Eph 5:1–2 — Be Imitators of God

The first two verses of chapter 5 are really belong to chapter 4 as the conclusion of the previous exhortation to unity. Paul has been dealing with specific sins, such as lying, anger, stealing, unwholesome words, bitterness, clamor, and slander. These sins are typical problems that occur in any congregation, whether in the 1st century or the 21st.

And these sins are not minor or inconsequential peccadilloes. Paul highlights the absolute seriousness and weight of these sins by warning us that if we persist in them we will grieve the Holy Spirit of God who sealed us for the day of redemption (v. 30). The Spirit’s powerful presence in the midst of the congregation will begin to be withdrawn - not in the sense that we are in danger of losing our salvation, for we have been sealed irrevocably - but in the sense that the corporate enjoyment of the Spirit’s working within the life of the church can be temporarily removed. It is as if the Spirit departs, and leaves the congregation until these sins are repented of and dealt with. This fearful judgment can also occur on the larger scale of a denomination of churches.

O let us be careful how we speak to one another, how we treat one another in the church! Too often we think only of ourselves. We want to vent our own feelings, our own hurt. If we have progressed a little farther in our sanctification, we might even think about how our angry and ungracious words might affect our brothers. But let us go further. Let us think about what we are doing to the Spirit. We are grieving the precious Spirit who has been placed within our hearts as the firstfruits of heaven, the very seal of God himself placed upon us.

Now in 5:1-2, which we want to examine this morning, Paul grounds his appeal to be kind, tenderhearted, and forgiving in the kind, tenderhearted, and forgiving character of God himself. “Therefore, be imitators of God, as beloved children.”

The exhortation to imitate God is not new. It is found throughout the Bible as a major theme. The exhortation was first given to man at creation. Man, as male and female, was created after the image of God. This was the indicative. But every indicative also logically contains an imperative. You, Adam, are made in the image of God. Therefore, be what you are: reflect in your character, attitudes, and actions that God-like nature in whose image you were created. The image of God was the indicative. The imitation of God was the imperative.

Adam failed to imitate God. He fell into sin and instead became an imitator of the falsehood and rebellion of Satan. This implied in Genesis 3:15 which refers to the offspring of Adam and Eve through the line of Cain as the seed of the serpent. Just as a man’s seed or offspring are like him and made in his image, so the seed of Cain would in fact be the seed of the serpent because they would be made in Satan’s likeness, characterized by Satan’s apostasy and rebellion against God.

Yet God did not leave mankind to perish in that state of God unlikeness. In his grace God began to implement a redemptive process, by which a new humanity would be born out of the old. He began to call out of the seed of the serpent, a new seed, the seed of the woman. Through the godly line of Seth the image of God would be recreated. This line was traced in an unbroken line of geneaological descent, until we come to Genesis 12, where God calls Abraham, and makes a promise to him concerning his seed.

Who is this seed? As we follow the story, we learn that the seed is the nation Israel. In the nation Israel we behold God’s program of progressively recreating his image takes a major new step forward. The nation as a whole is called to be holy even as God is holy. Leviticus 11:44: “Be holy, for I am holy.”

This is why Israel as a corporate entity is referred to as God’s firstborn son (Exod. 4:22). The son is made in the image of the father. Therefore, to say that Israel is God’s son is the same thing as saying that Israel is God’s image.

Indeed, we can take this a step further and say that Israel is the second Adam. Just as God created Adam in his own image and thus laid upon Adam the obligation to reflect God’s image by imitating God’s righteous nature, so God created Israel in his own image and thus laid upon Israel the obligation to reflect God’s holiness and righteousness. The only difference is that this is a redemptive re-creation, a re-enactment of the original creation in the form of a divine salvation by which Israel is separated out from the nations and consecrated as holy unto the Lord and charged with the responsibility of obeying the commandments that God gave to Israel at Sinai. These commandments were for Israel’s corporate sanctification. They were given to enable Israel to fulfill its calling as God’s image and son. By carefully following the Law Israel would progressively be re-made in God’s image as a corporate second Adam.

But Israel, like Adam, failed to walk worthy of the calling with which they had been called. This corporate second Adam was only a provisional foreshadow of the true second Adam, Jesus Christ. Israel as the first-level, provisional fulfillment of God’s new creation plan was not only provisional, but an utter failure, for like the first Adam, Israel’s mandate to imitate God was ultimately unfulfilled, indeed it was utterly violated by the most heinous apostasy.

Now, what does it mean to imitate God? God is invisible, a spirit without body, parts, or passions. And so the command to be imitators of God may seem vague and hard to define.

But it is not vague. Paul has already clearly defined what it means to imitate God in verse 24, when he said that we have put on the new man, which has been created in the likeness of God. The new man is Jesus Christ, the image of the invisible God. In Jesus Christ we have the ultimate revelation or concrete expression of what God-likeness is all about. We are imitators of God by being imitators of Christ, since Christ is the one in whom the image of God is most perfectly expressed.

This Christocentric interpretation of the imitation of God is supported by the next verse (v. 2) where Paul goes on to explain that we should be imitators of God by walking in love just as Christ also loved us and gave himself for us as a sacrifice. The model and ground for living a life of love is Christ’s love as expressed in his sacrificial offering of himself for the good of others.

