Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.

Ephesians 5:1

What a challenging statement from Paul!
“Be imitators of God, as beloved children.” 

But also a great reminder of the good news of the gospel. We are God’s beloved children, loved by Christ, unconditionally and eternally.  There is nothing we can do to make God love us more, and there is nothing we can do that will cause God to love us less. Period. 

But there is, of course, a way to show our gratitude for this amazing gift. We can do this by returning that love; and, as Paul says here, by living our life in imitation of our loving God.

“Be imitators of God, as beloved children.” 

I have been thinking about that statement, because it is a rather unusual way to describe the Christian Life, isn’t it? To imitate God. So that is what I want to focus my sermon on today. What Paul means by that, and how we can do that. 

Learning by Imitating

I have to confess – I don’t spend a lot of time watching cute videos on the internet, but even I know about all of the cute videos of children imitating their parents. Do you know what I am talking about? 

I am sure that all of my fellow parents have had moments that we are kind of thankful were not caught on video, and moments that we wish were. We all know that children are going to imitate their parents, whether we want them to or not. It is how children learn, how they grow. Imitation is an essential way that we learn. Scientists call this mimetic learning, learning by imitation. 

And so, it makes sense that as God’s beloved children, we would learn and grow by imitating God, just as any child learns by imitating their parents. 

But how do we imitate God? What does that even mean? How can we imitate someone we can’t even see? Obviously, God is not asking us to do the impossible, nor is Paul. And in fact, there are two very clear ways that we are offered in scripture on how to imitate God.  

Imitate God by Doing What Jesus Did

The first way that we can learn to imitate God is through his son. It is one of the reasons why God’s son was sent to earth: To show us how to live. 

Jesus’ mission was not just to die for us. If that were the case, he could have been killed as a baby and his mission would have been accomplished. His mission was not just to die for us, but also to show us how to live. We can learn so much simply by focusing on Jesus, by looking at how he approaches life, and by trying to do the same. 

Imitate God by Doing What Jesus Taught

But there is something else that Jesus did on earth, which brings us to the second way that we can learn to imitate God: Jesus spent a lot of his time on earth teaching. 

We see an example of that in today’s gospel reading (John 6:35, 41-51). After feeding the five thousand, Jesus spent a lot of time teaching them what it means. Simply feeding them was not enough. He then helped them to see how he is not just the bread-maker, the miracle-maker, but he is also the bread himself, he is the miracle. He is the living bread that came down from heaven. 

Both his words and his actions show us that. Jesus came to earth for this reason, also: To teach us. He taught his disciples, and they recorded what they learned. They wrote gospels and epistles in order to share what they learned from Jesus. 

And we can learn a lot about how to live our life by reading what they wrote, by studying God’s Word. It is another gift to us, along with the gift of God’s son. 

And that brings us back to Paul’s Letter to the Ephesians, which I have been focusing on in my sermons over the last several Sundays. Today’s passage (Ephesians 4:25 – 5:2) concludes with the words that began this sermon – “Be imitators of God, as beloved children.” 

But that is really just the summary of all that came before it, which is a series of instructions from Paul on how to do that.

There is a lot that Paul shares in this passage, but I want to look at three things that Paul says. And in each case, I want to offer an example from Jesus to show how he embodies these teachings and models them for us. 

Speak the Truth in Love

First, Paul teaches us to speak the truth to one another, and to speak the truth in love (Ephesians 4:15). 

Every community that God cares about is based on truth and love. And Jesus us what this looks like again and again. 

To offer one example, think about his famous dinner with Mary and Martha (Luke 10:38-42). Jesus is teaching, Mary is sitting at his feet listening, and Martha is stressing out trying to serve a meal for them all. She is distracted with her many tasks, and so she approaches Jesus and says: “Tell Mary to help me.”

Jesus could have responded in many ways here. The way he does respond is to tell Martha the truth in love:

“Martha, Martha, you are worried and distracted by many things, but few things are needed—indeed only one. Mary has chosen the better part, which will not be taken away from her.”

