Have you reached perfection? No?
Not relevant as it isn't what I asserted. But indeed, when God forgives me, I become perfect.
The Greek word here is teleios and it can mean ‘perfect’ but is more usually used to refer to maturity or wholeness. If we have a quick look at where this word is used elsewhere in the New Testament you will see what I mean.
Yet among the mature we do speak wisdom (1 Corinthians 2.6)
Let those of us then who are mature be of the same mind (Philippians 3.15)
and let endurance have its full effect, so that you may be mature and complete (James 1.4)
Words do not mean the same thing everywhere they are found. The fact that they mean one thing in one context doesn't disprove their meaning in a separate context.
realities about humans…
a) We are sinful. Flawed. Man is a sinner by birth and by choice. “There is none righteous, no not one” (Romans 3:10) and “all have sinned and come short of the glory of God” (3:23).
We are not sinful by birth. That is something that original sin proponents teach but it is not a belief that existed in the church or the Jews prior to Augustine's introduction of that doctrine 370 years after Christ's resurrection. Paul had issues with the temptation to sin. He said as much. He told us to refrain from sin and that salvation was not a license to sin.
b) After salvation, we do not suddenly become perfect or capable of perfection in this life. “If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us” (I John 1:8).
John's context here is those who sin and then say they have no sin. He wasn't claiming no person could claim to be sinless. Paul himself says he was blameless under the law of Moses. Saying you have no sin when you have no sin is not lying. In fact, saying a person has sin after God has forgiven him is a lie itself.
“Who can say, ‘I have cleansed my heart, I am pure from my sin?” (Proverbs 20:9). I was a sinner before salvation, and now am a sinner saved by grace. The nature of my sinning has changed, as have a hundred other things, but make no mistake, I have not become perfect nor capable of achieving perfection.
If you're still a sinner after being saved, then from what have you been saved? There is no point to salvation if you just keep on willfully sinning. You haven't repented. It's important to recognize that our repentance and Christ's work takes us out of the category of "sinner" and into "saint." That's why Paul addressed his audience as saints rather than continually reminding them that they were still sinners. "Dear Corinthian sinners...."
No. If you keep looking at yourself as that after you've been saved, you've got the wrong idea. Of course you're going to keep sinning. Paul taught repeatedly that we're to look at ourselves as new creatures, not the old sinner we once were.
Perfection comes only at the end of this life and the beginning of the next, the moment of glorification, when we see the Lord. “We know that when He appears, we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is” (I John 3:3). “Then I shall know fully just as I also have been fully known” (I Corinthians 13:12). “We shall all be changed” (I Corinthians 15:51,52).
And Paul was clear that he 1) had to keep from sinning (and so should we) 2) did not consider himself to have attained and would consider himself to have apprehended the final goal until he finished the race according to the rules laid out in the gospel. (See the letter to the Philippians).
Perfection is a characteristic bestowed on mortals, not in this life, but at the moment Christ returns and we see the Lord. This is called our “glorification.”
Perfection is bestowed on us when our sins are forgiven. It's obviously not something we can do for ourselves even if we do what God asks. It's his perfection that he bestows on us when we repent from sin and ask for forgiveness.
So why did Jesus tell us to be fully mature as God is? To show us we can't live up to his law, but only by having our being in him.
He didn't tell us to be "fully mature" he said for us to be perfect. Specifically he was speaking of our forgiveness but he led us by example to stay away from sin.