Notice that the call to imitate God is not a static representation of God’s unchanging nature, but rather the appeal is grounded in God’s self-revelation in history. The ground and basis of the new covenant ethic is not in a timeless list of commandments, as is found in the moral law, for example. The ethic of the new creation is rooted in the event of the cross. We are to imitate God by imitating God as he has revealed himself in the climactic event of redemptive history, the self-emptying incarnation, death, burial, and resurrection of the God-man. The appeal is to the historical self-manifestation of God’s character as seen in the founding event that established the new and everlasting covenant. Thus, the new covenant in Christ’s blood is the ultimate and final covenant. It possesses no weakness. It is not a lower-level fulfillment waiting to be replaced by a third or fourth-level fulfillment. This is the everlasting covenant, the berith olam, for there it can never be outdated or become an old covenant in contrast with another newer covenant.

And the reason that the new covenant is also the final covenant is that there is no greater historical event to come in which God will manifest in yet greater glory his righteous and holy nature. The cross of Christ is the ultimate, eschatological epiphany of divine glory. God’s holy nature had been veiled, shrouded in mystery until that day. To be sure God had revealed himself in various ways in the old covenant economy. But in the cross, heaven was ripped open. Out of heaven we have now seen the final disclosure of God in all his glory and grace and love. The clouds have parted. The majesty and wonder of God’s heart were opened up for all mankind to see. Not in the garden. Not in a static list of commands. Not in the ten commandments. Not even in the eternal moral law. But in the cross. That is when the true nature and heart of God was made know in its eschatological fullness and unsurpassed finality.

Therefore, brothers and sisters, it is to the cross that we must look for our standard of conduct in the new covenant. To be sure, we must not discard the ten commandments, for they too stand as an authoritative witness to God’s holy nature. As Paul says, the Law is holy and righteous and good. It is spiritual, because it reflects God’s spiritual nature. But in the blinding radiance of the divine love that we have now seen in the cross, how, brothers and sisters, can we ever go back to the weak and beggarly tablets of stone? The Law has its place, but it is only a subordinate place in the kingdom of God. When Jesus manifested his glory on the mount of transfiguration Moses and Elijah stood by, representing the Law and the prophets, the old covenant revelation of God. But when the voice of God the Father thundered from heaven, God did not command the disciples to listen to Moses, he commanded them, “This is my beloved Son, listen to Him!” After that the disciples saw no one but Jesus only, exalted in the radiant glory that would be achieved only through his sufferings on the cross.

The costly, sacrificial love of Christ is the ultimate ethical standard of the new covenant. It is the touchstone by which everything must be examined. It is the pinnacle and peak of the revelation of God’s nature. And since we are to be imitators of God, we must reflect the costly, sacrifice love of Christ in our own hearts, and in the way we treat other people both outside and within the body of Christ. To serve others in this way is not only to please God, it is to imitate God himself, to express in our lives that we are in fact the eschatological new creation, the new man, which in the likeness of God is created in righteousness and holiness of the truth.

In what concrete ways ought we to reflect the costly, sacrificial love of Christ in our lives? Look back to verse 32. Paul urges us to “be kind to one another, tenderhearted, and forgiving each another, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.”

These attitudes are not easy! They are costly! It costs us something to be kind to those who are unkind to us, to have a tender heart toward those who have been insensitive to us, to be ready and eager to forgive those who have wronged us. It hurts our pride. It seems like we are taking it on the chin. The other person doesn’t deserve to get off the hook so easily.

But though such attitudes are costly, that is precisely what makes them a fragrant aroma to God! This language is taken from the book of Leviticus, the first seven chapters, which prescribes how the Israelites were to bring their costly animal sacrifices, and to burn them up on the altar as a sweet smelling aroma unto God. The smoke of the sacrifice would ascend to heaven and God would smell the soothing aroma, and his heart would be satisfied in the costly expression of obedience and total consecration on the part of his people.

Our obedience to God, as expressed in our Christ-like self-sacrificial love for the brethren, is not worthy in itself. But our sacrificial love flows from our union with Christ. And thus our obedience is but the fruit of Christ’s perfect obedience. Only Christ could offer himself up without spot unto God as a burnt offering that truly delighted God’s heart. But in Christ, so can we. By faith, as we reckon our identity in Christ, we can express, in some small measure, the costly and precious sacrificial love of Jesus. Though our efforts are always tainted by sinful motives and fall far short of the perfection of Christ’s sacrificial obedience, yet it is of great value in the sight of God, and brings him great pleasure.

Let us be imitators of Christ, by putting on a spirit of kindness, tenderness, and forgiveness in our dealings with one another in the church. If we are full of kindness, tender and compassionate hearts, and ready to forgive, the Spirit will not be grieved, and we will be further built up and edified by the Spirit who has sealed us for the day of redemption. As he works in our lives together, uniting our hearts in worship and service and witness as a congregation, we will be fashioned into a little colony of heaven on earth. Our love for one another in the church will then be a little preview of the joys of the social life of the redeemed in heaven, as we commune with one another and with the Lamb forever.