The word “perfect” in those and similar passages signifies “honest, sincere,” being opposed to hypocrisy. “We speak wisdom among them that are perfect” (1 Cor. 2:6). There, and in Philippians 3:15, the word signifies “mature”—compare “of full age” in Hebrews 5:14—as distinct from infantile. “I will make drunk her princes, and her wise men … and they shall sleep a perpetual sleep, and not wake, saith the King, whose name is the Lord of hosts” (Jer. 51:57). Those words are cited by gross materialists,
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