Perfect

 I am struck, reading 3rd Nephi where Christ says, be ye therefore perfect even as I, or your father in heaven is perfect. The change from the Sermon on the Mount is that Christ has finished his race, he has become perfect. This works both for the meaning of the greek telos. translated into English as perfect which means to fulfil ones destiny, or to complete your growth or life's journey.

Christ grew and progressed going from grace to grace. He said that he was the vine, and his father the grape farmer, that he cuts off every branch in him that does not bear fruit. At the time he visited the Nephites that was done. He had gone up to the father and been glorified with his glory, which he had before he came into the world.

I wonder some about this glorification. He tells Mary not to touch him because he was not yet glorified, but then invites the apostles to thrust their hands into his wounds. Then presumably he was glorified in Acts 1 when he ascends into heaven. (I ascribe to the view, implied in the churchs New testament videos that the great intercessory prayer took place right before this ascension.) I assume that per doctine and convenants that when he touches ground again the Earth will undergo its cataclysmic purification described in prophecies of the second coming. So was he floating above the ground when he visited the Nephites? Where they transfigured the way Joseph and Sidney were when he visited them in the Kirtland temple? It describes the disciples as becoming white to exceed all whiteness halfway through - which sounds like this transfiguration.

Ah well. I suppose their is some fault of chronology or my understanding of how all this works, or possibly a simple error in translation or in writing. But I can't quite sort it yet.