Be Imitators Of God

Good morning. Good morning. Good to see you all again. It's been a little while, but not that long of a while. Ephesians 5, verses 1 to 10. Therefore be imitators of God as beloved children, 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. But immorality or any impurity or greed must not even be named among you as is proper among saints. and there must be no filthiness and silly talk or coarse jesting which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. For this you know with certainty, that no immoral or impure person or covetous man who is an idolater has an inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience.

Therefore, do not be partakers with them. For you were formerly darkness, but now you are light of the Lord. Walk as children of light. For the fruit of the light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth. Trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord. This is the word of the Lord. So this, verses 1 and 2, open up for us and describe for us. You could say this is the... One of the highest descriptions of what it means to be a Christian and what it means to live like a Christian. In verses 1 and 2. It says, therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children. So, what is a Christian? What does it mean to be a Christian? How would you describe a Christian? How does the Bible describe a Christian? You can talk about all kinds of things. You can say a Christian is a man or a woman or a child who, you know, believes the gospel. Right? Of course.

who has their sins forgiven, who's been justified by God. That means your sins are forgiven and you've been declared perfectly righteous because of the work of Jesus Christ applied to you, right? But there's something higher than that. To be a Christian, a Christian is one who has God as his Father. Having your sins forgiven, being declared righteous by God, those are wonderful, wonderful things, but they're all... You could say they're all the means to an end. The end, the point of all of those things is that so now God can have us as his sons. That we can have him as our father. The relationship is cleared. The legal demands, the wrath of God satisfied. And now, now we can be his sons. That's what the highest expression of what it means to be a Christian. A Christian is one who has God as his father. And so what does it mean to live like a Christian?

Here's the highest expression of that. The highest description, right? A Christian is one who imitates God as a beloved child. This is, you know, a very normal and natural thing to think about. This is what children do. Children always try to imitate their parents. Sons always try to imitate their fathers. Now maybe you had a, some of you had a bad father. Some of you had a good father. Most of us had normal fathers. Good mix of both. Really bad. You know? This is natural. This is built into us. This is what it means if a Christian is, best definition, someone who has God as his father, and to live as a Christian, best definition, is to mimic God. That's what the word means here. It says imitators. The imitators of God is the word. We get our word mimic from that. To mimic God. Of course, that doesn't mean, you know, Be omnipotent. Knock yourself out on that one, right? You can't mimic God there. Speak and have the world come to existence. What it means, it's moral. It's ethical. It's being an imitator of God in his character. It's mimicking God in his character. So be imitators of God, he says, as beloved children. You can imitate. And so God loves you. That makes him want to imitate him.

their fathers so that their father will love them to want to be like your father so that you can earn his loves so you can earn his pleasure but so often it doesn't young men you know trying to imitate because they are beloved already trying to get their dad to love to just a big pit of bitterness that's what we have to do with god we have to we have to mimic him so that he'll love us right we have to please him so that he'll be pleased with us there's something to that But this is what it says here. Be imitators of God as beloved children. You already are loved. That's what it means to be a Christian. A beloved child. And what comes out of that? You're loved by God. So you love him back. Remember what Jesus said. If you love me, what? What love looks like. Don't please the Lord. Down to verse 10. Trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord, he says. Very end of our text today. Trying to figure out what does it mean to please the Lord. Not because if I don't.

You know, I'll never earn his love. You already have his love. And so you want to please him. So he says, therefore, be imitators of God as beloved children. That's the whole, the perfect, very short description of what it means to be a Christian and what it means to live like a Christian. Do what God does. Act like God acts. Be like God is. And it's ethical, right? It's moral. You know, this is what God has done. Now you do this. This is what God has done. Now you do the same. This is what Christ has done. You do the same thing. Right before this, in verse 32, the very last verse of chapter 4, right? If you have your Bible, you can see it. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving each other. How? Just as Christ. This is God in Christ. That's the pattern, right? This is exactly what he's talking about. You see what God has done. You see what Christ has done. The Son of God. How he has treated you.

What is he? Well, he's been kind, he's been tenderhearted, he's forgiven you. So go and do the same. Mimic God. Be like that. And then he says the same thing in this, in verse 2. Love just as Christ also loved you. That's the pattern of the Christian life, is see what God is like, and then be like him. Be holy because I am. Forgive because I forgive. Love because I love. He says in Romans chapter 15, Therefore accept one another. Just as Christ also accepted us to the glory. Accept one another. How? Really? Well, just like God accepted you. Just like Christ accepted you. Do you see that? That's the kind of thing he's talking about when he says mimic God. That's why we sang the Ten Commandments this morning. The Ten Commandments, the moral law of God, is just a form of the character of God. It's the eternal character of God. The perfect moral nature of God written down in the commandments for us. Because we're made in the image of God and we are to be like Him.

