teleios

Semantic range

1. 1having reached its end or purpose (telos)
2. 2full-grown, mature, as opposed to a child
3. 3whole, entire, lacking nothing

Teleios is a word about arrival, not flawlessness. A teleios animal is unblemished; a teleios person is grown up. The Septuagint uses it for Hebrew tāmîm, whole. Paul's contrast in 1 Corinthians 13:10–11 is explicitly maturity against childhood.

"Be ye therefore perfect" (Matthew 5:48) therefore reads more like "become complete" — and in 3 Nephi 12:48, delivered after the Resurrection, the Savior includes Himself in the standard: "even as I, or your Father who is in heaven is perfect." The addition is doctrinally decisive: completeness is reached through Him and is not a demand to be met before He will help.

President Russell M. Nelson's "Perfection Pending" (October 1995) works through this vocabulary carefully and concludes that the commandment points to a state attainable only through the Atonement and, in full, only after the Resurrection.

See also

• תָּמִיםtāmîm
• ὑπομονήhypomonē
• χάριςcharis