You can almost hear the love in Jesus’ words, but also the truth. The most important thing is not the quality of the meal. It is to spend these precious moments with Jesus. 

Speak the truth to one another, but always with love. How? By learning from Jesus. By imitating him. 

Be Angry but Do Not Sin

The second example that I want to look at from this passage of Ephesians is the very next verse: Be angry, but do not sin, and do not let the sun go down on your anger. 

It is okay to be angry, Paul says. It’s unavoidable, really, like any other emotion. And it is important at times. But anger can also lead to sin, to actions that we later regret. 

So consider an example from Jesus’ life of how he approaches this. In Mark 11 we find Jesus leaving the home of Mary and Martha to go into Jerusalem. It is the famous “triumphal entry” that we celebrate on Palm Sunday. 

We read that Jesus “entered Jerusalem and went into the temple, and when he had looked around at everything, as it was already late, he went out to Bethany with the twelve.”

So, Jesus entered the temple, looked around, and then left. He didn’t do anything, not yet. He was angry. We know that. He even spoke some harsh words. But not to any human. He spoke these angry words to a fig tree. “May no one ever eat fruit from you again.” And then he spent the night back in Bethany in prayer. 

And the next day, he walked back to Jerusalem and only then did he drive the money changers out of the temple. And as he did so, he was teaching and saying, “Is it not written, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations’? But you have made it a den of robbers.”

And what I see in this is not an act of impulsive anger, but one that has been thought through. A modern example would be the email or text message that we are sometimes tempted to fire off in anger. 

What Jesus does is spend the night in prayer, and only then does what needs to be done. Modeling for us what it looks like to be angry, but in a way that does not lead us to sin. 

Be Tenderhearted

And then one final  example of Jesus showing us how to live out what Paul is teaching here. Toward the end of this passage we hear these beautiful words: 

“Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ has forgiven you.”

And the part of this that I want to highlight is not the part about being kind or forgiving one another. We all know that Jesus was kind and forgiving. I want to highlight the part about being tenderhearted. Because Jesus was also very tenderhearted. 

I love what the Christian writer, John Stott, says about being tenderhearted. He wrote that: 

“The definition of spiritual growth is going from having thin skin and a hard heart to having thick skin and a tender heart.” 

That describes Jesus. He had thick skin, but a tender heart. It was very hard to get under Jesus’ skin. It was hard to offend him. But it was easy to get to Jesus’ heart, to evoke his sympathy and love. 

Take just one example, which is also from his time with Mary and Martha. Their brother, Lazarus, fell sick, and then died. Jesus went to Mary and Martha. And we read in John 11 that “When Jesus saw [Mary] weeping and the Jews who came with her also weeping, he was greatly disturbed in spirit and deeply moved. He said, “Where have you laid [Lazarus]?” They said to him, “Lord, come and see.” Jesus began to weep. So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”

Yes, Jesus loved Lazarus. And Martha and Mary. And it hurt him to see them suffering. It disturbed him greatly. Even though he knew that he was going to raise Lazarus from the dead. But first, he grieved, and he wept. 

Jesus was clearly tenderhearted. He felt the pain of the world deeply. And he invites us to do the same. To imitate him by being tenderhearted, but thick-skinned. To love this world, and the people of this world. By imitating Jesus. 

When we do that, we will be tenderhearted. We will speak the truth in love. We will live with our anger under control. And we will keep our eyes on Jesus, who shows us how to do all of this in an absolutely perfect way. 

Closing

But we don’t do any of this perfectly, of course. We are not Jesus. So let me come back around to how this sermon began, with the verse that sums it all up. Paul writes: 

“Be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.”

You see? Jesus does much more than offer us a model of how to live. He also loves us. Unconditionally, and eternally. 

The whole Christian life starts there, and ends there. In the undying love of Jesus. He loved us. He loves us. It is why he came to earth. Not just to show us how to live, and not just to die for us. But first and foremost, to love us. 

Hold onto that truth, rejoice in that love, share it with others, and you can’t go wrong. May we do this faithfully, to the glory of God. Amen.