Be Imitators of God

Sermon Notes, Proper 14, Aug. 8, 2021 5 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. I remember the television commercial from the 1990's. A young boy dribbling a basketball says, "I want to be like Mike." Meaning Michael Jordan, the greatest basketball player whoever lived. In fact, "Be like Mike" became for a while a cultural aspiration. Everyone wanted to be like Mike. Wear Mike's shoes. Flash Mike's smile. Have Mike's friends. No one gave much thought to the impossibility of being like Mike. There was only one Michael Jordan and even he wasn't the Mike he was made out to be. If we can't be like Michael Jordan, how much more impossible is it for us to be like God? Yet here is Paul urging the church in Ephesus to be imitators of God. Paul is not given to hyperbole. He speaks with practicality, as we see in our reading this morning. So we have to assume that Paul actually intends his readers to imitate God. What does he mean by that? And how is it possible for us to do that? First question: what does Paul mean by imitating God? We can only imitate God in the attributes of his Nature he chooses to share with us. God created mankind in his image. He shares certain attributes with us, his creatures, and not others. We cannot share in his omnipotence or his transcendence. But we can share in his compassion and generosity. For Paul this is like new clothing that replaces the old clothing we wore before we received Christ. "To put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness." Paul spells out what that looks like in Col. 3:12-13. Put on then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.1 God expects us to behave as he would behave. Our best example of this is Jesus Christ. Inasmuch as we emulate Jesus, we are imitating God. For Paul this is the very likeness of God and there is no discernable difference between our new self and God's "true righteousness and holiness." We aren't little gods, or would-be gods. Jesus imputes upon us God's own righteousness, his own righteousness, to be our righteousness. This is central to Paul's teaching. We aren't saved to a lower tier of heaven, our sinfulness continuing to drag us down from God's true holiness. We are saved into the brotherhood of Jesus. As he writes to Titus, "He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit. "2 He completes the thought when he concludes, "so that being justified by his grace we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.3" Let's summarize before we move on. In emulating Jesus we become imitators of God. In doing so we exchange our righteousness, which is essentially worthless, for Jesus' righteousness. His righteousness alone allows us to sit at the table of heaven, heirs of the kingdom of heaven. Here is the paradox of our good works. In themselves they earn us nothing. But in the mercy of Jesus and offered in His Name, they identify us as God's own. There's a Cursillo song that sums it up, "And they'll know we are Christians by our love." So what does Paul mean when he says be imitators of God? Be like Jesus! Now let's try and answer the second question, how is it possible for us to be like Jesus? A little boy dribbling a basketball might be doing the same thing that Michael Jordan did, but no one would say he was Michael Jordan. Yet Paul says in imitating God we are no longer the graceless failures we used to be, but His beloved children. Jesus himself calls us his brothers. What happened to make this transformation? Let us go back to Paul's words to Titus again. "He saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit." The washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit. We have another term for that: Holy Baptism. We are baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus. People ask, "Do I need to be baptized to be a Christian?" You do not need to be baptized to be a follower of Jesus. Thank God. Because all who became Christians as adults were first off followers of Jesus before they were baptized into His Name. But to move from being a follower of Jesus to being an imitator of Jesus, yes you need to be baptized. We are on Holy Ground here. Take off your shoes. We may choose to follow Jesus and ask him to shape our wills after his own. I pray that prayer every day and often many times a day. When I move within the will of God good things happen. Good things also happen to and for people who have no desire to be a Christian. Whether done by me or non-Christians, these good works in themselves may even be God-inspired but they are not going to make me be like Jesus. They have no power to change my status with God. In baptism, the Holy Spirit in fills us with God's presence and we are fundamentally and forever changed. We die to our old nature and we are born to a new nature, as beloved children of God. Baptism is an act of God and the symbolism of water assures us that God acts in us just as he acted to part the waters of the Red Sea for the Israelites. Now we are imitators of Jesus. In answer to the persistent question asked about Jesus, why did he have to be baptized? He had to be baptized so that we might be baptized like him. And into him. So that we might be changed. P.V. Marshall says this. "But putting on Christ and imitating God are phrases that Pauline thinking repeats out of the knowledge that we grow into the identities we choose to have."4 When we choose to have the identity of Christ we begin to grow into his likeness. We begin to imitate God. If you are baptized into the death and resurrection of Jesus, you have everything you need to imitate God. You still need to make it your goal and aim in life and do it. The Holy Spirit already indwells in you and will help you. In the Name of the Father, and the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen. 1 The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Col 3:12-13). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles. 2 The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Tt 3:5-6). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles. 3 The Holy Bible: English Standard Version. (2016). (Tt 3:7). Wheaton, IL: Crossway Bibles. 4 Marshall, P. V. (2009). Pastoral Perspective on Ephesians 4:23-3:2. In D. L. Bartlett & B. B. Taylor (Eds.), Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary: Year B (Vol. 3, p. 330). Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press. --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------ --------------- ------------------------------------------------------------