Imitators of God - Walk in Love
Ephesians 5: 1 - 2
Therefore, be imitators of God as dearly loved children and live in love, just as Christ also loved us and gave himself for us, a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God.
When I originally gave this message, my children were all still very young, and to introduce it, I told a story on my youngest daughters (who are twins). I had been working in my office (writing this message, as it happened) when I was briefly interrupted by Channah (the younger of the twins) leading her sister Charis around the house, going from room to room announcing, “This is my Mom and Dad’s room, this is my room, this is my brothers’ room…” And on down the hall they went, presumably so that Charis could be shown around the rest of the rooms of the house she lived in.
For a moment I was a bit bemused (and quite amused, of course!), until I remembered that, a few nights before this, we had hosted some guests for dinner, people who had never been to our house before. So before dinner, I had given them the grand tour of the house, going from room to room announcing each room in exactly the same way. So the girls were simply doing what they had seen me do.
And kids do this all the time, don’t they? Earlier that same year, our older boys had gone to a movie night that was being hosted at our school. Since the younger four kids couldn’t go out to the movie night (it would have kept them up way past their bedtimes, which was never a good idea!), we decided to let them stay up a little bit later than usual to watch a movie at home. So while the older boys were out, we stayed home and watched “8 Below” a story about sled dogs in Antarctica. Later that night, as we were trying to get them into bed, Charis and Channah suddenly started crawling in circles around their room. When I asked them what they were doing, Channah announced, “We’re puppies!” I should have known…
I could give many more examples, though there is a chance that some of my kids might read this post; if I tell any more stories it might get me into trouble, so I should probably quit here. Any of you who are parents, I’m sure could chime in with your own similar stories (maybe we should start a substack group focused on sharing stories to embarrass our children… worth a thought!).
The point is, obviously, that kids are great imitators. They have an innate desire to take what they see around them and try it out for themselves. They want to be like what they see. And I think that is one of the characteristics that Jesus had in mind when He counsels believers to be like little children[1]. Because look at what Paul has to say in the first verse of Ephesians chapter 5: Therefore, be imitators of God as dearly loved children.
This idea of being imitators of God forms the context for the first half of chapter 5. We will be spending the next two posts examining the rest of this section in greater detail, but for today, I’m going to focus solely on these first two verses. Not only is there far too much in this section to cover in one post, but I also feel like this is a critically important idea, both for understanding the context of what Paul says in the rest of this section but also, ultimately, for having a successful Christian walk. It is so important, in fact, that I think it is wise for us to spend some time examining exactly what Paul means when he calls us to imitate God.
The Context: Therefore
So what does it mean to be imitators of God? Well, first of all we need to recognize the context of this statement. Paul tells us Therefore, be imitators of God. That word therefore connects this idea with the preceding verses of chapter 4. In those verses, as we saw a few weeks ago, Paul exhorts the Ephesians believers to put off their old sinful nature and to put on the new life of God which is theirs through Christ. So being imitators of God is an extension, or even a restatement, of this idea. As we imitate God, we become more like Jesus, His Son, which is the essence of what it means to put on “the new man.”
Secondly, of course, I want to look at the words Paul uses, because, as always, he chooses his words very carefully. The Greek word translated “imitators” here is mimetes, which is where we get the English word “mimic.” And mimicking is, I think, really the idea Paul is aiming at here. An imitator is someone who pretends to be something they have seen. Like my girls being puppies before bedtime, they’re pretending and we all know it. But being a mimic implies something a little bit deeper. Though today it also holds the connotation of being slightly mocking, originally a mimic referred to someone who was not just playacting, not just pretending. Rather, this is someone who is genuinely taking on the characteristics of whatever they are mimicking. They are still pretending, but at a much deeper level and with much greater identification between the mimic and its object. Think of animals that blend into their surroundings, like chameleons, for example. They are said to mimic their environment; they take on the characteristics of that environment and become indistinguishable from it.
That is what Paul means here. We should imitate God to the extent that we begin to take on His characteristics, with the ultimate aim of becoming indistinguishable from Him.
But to Paul’s original audience, the connotations of this word were even more specific. The Greeks were well known in the ancient world as great public speakers, great orators. Their wise men prided themselves on being logical and well spoken, on being masters of speech. Now, when a young man wanted to become an orator, there were three steps he had to follow, or skills he had to master. They were: theory, imitation and practice. And the most important of these three was the second step, imitation or mimetes. As William Barclay puts it, “The main part of their training [to be an orator] was the study and imitation of the masters who had gone before.”[2]
So in using this precise word, Paul seems to be making a deliberate connection to oratory training. It’s almost as if he is saying something like this: If you wanted to become an orator, you would imitate one of the masters of oration, watching and seeing what they did, so that you could do it too. Since you want to become a healthy, mature Christian, you must imitate the Master of that life, which is Christ Jesus, seeing what He did, so that you can do it too.
