One of the most honoring moments in parenthood is when you start to notice your children wanting to act like you. It will get them in trouble sometimes, unfortunately. But I remember distinctly one morning I was getting ready for church and putting my clothes on. I was in the bathroom. The kids had already gotten up and were running all over the house, as is custom in our home. I had my jacket hanging in my room and my shoes at the foot of the bed, and I heard clunking coming around the corner. Here comes my son with my shoes on and my jacket on. He walked in with the biggest smile on his face and said, “I’d be like you, Daddy.”
That did something for my heart. It put the biggest smile on my face, because it made me realize there is a respect there, a love there, an appreciation that God is forming in our relationship and in our home. There have been moments along the way where I’ve started to hear them say things that we say, and God help them sometimes, they act like we act. Their favorite game is to repeat whatever Mom and Dad says. Can I get an amen? It’s a wonderful, blessed time. But this doesn’t happen by accident. God designed us to be imitators of others.
Be Ye Therefore Imitators of God
“Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children.” (Ephesians 5:1)
A lot of times we talk about being a follower of Jesus. That’s kind of an overarching term we use to describe being a Christian. When you ask what it means to be a follower of Jesus, the answer is, “Well, I go to church, I read my Bible, I try to understand it and obey it, I walk with Jesus and talk with Jesus.” Praise God, that is part of the Christian life. But the word Paul uses here might be more appropriately rendered in modern English as imitators. You could translate this verse, “Be ye therefore imitators of God, as dear children.”
The picture Paul gives us is of Davoni standing there in my shoes, wearing my jacket, trying to talk like Daddy. He sees something in me that he wants to emulate, and he attempts to display the same appearance and characteristics he has seen in me. Paul is instructing the church not just to be Christians, not just to try to obey commands, but to be imitators of God, just as dear, beloved children imitate their parents. Watch God. Look at God. Listen to God. Consider and meditate upon the character of God. And as you begin to understand who God is, exemplify that same character, that same style, that same presentation you see coming from the Holy God.
That’s a big calling, isn’t it? Because He’s a big God. The truth is, this is a call we will never fully complete on this side of eternity, but it is one we should be daily striving for.
Who Are You Going to Imitate?
Here’s the truth about life as a human being: whether you like it or not, you will imitate somebody. I mentioned this in Sunday School today. We love to talk about free will, especially here in the United States. We like to talk about liberty and freedom and the pursuit of happiness, and all of that works great for a governmental system. But the reality is that in our fallen state, and just because of the way God has designed us, we are not going to be original. We are going to imitate somebody or something.
If you interview any great artist, whether in music or painting or sculpting, and ask how they arrived at their style, they’ll tell you, “Well, I watched so-and-so,” or “I trained under so-and-so,” or “I remember growing up watching this musician on TV and I wanted to be just like them.” And if you listen to their music or look at their paintings, you begin to notice similarities between their style and that of the mentors they looked up to. That’s what we do as human beings. We take what we see around us, we try to make it work for us, we put our own little spin on it, but at the end of the day we’re doing what we have seen somebody else do.
That’s why, when Exodus talks about God visiting the sins of the parents on the children to the third and fourth generation, it is not some mystical curse. God is giving us a life principle: if you set an example of wickedness and sinfulness, that wickedness and sinfulness is going to be imitated and emulated three and four generations down from you. The curse was simply God letting humanity take its course. But for those who walk according to God’s ways, the blessing is upon generations and generations.
So we have to embrace the reality that no matter how original we think we are, we’re not all that original. We are imitators. We start as children, and we follow this process throughout the rest of our lives. The important question this morning is not will you imitate, but who are you going to imitate with your life? Will you be an imitator of the sinners around you, the sinners you watch on television, the sinners you read about in your books, the sinners you spend your time with at work? Or will you imitate the holy God who created you and gave you your life? That is the question of the hour.
Ask yourself this honest question: who are you going to imitate this week? Will you imitate the bad habits you saw in your parents and grandparents? Will you imitate the sin you see people embracing all around you? You say, “Well, Justin, I’m not out there drinking and partying and hooking up with people.” No, but do you ever get bitter? Do you ever lie to yourself and to others? Do you ever make excuses for your bad attitudes and bad behaviors? You know what you’re doing when you do that. You’re imitating what you have seen and heard and experienced from others. I hope you will determine in your heart and mind, by the power of the Holy Spirit, “This week, I want to be an imitator of God.” I want to be like that little child who just tries to walk in his father’s shoes.
If that is the condition of your heart, then we have to ask what it looks like. Over the next several verses Paul gives us seven ways we can be imitators of God. I’m not going to get through all seven this morning, so this will be a two-part sermon. That means you’ve got to come back next week.
Walk in Love
The first way we imitate God sets the stage for everything else Paul is going to say. Not obedience, not righteousness, not generosity, not kindness. He says:
“And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling savour.” (Ephesians 5:2)
For those who are curious, that is the Greek word agape. This is not brotherly love. This is not spousal intimacy. This is the God-sized, self-sacrificing love we are to imitate in our lives. First John 4:8 tells us that God is not just loving; God is love. The very nature of God is love.
Here’s something hard for us to understand, because we have only ever lived in creation: God loved before creation existed. That means love is not dependent on the thing being loved. Love is a characteristic that is given to others whether they earn it or not. Ouch. God existed as a Trinity long before He created anything. He has always existed as Father, Son, and Spirit, and His love has been expressed and experienced within the members of the Trinity throughout all His existence, which cannot be measured. When He brought creation into existence, that love began to be expressed to what He had made, and it was totally independent of the actions of creation. It has continued to be displayed and bestowed upon us despite the fact that we do not deserve it.