And as Christians, we see that law, and we don't see a death. We see life. Because now, oh, now I know what it means to be like God. Now I know what it means to be. So be imitators of God as beloved children. This is the Christian life. It's relationship. It's not trying to create it. But so that I can have relationships. And then verse 2, he says this. And walk in love, as Christ also loved you and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a free of our own. And so now he's turning. You know, we love God. We want to mimic God. We want to obey Him. And what does that look like? Well, it looks like loving one another in love. This is what Jesus calls, right, the two great commandments. Right here. Love God. Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love your neighbor as yourself. Both of those things look like obeying the law. That's what it means to obey the law. The Apostle Paul says again in Romans, he says, obedience to God.

Both towards God and towards man. Love God, then love your neighbor. That's what it means to be a Christian. It means what it means to live like a Christian. Jesus Christ loved us, loved you, and gave himself up for us. Notice this is a weird thing there in verse 2. He changes pronouns, right? You see this? Walk in love just as Christ also loved you and gave himself up for us. If we were writing this, you know, the editor would... He loved you and gave himself for us. Why not just say he loved us and gave himself up for us? He loved you. When he says he loved you, when he says he loved you, we're going to take that personal love, that forgiveness, that love, that tenderness, that kindness, and turn it around and treat others exactly the same way. This is why, right, when John, the Apostle John says in 1 John, if you say that you love God but hate your brother,

about trusting God, about obeying God, you know, morals, you can be right on awkward stuff, all cultural stuff, and you can fight all the right fights and all that stuff, and hate your brother, and God says you're just... Because love for a neighbor, loving God. If you love God, how do you come to love God? Well, you come to love God by being loved by God. So God loves, He forgives you, He accepts you, He's kind to you. We respond, we love because He first loved us, so we love Him back, and then we start loving Him. So this is one of the, like I said, this is one of the highest expressions of what it means to live the personal life. You can sit and meditate on these two words. There's so much more to say. There's so much more to say. Look what he says in verse 3. But, so now he's going to say something different. Now he's kind of shifting gears. Now there's a contrast. So you're up here. This is so wonderful. This is so ideal and, you know, just warm. That's all we need. All we need is to love God.

Do that and everything will be great. But it's not always. Because what he does now is he comes back into the dirt and starts giving negatives. For any impurity, you have to have, you can't just have positive, you know, oh, just love people and everything will be great. You have to, we have to know what that doesn't mean. The opposite of that. And here's what it is. This is what it always is. It's sex or porneia. That's the word that covers all the bases. All the bases. It covers all the bases. But immorality or any impure word, you know, unclean. He's not talking about you can make it. It's any kind. It's what you lust after. It's what you look at. It's what you want. At the sake of obeying. This is fitting. Being a Christian. We're foresuggesting which are not fitting. How you act. What's inside. So you're, you know, immorality in a verse. What is he talking about? How you talk. It's a connection. He's talking about how you talk.

Jesus said, out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. You can tell what you are by how you talk. All over Scripture. Who you are really comes out. You know, when people are really angry. And you say stupid things. And you say afterwards, ah, I didn't mean that. Or maybe you get drunk and you say stupid things. When you're drunk, that is absolutely you talking. That is you. What Jesus says is out of the overflow of the heart, the mouth speaks. He really showed what we really are and what we really are. Think. So these are always connected, right? Immorality, impurity, and greed. And no filthiness and silly talk or coarse jesting. I know what this is talking about. We don't have to ponder this very deeply to know what he's talking about. One interesting thing here about coarse jesting, that's a weird thing. It's like, it means something that like turns, you can like turn real easy in your hands.

Okay? You know how we talk about double meanings or, you know, it usually comes along with kind of immoral or dirty jokes, right? Where it can mean one thing or another depending on how you look at it, and it's intended to be that way. And that's kind of the joke. That's what that's talking about. Silly talk. Filthiness. Things that are not honorable. Certainly not honorable. That's what he says. There must be no filthiness in silly talk or coarse jesting which are not fitting. Fitting for what? Mimicking God, right? Not proper among saints, God's people, not fitting for being a child of God. The one positive thing that he says is the opposite of all of that. When you're mimicking God and you know that he loves you, making him as a beloved son, a beloved child, you love him, you know that he loves you, you love him back, you know that he has loved you and forgiven you, he's kind to you, he's tender-hearted.

You're living that way with the people around you. That comes out of your mouth. What is it that comes out of your mouth if that's who you are? What comes out of your mouth is thanksgiving. Not cursing. Not filthy talk. Giving of thanks acknowledges God is good. God is my Father. I'm living as a son of God. I worship God. God takes care of me. And all of that is living in my heart. And when I talk, that's what comes out. Not vile. Not bitterness. Not insults. Not twisting good things into bad things. We're self-consciously living as sons of God. Knowing what he's done for us. Knowing what he's given for us. That is going to change you. Now in verse 5, it gets very intense. Look at what he says. For this you know with certainty. For this you know with certainty. For this you know with certainty. That no immoral person who is an idolater has an inheritance in the kingdom.

and he says this you know is certainty that's clear i mean that's about as clear as you can possibly but we don't want it to be so the one piece we want to twist is the grace of god justification by faith alone right no works not by works of righteousness that we have done but by his mercy he saved us so that means it doesn't really matter how i live what i look at on the internet what i do with my money what's going on in my heart what comes out of my mouth justification by faith alone to twist the god twist the grace of god into licentiousness right loose living to use it as an excuse to do it in the right way and what does he say about that well for this you know for certainty that no immoral or impure person or covetous man who is an idolater worshiper of god not a son of god mimicking god but an idolater inheritance in the kingdom of christ

