Greetings, Friends!
How can you and I imitate God? That’s the question Paul implicitly raises in Ephesians 5:1-2. It’s a daunting question, but the answer turns out to be fairly straightforward.
Ephesians 5:1-2 says,
Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are his dear children. Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ. He loved us and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God (NLT).
The first thing Paul says is that we are to imitate God in everything we do. Imitate God! God can create everything out of nothing; I can’t make “Cup O Soup” without messing it up. God knows every star by name; I’m lucky if I can find the Big Dipper. God knows the future; sometimes we don’t even know what’s going on right now. God holds the universe in place by will, managing the orbits of billions of planets, making sure suns rise and set at the right times, birthing new stars and watching as old ones die; the average human can’t drive and talk on a cell phone simultaneously. God, according to the book of Job, can take Leviathan, the sea monster, home as a pet; we’re afraid of spiders.
We who are finite, limited, and imperfect are expected to imitate the One who is infinite, unlimited, and perfect. For Paul, this is a matter of children turning out like their parents. “Imitate God…because you are His dear children.” There’s something about our spiritual-DNA that programs us to turn out…in some way…like God. Blond parents tend to have blond children. Athletic parents tend to have athletic children. Russian parents tend to have Russian children. It’s in their DNA, their genetic makeup.
I’m “friends” on Facebook with some of my high school friends. It’s been no surprise to me that the guys and gals who were athletes in high school have kids who are stars on the school’s football and basketball teams. The people who excelled in music have children who are excellent musicians. My classmates who excelled in academics tend to have children who do really well in school. It’s in their DNA; if not their actual, biological DNA, then it’s in their environmental DNA…the way these children were raised and nurtured by their parents influenced their behavior.
Children tend to imitate their parents. But it’s a huge leap…a cosmic leap…from where we are to where God is. If we tried to make that leap on our own, we’d fall flat. Fortunately, we have an intermediary. We have someone who has shown us just what God looks like. Someone who has revealed God’s character to us in a visible way. In v. 2, Paul says “Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ. He loved us and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God.” Imitating God without some kind of example is too big of a step for us. God knew that. So He became one of us in Jesus Christ.
So, how can you and I imitate God? We imitate God when we imitate the example of Christ by sacrificing ourselves for others.
Pastor Rich