If God’s love depended on our actions, it would have ceased the moment Adam and Eve ate the fruit. But instead of responding to that rebellion in a loveless way, what did He do? He kept His word and brought the consequences that were owed. But the very next thing He did was make a sacrifice so that they might be clothed and covered and experience His mercy. Isn’t that amazing? God responded to the wickedness of creation with love and mercy, because His love is not controlled by us. It is bestowed despite what we do and what we deserve.
So if we are going to act like God and be like God, there is an ingredient that cannot be left out: love. Not only love, but a self-sacrificing love that supersedes the actions of those around us. And notice the example Paul gives. He doesn’t say, “Love in a general way.” He says, “Love like Jesus.” And how did Jesus love? While we were yet sinners. God commended, or revealed, His love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. He did not deserve to die, but He died anyway. Not because we earned it or deserved it, but because the love of God stepped into our sinful mess and took our place in punishment. We deserved to die on that cross, and in His great agape love, He sacrificed Himself in our place, for people who did not deserve the sacrifice given.
Notice what Paul says about the sacrifice of Christ: it was a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savor. When God beheld the sacrifice of Christ, it was pleasing to Him, the way it is to us when we walk into a home where somebody’s got the candles going and has been preparing a nice dinner, and all those fresh smells start hitting you and it just melts your heart a little bit. That’s the experience God had when He beheld the sacrifice of Christ. Why? Because the foundation of that sacrifice was an agape love that sacrificed self for the good of those who did not deserve it.
So how are we going to put on God’s shoes and God’s coat and walk like God and talk like God and be like God? We’re going to sacrifice ourselves for the good of those who do not deserve it. This has to be the starting point, folks, because all the good works you can do will not get you any closer to looking like God if you do not have God’s love in your heart.
First Corinthians 13, the famous love chapter: we love to go there and talk about how love is patient and kind. But we can’t skip what comes right before. Paul says if I give to the poor and give my body to be burned, if I speak with the tongues of angels, if I live a miraculous and exemplary life, if I am just beaming with beauty and glory and splendor, but have no love in my heart, I am a tinkling cymbal. My life is empty. It’s useless. I am nothing. You can try to emulate God’s holiness and righteousness. You can try to be ultra-spiritual. You can give money to the poor and to this organization and that one. You can give your tithes to the church, read your Bible, pray, and show up with a smile on your face and go through all the motions. But if love is not in your heart, you’re wasting your time. Because God is love, and if we are going to be imitators of God, we have to love like God loved.
Who Is Too Unworthy to Love?
Let me address the elephant in the room: that’s hard to do. It’s very hard to do. This is a safe space, so it’s okay to be honest. There are people you don’t want to love. There are people who make it hard to love. There are people I would dive into the ocean and risk my life to save, gladly, because I love them and they matter to me. And there are other people—this is just Justin being a human, talking up here—that I hate to say I might hesitate to dive into that water for. Not because I want to see them perish, but because the question would be, do I love them enough to make that kind of sacrifice?
But I’m a wicked sinner. If you could see what I once was, if you could go with me back to where I started from, you would be shocked. Yet even while I was a sinner, God showed His love to me. He sent Jesus Christ to die in my place and give Himself for me.
So if you’ve already answered the first question—“I want to be an imitator of God”—here’s the second: if God, who is perfect and holy and righteous, could love me like that, then who is so sinful, so broken, so unworthy that I can’t love them the way Christ loved me? You can’t answer that question. The love of Christ has saved us from our sins. The love of Christ has welcomed us into the family of God. And it is that love that is the foundation of our being like Christ.
Be Filled with the Spirit
You say, “Justin, that’s hard. There are people I don’t want to love. How do I do that?” We’ll deal with that more fully in the next section of this chapter, but I want you to look ahead at verse 18:
“And be not drunk with wine, wherein is excess; but be filled with the Spirit.” (Ephesians 5:18)
Because here’s the answer. How do I walk like God? On my own, I can’t. We’re still sinners living in sin-cursed flesh, and if we’re given the opportunity to do what we want to do, Christian or not, we’re going to take the chance. I just admitted to you this morning that there are people I don’t know if I want to love. So how do I walk in that kind of sacrificial love that Christ had? I have to have something inside of me giving me the power to do it.
I acknowledge that I can’t love like Christ by myself, but I have been given a Spirit who can make it a reality in me. How have martyrs died at the hands of people who hated and betrayed them? How did Elisabeth Elliot get on a plane and land in the village full of people who had murdered her husband, and give them the gospel? Because you have a Spirit inside of you who is bigger than the world.
So if you want to be an imitator of God, if you want to love like God, here’s the answer: you bow your head before a holy God and say, “God, I know I can’t do this on my own, but I know Your Spirit is powerful enough to do it. Lord, would You fill me with that Spirit, fill me with that power, and give me a Christ-like love that I can’t make happen on my own?” That’s a biblical prayer, and God answers biblical prayers.
So, folks, I close with this question: how’s your love? Have you been loving like Christ? Have you been joyfully making those sacrifices of love for the people around you who need them? I haven’t been doing that perfectly. But today God can change something in your life. Today He can start the process of cleansing you and making you into the image of Christ. And this very week you can see the love of God filling you up and flowing out of you into others. That’s my prayer, and I hope it will be your prayer too.
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