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*A Fragrant Offering and Sacrifice to God*
/Ephesians 5:1-2/
 
Are you ready for Resurrection Day?
Most of us probably have not prepared ourselves mentally for it.
It seems that we just celebrated Christmas, and that observation is not just because time speeds up as I get older.
In fact, Easter is indeed earlier this year than most, if not all, of us have ever seen it.
The date for Christmas always stays the same; we know that regardless of the year, it will always be on December 25.
But the date for Easter is based on the lunar calendar that the Hebrews used to identify the date for Passover, which explains why it moves around so much on the Gregorian calendar which we use.
Easter can fall anytime between March 22 and April 25.
Even so, it is very unusual for it to be this early.
I’m oversimplifying it, but the date for observing Resurrection Day in any given year is determined by finding the Spring Equinox.
That’s the date when there are exactly twelve hours of daylight and twelve hours of night.
Then you find the first full moon after that, and the first Sunday after that is Easter.
The last time Easter was this early was 1913, and it won’t occur on March 23 until the year 2160.
It won’t fall on its earliest possible date until the year 2285.
And of course, such statements assume that Jesus will not have come back by then!
Besides these being very interesting facts, there is a very important point here.
Our observance of Easter is always linked to when Passover occurs.
There is a discrepancy this year, which is based on the fact that our Gregorian calendar is based on the earth’s orbit around the sun, while the Jewish calendar is based on the moon’s orbit around the earth.
Every few years, there is an extra month added to the Jewish calendar to kind of even things out.
So the dates of Passover and Easter do not always fall very close together.
This year Passover is not until April 20.
In most years, however, the two events are connected, as they were when Jesus was crucified, and they should be.
The Passover marked the exodus of the Hebrew slaves from Egypt, and Christ has become our Passover Lamb, giving us freedom from slavery to sin.
As we have journeyed through Ephesians 4, God has shown us some beautiful and amazing things about this life that Christ has provided for us!
When Jesus enters our lives, He does not leave us the way we were, but begins a work in us that continues for all the rest of the time we are here on this earth.
As a result, we are changed, not just in superficial ways that don’t count for much, but we are changed and transformed deep in our beings.
The change inside of us is to be so dramatic that Jesus even compared it to being “born again.”
Paul referred to it in Ephesians as “putting off the old self” and “putting on the new self, created to be like God in righteousness and holiness.”
As we saw last week, Ephesians 4 quite naturally flows into Ephesians 5.
In verse one of chapter five, we find the word “therefore” which points us backward into chapter four.
On the basis of what we discovered in chapter four, then, we are to have a certain response.
Here is the response Paul says we are to have:
/Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God./
 
How fitting it is that we should come to this verse on Palm Sunday, just a week before our observance of Good Friday and Resurrection Day!
Here God’s Word says that we are to “imitate,” or mimic, God.
What is the best example of imitating God?
In the way that He loves.
And what is the best example of the way He loves?
The death of Christ on the cross, which became an offering and a sacrifice to God for us.
But the */way/* that God loves is so different from what we normally see that the Scriptures even use an entirely different word to describe it.
As you have heard perhaps many times before, the Greek language included at least four different words which might be translated “love.”
Each of them describes love in different forms and to different degrees.
But when Paul tells us in verse two that “Christ loved us” he used the word /agape /which refers to a giving, sacrificial love, a love that gives without asking for anything in return, an unconditional love that loves no matter what.
This is a love that depends entirely on the one who loves and not on the merit or response of the one loved.
A great example in the Scriptures is found in Romans 5:8—/“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”/
This love is a love that represents “a self-emptying self-sacrifice” (J.
D. Watson).
That’s the kind of love Paul saw when he thought about Jesus dying on the cross.
On the cross, Jesus freely gave of Himself for our sakes.
On the cross, Jesus sought our good rather than His own good.
On the cross, Jesus made sacrifices on our behalf.
On the cross, Jesus gave without asking or seeking anything in return.
But pay attention to the two verses in front of us today.
The word for “love” is actually used in three different ways here.
First, love is used as an adjective—/“Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children.”/
The King James simply reads, “dear children,” and in that case it is the word “dear.”
Second, the word love is used as a noun.
/“Live a life of love”/ or “walk in love” as some versions render it.
And third, the word love is used as a verb—/“Just as Christ loved us.”/
So we have an adjective, a noun and a verb, all forms of the same word to describe not only the love of God for us, and the kind of life we are to live, but also the supreme example of love when Christ gave Himself for us on the cross.
But let’s break it down some more, to uncover some wonderful treasures God has put here for us.
Continue the thought in verse two: /“just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.”/
This phrase is used a number of times in Scripture.
It describes how Jesus was */given/* over to the chief priests and elders of the people to be tried and falsely charged before the Sanhedrin (Mt 26:16,24).
It describes how the Sanhedrin */handed/* Jesus over to Pilate (Mt 27:2).
It describes how Pilate */handed/* Jesus over to the will of the people (Lk 23:25).
And, it describes how Jesus was */handed/* over to the soldiers to be crucified (Mt 27:26).
But don’t miss the truth here that Christ /"gave himself up."/
The cross and the grave were not an accident as far as Christ was concerned.
Jesus' life was not taken from Him. Death was not something given to Jesus against His will.
Jesus /"gave himself up."/
It was His decision, His plan, His will.
It was His sacrifice and not a sacrifice forced upon Him.
Jesus deliberately chose, as Isaiah puts it, to be /"led like a lamb to the slaughter"/ (Is 53:7).
He didn't try to escape.
He didn't try to pull away and hide.
He was /"obedient to death – even death on a cross"/ (Phil 2:8).
He willingly drank from the Lord's cup of wrath (Mt 26:42).
/ /
Focus on the next phrase./
"Christ loved us and gave himself up *for us*."/
Christ's agape love and Christ's sacrificial death was */for us/*.
We turn to what God said through the prophet Isaiah, in 53:5—“/But he was pierced for our transgressions, he was crushed for our iniquities; the punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed.”/
Christ's love was for us.
Christ gave Himself up for us.
*/For us!/* What thrilling words!
What beautiful words!
They are thrilling and beautiful just on the surface, but there is a deeper beauty that goes beyond a casual glance at the Scripture.
There may be some here today who might sometimes think that I focus too much on the details in the Scriptures, but this is one detail that we better pay attention to!
The little word “for” has been called by one Greek scholar “the great preposition of substitutionary atonement.”
Here’s what that means: What Christ did, He did for us, on our behalf.
The word “for” means “instead of,” so when it says that Christ gave Himself up for us, it means that Christ willingly took our place on the cross, and paid the penalty for our sin, becoming our substitute to pay for our atonement.
Do you realize what that means?
It means we can have forgiveness, we can have salvation, we can be redeemed, we can have new life, eternal life.
It means our sins are covered and we are washed clean in the Blood of the Lamb!
It means all of this if we ask God to forgive us because of Christ's sacrifice.
Consider now not only the life that Jesus sacrificed for us, but consider also what the sacrifice involved.
To get to the point where he could die, Jesus had to plan for it.
He left the glory of heaven and took on human nature so that he could hunger and get weary and in the end suffer and die.
The incarnation was the preparation of nerve endings for the nails of the cross.
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