Imitating God: Walking in Love as His Children

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It's very important for us as we study the Bible and as we read, for example, a letter like this to remind ourselves that it was written to real people in a real place at a real point in history, and the environment of Ephesus into which Paul went as a proclaimer of the gospel was a really daunting environment. [00:02:07]

Paul is calling on these people to live radically different lives in a framework that challenges them just about at every point. Now when you read Acts chapter 19, for example, you realize that Demetrius, who was head of the sort of guild of the silversmiths, that guild making little effigies of the temple of Diana or the temple of Artemis. [00:03:03]

What Paul is actually doing here is he is saying to these individuals, and he's been doing this largely since the beginning of chapter four, he's saying to them, to those to whom he writes, you are in Christ and you are in Ephesus. Now I want you to live differently because you are different. [00:04:42]

Because this Bible is God-breathed, what we have here is not simply the pattern for the believers in Ephesus, but for all believers in all circumstances and for all time. And I, we this morning gather in a context that confronts us with a culture that is increasingly fragmented, increasingly alienated from one another, increasingly broken up and broken-hearted. [00:06:22]

We do not need a church that will move with the world, but a church that will move the world. Now that of course is the message of Jesus, isn't it? Jesus said, Father, I do not pray that you take them out of the world, but that you keep them from the evil one. [00:07:40]

Therefore, be imitators of God. It means exactly what it says. The word in Greek is the word which gives us our English word mimic. Mimic God, he says, that's what I want you to do. You say, well, where did Paul come up with this? Well, he understood what Jesus said at the end of the Sermon on the Mount. [00:08:59]

Paul is not writing to well-meaning people who are seeking to live upright and moral lives and who are glad of a little encouragement. He's not writing to a group of people who are operating on the Santa Claus is coming to town routine, who are trying to be good for goodness sake. [00:11:08]

Our love for our earthly children does not even compare to the love of our heavenly Father for us. His love for us is infinitely greater than the greatest, deepest, most profound love that I can feel for any one of my children, that when he looks upon us he does not cause us needless tears. [00:15:53]

Walk in love, he says, as you walk around Ephesus, as you walk into the fellowship of God's people, as you walk into the swimming pool, walk in love. This is how you imitate God. Peterson in his paraphrase, which we know as the message, puts it like this: watch what God does, and then you do it. [00:17:15]

The love that Paul says is to be displayed is a love which he defines, and Paul does this all the time. Check it. Paul defines the love of God almost always in terms of the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ, so that the whole focus of the love of God is there. Augustine said the cross is the pulpit from which God preaches his love to the world. [00:20:46]

Paul is saying I want you to walk in love as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us plural. What he's doing there in Ephesus is essentially what he has done in writing to the Galatians because remember in the Galatians he speaks in very personal terms, and he says the Son of God loved me and gave himself up for me. [00:22:05]

The commands are commands; they are also made possible because of the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer conforming the believer to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ. Now I suppose in earthly terms, it is possible to adopt a child and for that adoption to go through in all of its technicality and in all of its legality. [00:12:42]

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