Kingdom's Keys Fellowship
Where God's Kingdom Meets Man's Heart.
Out and About 24 Imitate God? Are You Serious?
“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 (Eph.5:1-2).”
Imitate God? You’ve got to be kidding. How do we imitate God and live a life of love? A bit presumptuous to even consider such a thought you might say, but there it is. Paul doesn’t allow us to shy away from the truth. He is telling us what we are capable of. He is not mincing words here. He really means what he says. Apparently we are able to imitate God. What is the basis for such a claim? This verse gives us three clues that support his claim.
First, we are God’s dearly loved children. Our Heavenly Father loves us.
Second, Christ loved us. God the Son loves us.
Third, He gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to His Father.
God grounded His love in a final giving of Himself for His Father for our recovery. In all three the single binding factor is God’s love. These three facts stand out as truths we need to embrace first with our minds, second with our hearts and third with our spirits. So let’s take these thoughts and peruse their depth remembering they are not only words but the revelation of the living eternal qualities of a living eternal God through a living eternal Spirit.
First, we are God’s children.
This is what Paul knew from Scripture. We are created in the image of God. That is what makes us capable. Sinners we may be but the truth is that, regardless of our condition, He loves us and loves us dearly. That has to say something to us. Sin may have separated us from Him and we have gone our own way and maybe still are but His love for us is eternal. He won’t go away and His love will always remain. God’s love is consistent.
To be a loved child is first to recognize that spiritually we are children. Jesus said that unless we receive the Kingdom as a child we cannot enter it (Lk.18:17). It’s not what we think about God that counts. It’s what He thinks about us. And it’s not just thought and thinking but the wholeness of being a mind, heart and spirit in a body He made for His pleasure and purpose and for our eternity. His Kingdom is all about relationship, about being persons who share and about growing and maturing as individuals with meaning and purpose. All of this comes to us because we are loved by Him.
Second, Christ loved us. God the Son came into the flesh, was born as a human being, to relate to us in such a way that we could see God Himself, believe Him, trust Him and have faith in Him. The key to this relationship is faith. Why? Because God is faithful (1Jn.1:9). Faith is part of the nature of God. When you see Jesus you have seen the Father’s faith, His love, His grace and His truth (Jn.14:9).
Third, He gave Himself as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Jesus came as the long awaited Messiah foretold in Scripture. He became not only the teacher who pointed to His Father and our Father but also as a Savior who would give His life on the Cross for all of mankind. This was not an ordinary means of death. Crucifixion was a man-invented calculated horrible and dehumanizing visual event meant to strike terror into the hearts of anyone intending to stand against existing political authority. To make the point it was carried out by the military arm of that authority. It was a symbol of man’s arrogance that ultimate power rested in the ability to exact death. If there was anything spiritual to be worshipped it was the state, its structure and its emperor. Its citizens were its children. It was this final sense of authority that defined humanity and it was this final definition that had to be challenged spiritually.
Jesus became the ‘fragrant offering.’ Fragrance has to do with odor. Jesus emitted a spiritual odor, a fragrance that wafted through the dark spiritual atmosphere of the lost world, lost in sin and evil, the devil’s control and assumed victory. That fragrance was caught in the spiritual nostrils of broken lives, beaten down hearts and perverted minds. It was a fragrance of hope, of love and of a new way to think. It was the fragrance of the One and only God, a loving Father, a loving Son and a loving Spirit. It was a fragrance that broke through the smog of self-centeredness and fear that dominated an entire world. The state and its emperor were not the final word, experience or deity. It was the eternal God entering our world, making sense to our minds, filtering through to our hearts and mending our spirits. Death in this world was not the end nor was it any longer a sword to be held over the fearful heart. Eternal life had been revealed in the Resurrection of Jesus. It was worth dying for as it still is.
Sacrifice is what enabled the fragrant offering of Jesus to reach across from the spiritual kingdom into an alienated world and an isolated heart. Sacrifice in the case of Jesus was a ‘once-and-for-all-time’ giving of self to die that only He could do. It was not only a physical death but a physical death undertaken through the spiritual means of faith. It was death by faith. Jesus embraced death to show that the Father not only loved His Son but He loved us enough to let His Son make a faith choice to die in our place and faith that He would rise from the dead. Faith is the door to the Kingdom of Heaven but not just faith by itself but faith in Jesus who meets us at the door to bring us through. It is by faith in Him that the doors to all hearts are opened. The risen Jesus is always standing at the door of our heart and it is by faith he carries us day by day. Is it no wonder we pray, “Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven?”
So, imitating God? If God says we can then we can. It’s loving the way Christ loved and consciously making ourselves to be a daily sacrifice. Sacrifice is a spiritual decision in faith to think spiritually as opposed to worldly, seeing others as spiritual images of God, placing their needs above ours and keeping in step with the Spirit of God as He showers our mind through Scripture.
