to Be Perfect? (3 Nephi 12:48),” KnoWhy 335 (July 5, 2017). “Instead of expecting people to be ‘without mistake,’ Jesus may have been commanding them to be made whole through making covenants with Him.”
Thomas S. Monson, “Choices.” Ensign, May 2016: “The gift of repentance, provided by our Savior, enables us to correct our course settings, that we might return to the path which will lead us to that celestial glory we seek. … As we contemplate the decisions we make in our lives each day—whether to make this choice or that choice—if we choose Christ, we will have made the correct choice.”