Ephesians chapter 5 verse 1 opens up by telling us to Imitate God in everything because we are His children. This was Apostle Paul’s admonition to God’s children in Ephesus as well as God’s children who may and will read this letter. The key words in this verse for me are imitate, everything and God. I just want to scream this verse to every single believer on the earth!!! Only if we adhered to this portion in the bible, oh! how powerful the church would be on the earth. oh! how beautiful the world would be filled with children of lights influencing the world and dominating with the light of God.
Sadly, this is not exactly the case for many children of God. I still get days and moments when I am left in shock at the attitude, speech, demeanor of children of God. And this shouldn’t be the case. Therefore, in today’s blog post, I aim to remind us all of the kind of life we have been called to live as believers. We are children of God and as a good child of our father, we should take time to learn of Him while we exude His character always by the power of His Holy Spirit in us.
I love how the bible doesn’t leave us helpless after giving us an instruction. Right after apostle Paul tells us to imitate God, he points us to the person of God who we can easily relate to, who we can easily learn from. He said, “live a life filled with love, following the example of Jesus Christ who loved us and offered Himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God”- Ephesians 5:2. In other words, he is saying to us, look to Jesus who is God and took the form of a human and walked the earth just like we are walking right now. Some christians or individuals after reading the first verse of Ephesians chapter 5 may argue that it is difficult to imitate a God that they have not seen. But thank God, Jesus Christ came and changed that orientation – we can see all of the works of Jesus Christ through scripture. We can see how He responded to circumstances, how He lived His life filled with communion with the father, doing all of the father’s will. As much as we read and learn of the works and walks of Jesus Christ, we are able to learn about God and ultimately imitate Him.
The first thing I see that is worth emulating and imitating from the life of Jesus is His sacrificial love for humanity and secondly His desire to please God at all cost. These two things I believe are the core essence of our living and identity as Christians; as I even think more about it-these two things actually make Jesus the Christ. He first loved us and then decided to sacrifice Himself as ransom for our debt which pleased the father- Ephesians 5:2.
Apostle Paul helps us further to point out those things that we should do without if and when we decide to live a life replica of God our father. “Let there be no sexual immorality, immorality or greed among you because such sins have no place“, he said- Ephesians 5:3. He further says that we should do away with foolish talk, coarse/silly jokes but fill out mouths with gratitude and thankfulness to God – Ephesians 5:4. And the admonition continues through the chapter and through scripture.
And finally as I wrap up this blog post, I would like to point us to verse 10 which tells us to carefully examine and determine the things that please God. The only way I know to do this is to have a solid relationship with God; a relationship where you talk to Him and listen to Him. So that on days, you are about to step out of line, you are able to hear Him clearly telling you calm down or walk away or pray as the case may be.
So cheers to a life of imitating God my dear brother and sister in Christ 🙂