Imitate God? You’ve got to be kidding. How do we imitate God and live a life of love? A bit presumptuous to even consider such a thought you might say, but there it is. Paul doesn’t allow us to shy away from the truth. He is telling us what we are capable of. He is not mincing words here. He really means what he says. Apparently we are able to imitate God. What is the basis for such a claim? This verse gives us three clues that support his claim.
First, we are God’s dearly loved children. Our Heavenly Father loves us.
Second, Christ loved us. God the Son loves us.
Third, He gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to His Father.
God grounded His love in a final giving of Himself for His Father for our recovery. In all three the single binding factor is God’s love. These three facts stand out as truths we need to embrace first with our minds, second with our hearts and third with our spirits. So let’s take these thoughts and peruse their depth remembering they are not only words but the revelation of the living eternal qualities of a living eternal God through a living eternal Spirit.
First, we are God’s children.
This is what Paul knew from Scripture. We are created in the image of God. That is what makes us capable. Sinners we may be but the truth is that, regardless of our condition, He loves us and loves us dearly. That has to say something to us. Sin may have separated us from Him and we have gone our own way and maybe still are but His love for us is eternal. He won’t go away and His love will always remain. God’s love is consistent.
To be a loved child is first to recognize that spiritually we are children. Jesus said that unless we receive the Kingdom as a child we cannot enter it (Lk.18:17). It’s not what we think about God that counts. It’s what He thinks about us. And it’s not just thought and thinking but the wholeness of being a mind, heart and spirit in a body He made for His pleasure and purpose and for our eternity. His Kingdom is all about relationship, about being persons who share and about growing and maturing as individuals with meaning and purpose. All of this comes to us because we are loved by Him.
Second, Christ loved us. God the Son came into the flesh, was born as a human being, to relate to us in such a way that we could see God Himself, believe Him, trust Him and have faith in Him. The key to this relationship is faith. Why? Because God is faithful (1Jn.1:9). Faith is part of the nature of God. When you see Jesus you have seen the Father’s faith, His love, His grace and His truth (Jn.14:9).
Third, He gave Himself as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
Jesus came as the long awaited Messiah foretold in Scripture. He became not only the teacher who pointed to His Father and our Father but also as a Savior who would give His life on the Cross for all of mankind. This was not an ordinary means of death. Crucifixion was a man-invented calculated horrible and dehumanizing visual event meant to strike terror into the hearts of anyone intending to stand against existing political authority. To make the point it was carried out by the military arm of that authority. It was a symbol of man’s arrogance that ultimate power rested in the ability to exact death. If there was anything spiritual to be worshipped it was the state, its structure and its emperor. Its citizens were its children. It was this final sense of authority that defined humanity and it was this final definition that had to be challenged spiritually.
Jesus became the ‘fragrant offering.’ Fragrance has to do with odor. Jesus emitted a spiritual odor, a fragrance that wafted through the dark spiritual atmosphere of the lost world, lost in sin and evil, the devil’s control and assumed victory. That fragrance was caught in the spiritual nostrils of broken lives, beaten down hearts and perverted minds. It was a fragrance of hope, of love and of a new way to think. It was the fragrance of the One and only God, a loving Father, a loving Son and a loving Spirit. It was a fragrance that broke through the smog of self-centeredness and fear that dominated an entire world. The state and its emperor were not the final word, experience or deity. It was the eternal God entering our world, making sense to our minds, filtering through to our hearts and mending our spirits. Death in this world was not the end nor was it any longer a sword to be held over the fearful heart. Eternal life had been revealed in the Resurrection of Jesus. It was worth dying for as it still is.
Sacrifice is what enabled the fragrant offering of Jesus to reach across from the spiritual kingdom into an alienated world and an isolated heart. Sacrifice in the case of Jesus was a ‘once-and-for-all-time’ giving of self to die that only He could do. It was not only a physical death but a physical death undertaken through the spiritual means of faith. It was death by faith. Jesus embraced death to show that the Father not only loved His Son but He loved us enough to let His Son make a faith choice to die in our place and faith that He would rise from the dead. Faith is the door to the Kingdom of Heaven but not just faith by itself but faith in Jesus who meets us at the door to bring us through. It is by faith in Him that the doors to all hearts are opened. The risen Jesus is always standing at the door of our heart and it is by faith he carries us day by day. Is it no wonder we pray, “Thy kingdom come on earth as it is in Heaven?”
So, imitating God? If God says we can then we can. It’s loving the way Christ loved and consciously making ourselves to be a daily sacrifice. Sacrifice is a spiritual decision in faith to think spiritually as opposed to worldly, seeing others as spiritual images of God, placing their needs above ours and keeping in step with the Spirit of God as He showers our mind through Scripture.
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Comment by HKHaugan on October 5, 2011 at 4:29pm
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The Lord Jesus has enabled us to be something new in the world. As He was a sweet fragrance so in Him faithful sacrifice is His gift, “For we are to God the pleasing aroma of Christ among those who are being saved and those who are perishing (2Cor.2:15).”
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