Our text for this week is Ephesians 5:1-2:
and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.
The mere thought that we can be imitators of God is so remarkable that it seems like the ultimate presumption, yet, this is what we are commanded to do! This is the sober truth—every one of us is called to be like the Lord and to do the works that He did! This is our most basic purpose for being on the earth—to represent Him by being like Him and doing His works.
Of course there is no way that we could ever accomplish this without Him, and that is the point. He has given us His Holy Spirit to live in us and to manifest Himself through us. The power of the One who created the universe is living in us, and He will use us when we come into agreement with Him. This is our highest and most basic quest—to think His thoughts, to speak His words, to go through life seeing with His eyes, hearing with His ears, and to understanding others with His heart. That we are growing in all of these things is one of the basic ways that we can measure true Christian maturity.
Therefore one of the most important questions that we can ask is “How do we do this?” He tells us how in the next verse—we are to walk in love. However, this is not a general “sloppy agape,” but as the verse states, we are to love with the same kind of love with which the Lord loved us by giving Himself for us. He was an offering and a sacrifice and we are called to be the same. We are here to live a life of sacrifice for others.
When we were redeemed we were bought with a price and we are no longer our own—we belong to Christ. He did not redeem us just so that we could have better lives here and then eternal life in heaven. These are benefits that are too wonderful to comprehend, but we were redeemed for more than that—we are called to be His representatives on the earth until He returns. Then we will rule with Him over the earth, a job for which we are now being prepared.
We may think that ruling over the earth will be “heaven” but it too will be work even though we have our “glorified bodies” and dwell in a heavenly realm with Him. The reason that He rules over the earth for a thousand years is because it will take that long to restore the earth. This is the time that Peter referred to as “the period of restoration of all things” in Acts 3:21. This is not the place to get into this in much detail, except that we must have a vision for the “restoration of all things.” As long as a single soul is still in bondage to the devil our work is not done. We were redeemed so we could be given eternal life, but we were also redeemed to be a part of God’s plan for redeeming the earth from all of the consequences of the fall, from “all things” as Peter put it.
This may all seem too awesome to someone who has not been saturated with the exhortations of our callings in the Scriptures, but they are in fact the basic reason for which we remain on the earth after our redemption. This life is basically “training for reigning.” To be imitators of God may sound like the most extreme presumption, but man was actually created in God’s image and it is a basic purpose for all of mankind. Man was created to represent the Lord and rule over the physical creation on earth. We are right now laying the groundwork for the kingdom age in which this will be done.
Because “God is love” this is the fundamental devotion that we must have in our life if we are to be imitators of God. As with any building, if the foundation is not right everything that is built upon it can be in jeopardy, so we must get the foundation of love right. Even so, then we must build upon it with power. How could we ever be an imitator of the Almighty without power? This is why we are told in II Timothy 3:5 that we are to not associate with those who hold to a form of godliness but deny the power. The Lord wants His people to be known for their love, but He also wants the world to know that His love has power.