Finally, Paul encourages this imitation by reminding us of who we are: God’s children. As I mentioned a few paragraphs ago, children imitate their parents all the time. One of the best[3] pictures we have of our oldest son, Bradley, is when he is about two years old. In the picture, he is sitting at my desk with both hands on the keyboard of my computer, and he’s staring intently at the monitor, as if he's in the midst of some truly monumental task. Now, he’s not sitting there because he was some kind of computer prodigy as a child. No, he’s there because he often saw me sitting there working, and he wanted to be like me.
We see this come out in so many ways with our children, don’t we? Those of you who are parents know exactly what I’m talking about! How often do you hear your children speaking to their siblings with the tone of voice or expression that they learned from listening to you? When they were younger, my kids would do that all the time, and invariably, my reaction would be, “Is that how I sounded when I said that?” I think that is the most daunting aspect of being a parent, that so much of what we do and say will ultimately become what our children do and say, whether we like it or not.
It's not just our children though, is it. As adults, we can see the other side of this principle. You’ll find yourself in a situation, usually involving disciplining your children, and you suddenly realize, “I’ve become my father (or mother)!” You find yourself doing or saying the things that they did or said to you, without realizing it, and often without desiring it. In fact, these are often the very things we swore we would never do to our children. And yet, we find ourselves doing exactly that: imitating our parents.
I think the main thing that Paul wants to point out in this verse, however, is why children imitate their parents. It is not because we are the best examples they can find. I wish that were the case but I know, at least in my house as my kids were growing up, the reality was often the opposite. Rather, they imitate us because we’re there. We spend time with them every day, and they spend time every day, watching us, studying us, learning what it means to be a man or a woman from watching us being men and women. Ultimately, this implies a relationship, physical proximity, at the very least, but often much more than that. It implies time together, and a bond of love joining the two together. In fact, the child’s desire to be like their parent comes from the love that is shared between a parent and their child.
Paul is saying that if we want to be true children of God, we will spend time in His presence, building our relationship with Him, learning Who He is, so that we can be more like Him; so that we can imitate Him.
But Paul takes this idea one step further. He doesn’t say we are simply the children of God; rather we are God’s dearly loved children. The word translated here as loved (many other versions use the English word “beloved”) is used about sixty times throughout the New Testament. What I found interesting was that it was used nine times in the Gospels. And each of those times, it is referring to how God the Father feels about Jesus. For example, at His baptism, when the dove descends and the voice from Heaven speaks, “This is my son, whom I love”[4] it is the same word.
While it is always a bit dangerous to read too much into a single word, still I think we are safe in assuming that, by using this particular word, Paul is at least implying that everything God feels about Jesus, His perfect, natural Son, God now feels for us, His adopted children. And since we are beloved of God, we ought to respond in love, by seeking to be more like our Father. In other words, by imitating Him.
A Life of Love
But this, of course, raises the question: If we are to imitate God, what exactly should we be imitating? Paul has three answers to that question, which cover the rest of this passage, up to about verse 21. But for today’s post, I want to focus on just the first of these, which we find in verse 2, where Paul says, live in love, just as Christ also loved us and gave himself for us, a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God.
So first of all, we should imitate God by living a life of love. Warren Wiersbe believes that Paul starts off this passage with the idea of love “because love is the fundamental factor in the Christian life.”[5] Christ teaches in Matthew 22 that the love of God and love of neighbor sum up all of the Law[6]. So, because God is love, our imitation of Him must involve a life that exhibits His love.
And notice how Paul establishes the parameters of the life he is talking about. He tells us we should live in love, just as Christ also loved us and gave himself for us. This is the picture of what our life of love ought to be. As Albert Barnes puts it, “We are to evince the same love for one another which [Jesus] has done for us. He showed his love by giving himself to die for us, and we should evince similar love to one another.”[7] Our lives should be lived by showing others the sacrificial love that Jesus showed us when He took our sins to the cross.
I’m also struck by how Paul emphasizes the sacrificial nature of this life of love. Christ… gave himself for us, a sacrificial and fragrant offering to God. Paul is, again, using very specific language in this part of the verse. Though a sacrificial offering sounds rather tautological, Paul is not simply repeating himself. There are two distinct concepts that Paul wants to bring out, and he does this with two very specific words. The Greek word translated offering is the equivalent of the Hebrew word minchah. This was the word that was generally used to describe the freewill gift offerings that are outlined in Leviticus chapters 1 – 3; the grain offering, the peace offering, etc. More specifically, these were the bloodless sacrifices that God proscribed and accepted, and they were the gifts that the people of Israel freely gave to God, to show their obedience to Him and their love for Him. The Greek word translated sacrificial, on the other hand, is the equivalent of the Hebrew word zebach, which is the word used to describe sin offerings. These were the offerings of atonement, which required blood to be spilled. And in the Greek form, this word can be used to refer either to the act of sacrifice or to the victim of the sacrifice.
So between these two words, Paul is intentionally referencing every kind of sacrifice that was described in the Law as being acceptable to God. Christ’s sacrifice covered it all. But not only is His sacrifice complete, covering all possibilities, it is also fragrant, a Greek phrase that meant, “a pleasant, sweet-smelling aroma.” This is another mirroring of ideas from Leviticus. When a sacrifice was made at the right time, in the right way, for the right reasons, that sacrifice was acceptable and the smoke of the offering was described as a sweet aroma, pleasing to God, which was another way of expressing the idea that the sacrifice was acceptable and God was pleased with it.
