Christian perfection is to be perfect in love. Christ gives us a command to love others as he has loved us. I'm assuming two things:
1) the Christ's love is indeed a perfect love
2) that Christ would not command us to do something knowing that it was impossible for us to actually do it.
Therefore, I conclude that perfect love is something this is humanly possible. Further, I submit that the love we see Jesus display he does not in his divine power, but in submitting himself (as a human) to the Father's will, just as Adam could have similarly so done, and the second Adam makes possible for all of the rest of us to do as well by virtue of placing his own Spirit within us.
I think Paul gives us some insight into this.
Romans 7
Believers United to Christ
2For
the married woman is bound by law to her husband while he is living; but if her husband dies, she is released from the law concerning the husband. 3So then, if while her husband is living she is joined to another man, she shall be called an adulteress; but if her husband dies, she is free from the law, so that she is not an adulteress though she is joined to another man.
4Therefore, my brethren,
you also were made to die to the Law through the body of Christ, so
that you might be joined to another, to Him who was raised from the dead, in order that we might bear fruit for God.
5For while we were in the flesh, the sinful passions, which were
aroused by the Law, were at work in the members of our body to bear fruit for death.
6But
now we have been released from the Law, having died to that by which we were bound, so that we serve in newness of the Spirit and
not in oldness of the letter.
7What shall we say then? Is the Law sin? May it never be! On the contrary, I would not have come to know sin except through the Law; for I would not have known about coveting if the Law had not said, Y
OU SHALL NOT COVET.
8But sin, taking opportunity through the commandment, produced in me coveting of every kind; for apart from the Law sin
is dead.
9I was once alive apart from the Law; but when the commandment came, sin became alive and I died;
10and this commandment, which was to result in life, proved to result in death for me;
11for sin, taking an opportunity through the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.
12So then, the Law is holy, and the commandment is holy and righteous and good.
13Therefore did that which is good become
a cause of death for me? May it never be! Rather it was sin, in order that it might be shown to be sin by effecting my death through that which is good, so that through the commandment sin would become utterly sinful.
The Conflict of Two Natures
14For we know that the
Law is spiritual,
but I am of flesh, sold into bondage to sin.
15For
what I am doing, I do not understand; for
I am not practicing what I would like to do, but
I am doing the very thing I hate.
16But if I do the very thing I do not want
to do, I agree with the Law,
confessing that the Law is good.
17So now,
no longer am I the one doing it, but sin which dwells in me.
18For I know that
nothing good dwells in me, that is,
in my flesh; for the willing is present in me, but the doing of the good
is not.
19For
the good that I want, I do not do, but I
practice the very evil that I do not want.
20But
if I am doing the very thing I do not want,
I am no longer the one doing it, but
sin which dwells in me.
21I find then the principle that evil is present in me, the one who wants to do good.
22For I joyfully concur with the law of God in the inner man,
23but
I see a different law in the members of my body, waging war against the law of my mind and making
me a prisoner of the law of sin which is in my members.
24Wretched man that I am! Who will set me free from the body of this death?
25Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, on the
one hand I myself with my mind am serving the law of God, but
on the other, with my flesh the law of sin.
We are wrestling between our minds and our flesh. With our minds, we have been given the mind of Christ, however in our flesh is still sinful desires. That is how that works.