So if you don't have an inheritance, what does that mean? You're not a what? Same three things. And in the middle of that is how you talk. It's how you talk. It reflects who you are. This is incredibly important. This is incredible. Let no one deceive you. Because of these things, the wrath of God comes upon the sons of Israel. So what would the empty words be? You are saved by the grace of God. And that means nothing what you do. There's no connection whatsoever. Between how you live and whether or not you're a child of God. Okay? There's just no connection whatsoever. You can do whatever you want. You can live however you want. You can claim, you know, 1 John 1.9. If you confess your sins, he's faithful and just to forgive our sins, to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. That can be your little free, you know, free pass ticket that you pull out every time you sin. It doesn't matter. I'm forgiven. I can do whatever I want. And if that's you, you are...

deceived with empty words. Empty words. Hollow, empty, stupid, vain. Could not be further from the truth. Why? For because of these things, the wrath of God comes on the sons of disobedience. What things? Well, you know what things. Immorality, impurity, greed, and filthy talk that comes out of the heart that doesn't know God. Because of these things, the wrath of God comes on the sons of disobedience. This is fascinating. Look at how he describes two people here. Either a beloved son, a beloved child of God, or a son of disobedience. Your paternity, your father, determines everything spiritually. You're either a child, a son of God, or you're a son of disobedience. If you're a son of disobedience, that's how we come into this world. If you're a son of disobedience, you live like that. You mimic, but you mimic disobedience. And so out of that thing comes out.

The immorality, the impurity, the filthiness, the greed, the talk. Thanksgiving. The sons of disobedience are the sons of God. This inheritance. This is the kind of thing that the Apostle Paul says other places like this. This is 1 Corinthians 6, verse 9. Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom? Do not be deceived. Same thing. Don't let anyone deceive you within two words. This must have been something and remains. Something that we are prone to be deceived about. He keeps saying, don't be deceived. Don't let anyone lie to you. Do not be deceived. Neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor decapitists, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers, or linear gods. Same list, just a little bit bigger. Same list, right? Don't let anyone deceive you. It's not because you become a son of God by not living like that.

You don't do your best, live a good life, and God rewards you with sonship. That's not how it works. He makes you a son. And as he makes you a son, he changes you. The person of Christ is a new creature. The old is gone. And the new has come. He really does change you. He transforms you. He washes you. Not just by saying, okay, your sins are forgiven. He does that. But then he changes you. Gives you a new heart. Gives you the Holy Spirit. You can't claim to have a new heart. If it never touches your heart, that's insane. What an empty promise. What an empty word that would be. I'm going to make you new. New heart. But out of that new heart, all the same jump is going to step forward. God saves you. Not because of your words. You want to obey. It tears you up. He helps us. And then we get strengthened. And then we wander off again. It reminds us. Sometimes it hurts.

He never says, yeah, I made you a son of mine so that you can live as a son of disobedience. Then he says this in verse 7. Therefore, be partakers of the sons of disobedience. Stop living like that. For why? Verse 8. For you were formerly darkness. You were formerly darkness. That's what you were. That's how we came into this world. But now, you are light in the Lord. Walk as children. To be a child of God is to be a child of God. Bow to disobedience. But you're not darkness anymore. God has changed you. You were darkness, but now you're light. So, darkness, now you're light, and the Lord will walk his children. The fruit of light, verse 9, consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth. What's your life? That's what our lives will look like if we are walking his children like goodness, righteousness, filthy talk, not horse joking, goodness, righteousness, trying to learn, verse 10, what is pleasing to the Lord, trying to figure this out. What does it mean to please the Lord?

This circumstance, this situation, this relationship of the community. When's the last time you did anything? Just because you love God. Now, is that some kind of weird pietism? He loves you. So be like that. Love him back and love your neighbor. Try to figure out what pleases him. Don't live like you used to live. You were darkness, but you're not anymore. You're light. You used to be a son of darkness. The son of this is you're not anymore. You're a son of the light. You're a son of God. That has to mean something. You don't have to make up what it means. When's the last time you did it? Brothers and sisters, have Christ love you. Have Christ give himself up for you as an offering to God. To be transferred from darkness to light. To be changed. Not just on paper, you know, but really him working in you. Making you want to figure out how to please him. We can't get comfortable in a veneer. You know what a veneer is, right? It's a little layer. It's a thin layer on top of something else.

You don't want to be a veneer Christian. You want to be a Christian as a child of God to do what to please. And who's trying to figure that out. Who knows what it is to be forgiven. Not just back then, but every day because we sin every day. And to have your heart full of thanksgiving according to some standards. May God have mercy on us. And make us taste his love and forgiveness and want to be like that. Lord, would you please have mercy on us. Make us not just hear these words as empty words and not empty words. Make us hear them, be convicted, pierce through the heart, make us not forget. Help us to live and mimic you.