Imitators of God

Good morning, welcome to New Horizon. Please open your Bibles to Ephesians 5.

Read Ephesians 5:1–2- “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.”

Pray.

Transition from chapter 4 to chapter 5.

Chapter 4- How do we live as the church, and what are to be our mindsets, in order that we accomplish what God has created to church to do?

Chapter 5 is going to take us even further into some difficult areas of obedience (lust and greed), particularly in the first 21 verses.

These first two verses are meant to be the motivating verses. They are meant to provide the necessary power and motivation for what we are called to be and do.

A text that focuses on considering all that God has done for us in Jesus.

We are to be aware of what God has accomplished on our behalf.

When we find the word “therefore” we see that Paul is immediately throwing us back into his final words in chapter 4, that we have have been forgiven by God in Christ.

What will the Christian life look like in light of God’s forgiveness of our sin?

1. Christians imitate God.

Imitate.

Copies of an original.

Sketching as a child.

Putting my own life on top of the life of God and seeing what comes through.

Problem is, we know this to be an impossible task.

No matter how much I sketched, or how good my drawing looked, you never confused the copy for the original.

Imitating as loved children.

At the heart of this imitation is a loving and forgiving relationship.

Grandma Stone- Pup.

A desire to be present with her dad and to do what her dad is doing.

I often attempt to imitate God from afar, not as a loved child of God, but instead as a stranger trying to mimic behavior from a distance.

Watch Me- Whip and Nae Nae.

I watched students attempt this dance and it became clear that they had no formal training.

They had seen a music video and were trying to recreate what they had seen.

What they needed was relationship, presence, time.

This is what the children of God have in abundance.

We imitate as we spend time with God. And God is patient as a parent is with their child.

Imitating appropriately.

Kids imitating the parents- at times super sweet- at other times they imitate their parents in ways that they are not qualified to do.

“Are you the mom? Are you the dad?”

At some points in life, rather than seeking to imitate the character of God, we try to imitate the being of God.

We understand God to be all powerful, all knowing, worthy of worship, and this is what we desire to imitate.

In order to keep us from this mistake, Paul describes what exactly is to be imitated.

Which brings us to our next point.

2. Christians love like Jesus.

Walk in love.

How does one love in the way that Jesus loved?

Deep knowledge.

For Jesus, we see deeper relationship sought after even with a few basic questions being asked.

Rich young ruler.

Jesus loved him by knowing true obstacles in his life.

Samaritan woman at the well.

Jesus loved her by spending time with a likely outcast and prodding into the most personal places of her life and sin.

Zaccheus.

Jesus loved him by seeing him when many others would likely willingly pass him by.

Jesus expresses His love by digging deeper into a persons life and seeking to know them as they truly are.

We are masters of shallow relationship.

We often ask shallow questions which require shallow answers and then leave them be.

We invite a few into pretty close relationship, and then we work hard to keep others at arms length.

Those who interacted with Jesus felt themselves loved because they knew that they were known.

We begin to love others as Jesus loved others when we begin to dig appropriately into their lives.

Compassion.

What Jesus knows drives Him to gut-wrenching compassion on behalf of others.

Jesus entered into the hurt and suffering of others.

Seinfeld- Well good luck with all that.

We find ourselves useless to meet the needs of others because we find ourselves unaffected by the hurts and sufferings of others.

Our church is fantastic at being affected by the suffering of those in our church family. But what about those outside?

Meeting needs.

Jesus speaks the necessary truth to the rich young ruler, he reveals his identity to the woman at the well, he gave Zaccheus his attention.

He heals the sick, he casts out the demon, he holds ignored children in his arms, he protects the woman caught in adultery, he feeds the hungry, he patiently teaches the seeking Jewish leader.

Meeting needs in love will not look the same in every situation.

Jesus knows enough of a persons life to see their torment. Their torment causes Him grief and sadness. He provides for what is needed.

We are called to do the same.

Walk.

Well trodden areas of life.

Live doused in love.

Not only in the context of the church.

Do people know your love and care for them?

3. Christians live for God.

Paul finally covers the aim, the direction, for which we live.

Notice that the love of Jesus is defined as His offering and sacrifice, His giving of Himself on behalf of another.

An offering.

Our lives are given up to God.

What He asks, we are willing to give.

Rich young ruler- difficult command- Follow me.

Separate yourself from the life you had before, from what you thought you needed, and offer your life up freely to me instead.

Isn’t this the essence of what we have read in the latter half of chapter 4? Don’t walk as the gentiles walk, don’t live the way you used to, you’ve left all of that behind.

Paul even describes the life that is being left behind, before finally depicting the life of one who is devoted to Christ and His Church.

Our lives are offered up, given freely to God.

And in order for this to be so, we look at all of what we have, and we tell God that it is His. And then we live accordingly.

A sacrifice.

We live for God even at great cost to our own desires and dreams.

Sacrifice carries with it the understanding of experienced pain.

We likely cannot really imagine all of the imagery that was evoked from the mention of a word like sacrifice.

OT- The sights, the sounds, the smells.

Or even more personally, the consideration of the sacrifice of Jesus.

Sacrifice is not a throw away word here. To live as a Christian, to live for God, to live as Jesus lived and love and He loved, is going to require sacrifice, death, pain.

This makes sense- Paul is always talking about what has already been put away, or put to death.

Bryan Chapell- “There is no life of love without a degree of giving and dying.”

We die to self, we put to death what we once were, we give it as a sacrifice to be made new in the likeness of the Son of God.

To God.

For God’s pleasure.

Remember grieving the Spirit?

Here we find God’s enjoyment and pleasure.

Desire to please God with our lives, as children seeking to please their Father.

For God’s glory.

An aim to make much of God in all that we do.

Here is the Christian life, as laid out by Paul in our verses:

As God’s children, we imitate the character of God as shown in Jesus’ willing sacrifice for the good of others to the pleasure and glory of God.