So Paul, through his vocabulary, is making an overt connection between the idea of acceptable sacrifices under Levitical Law and Christ’s sacrifice on the cross. Jesus gave Himself up willingly, as an offering to God. He was without sin, a perfect, spotless Lamb, and His sacrifice was sufficient, covering all sin forever. Thus it was a fragrant offering, pleasing to God.
Final Thoughts
But one basic question still remains. How should imitating God’s love shape how we live each day? Paul doesn’t give us clear, step by step instructions here; just the basic principle. The details are up to us to figure out in our own, individual lives.
But I think we can gain some insight from the picture that he paints for us in verse two of what this life might look like. First, it is a life of sacrifice. Just as Jesus gave up all He had to serve and save us, because of His love for us, so we must be willing to give up all we have to serve and save others, because of our love, which is His love for them. And second, this sacrifice is given willingly. Just as Jesus gave up His prerogatives as God and prayed, “Not my will, but yours, Lord”[8] so we must willingly acknowledge our debt to Him and offer up all we have, whenever and however He asks it of us. And finally, the sacrifice must be perfect. Jesus lived without sin so that He could truly be a spotless lamb to be offered as the payment for our sin. And though we can not match His perfection, we can give the best that we have, the firstfruits of our lives, as our offering to Him.
Now, I have to admit that, after I’d written these ideas, they sounded to me so much like empty platitudes that I almost deleted them again. Because what I really wanted to share with you, what I really wanted to know as I was studying this passage, was how to life a life of love each day, in the midst of the real situations that we all face. How does imitating God shape the way I actually live?
And I think the answer is this. Living a life of love involves transforming our minds, just like Paul talked about in chapter 4. It means asking yourself each day, in each situation you face, “How is God calling me to show His love to the people right in front of me?” This would be your family, your coworkers, the homeless beggar you pass every day on your way to work, the rude driver who just cut you off in traffic. How does God want me to love them right now? And of course, it also means being willing to listen and actually do what the Spirit guides you to do in answering that question!
When we begin to ask ourselves that question in every situation, and when we begin to wait eagerly for the Spirit to answer and lead us, then we will be living a life of love. And then, we will be imitating God.
I have to admit, I am still rather unhappy with this conclusion. It seems the bar is set pretty high! Maybe you are like me, and you’re thinking that this seems like a pretty impossible command. When I encounter these seemingly impossible commands in Scripture, sadly my first impulse is to just ignore them. I can’t possibly do that, my mind quickly informs me, so why bother troubling myself about it? That feels much more reasonable, and certainly much safer, doesn’t it!
But I’m not happy just shrugging off the commands of this chapter as impossible. I have to believe that God does not give us commands that we can’t obey!
So I went back to the laws God gave the Israelites concerning the Levitical sacrifices. There were a lot of requirements for those sacrifices! The bar was set pretty high there as well. But throughout the history of Israel, God showed that He was more interested in the heart of the sacrficer than He was in the sacrifice. If the person making the offering was seeking His face and desiring to follow His Law, then God was pleased to accept their sacrifice, even if it wasn’t perfect, according to the strict letter of the Law.
Now, please don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying that God is okay with mediocrity. As long as we try hard, He will accept whatever trash we bring Him. No, the bar is set high because that is the standard that God expects. He is righteous and holy, and He expects His children to be righteous and holy too. But, as Psalm 103 says, He remembers that we are dust.[9] Even though we can’t be perfect, even though our sacrifice is inadequate and our lives are not lived in love, still He sees our hearts. And if our desire is to please Him, if our desire is to become more like Him, then He is pleased with our efforts, inadequate as they might be.
So be encouraged! Even if you don’t measure up to this very high standard, even if you feel like you are nowhere close to living a life of love, God sees your heart. Make it your desire to be more like Him; seek His help to become more like Him. And He will be pleased with your sacrifice. Even more, He will help you to be more like Him as you seek to imitate Him more.
[1] Matthew 18:1 – 4; Mark 9: 34 – 37; Luke 9: 46 - 48
[2] Barclay, William. “The Imitation of God - Ephesians 5:1-8.” Read & Study the Bible Online - Bible Portal, https://bibleportal.com/commentary/section/william-barclay/the-imitation-of-god-ephesians-51-8-8301.
[3] And by “best” I, of course, mean “the most embarrassing”
[4] Luke 3:22. I have quoted the NIV here, simply to be consistent with my point; the NET renders the quote in this verse “You are my one dear son.”
[5] Wiersbe, Warren. The Wiersbe Bible Commentary: New Testament. David C. Cook publishing, 2007. P. 612, electronic edition.
[6] Jesus said to him, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the law and the prophets depend on these two commandments.” (Matthew 22: 37 – 40)
[7] Commentary on Ephesians 5:2. Albert Barnes’ New Testament Commentary, accessed in The Power Bible software.
[8] Matthew 26:39 and Luke 22:42
[9] Psalm 103:14 for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust. (NIV)