Perfect God, Imperfect People

(This is another answer to a question submitted to me via AllExperts)

"How could a perfect God create such imperfect people?"

This is a very common philosophical question asked throughout the ages. I will try to shed some light from the Lutheran Christian perspective.

The Greek word translated "perfect" (teleios) has a sense of "complete" and "finished". The Hebrew equivalent (Tamam) shares this meaning as well as having a sense of "fullness" "innocence" "wholeness" and "health". Thus "perfect" could be thought off as fully and completely conformed to God's design. The "perfect" person is not "half-baked" or "flawed" but is rather God's finished "magnum opus", the cherry on top of his creation, the apple of his eye.

Now, after the Greek, Latin, Hebrew and Theologish, I will speak plain English.

Man was created perfect.

After God made all the rocks, trees, birds, reptiles and so forth he said things were "good". After he made man, things were "very good". Creation was "perfect". Adam and Eve were created perfect. When sin entered the world, this perfection was lost. (This was the work of man and Satan.) The creation was no longer perfect.

Mankind was no longer perfect.

All human beings are now born with the sinful imperfect nature inherited from Adam. Jesus Christ, fully God, was conceived by the Holy Spirit in the flesh of the Virgin Mary, becoming fully man. He became the "second Adam" the first person of the second creation, the new heavens and the new earth.

Jesus was perfect.

He lived the perfect life of obedience. He died the perfect death of sacrificial love. As he died on the cross he said "It is finished!". (In Greek this is Τετέλεσται, from teleios, which means "perfect".) In Baptism, God covers you with the perfection of Jesus. Those who believe in Christ have their sin, flaws, and imperfection washed away. Because we were united to the death of Jesus, we will also be united to his resurrection.

God looks at his church as perfect.

"Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word,  and to present her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless." Ephesians 5:25-28

When we finally get to die and leave behind these imperfect, half-baked, sickly old bodies of ours, Christians will be given new perfect bodies in the new creation, the heavens and the new earth.

We will be perfect.

"For this perishable body must put on the imperishable, and this mortal body must put on immortality. When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:

      " Death is swallowed up in victory.
        O death, where is your victory?
        O death, where is your sting? "

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 1 Corinthians 15:53-57