What does it mean to be imitators of God (Ephesians 5:1)?

(V. 1). In this portion of the Epistle believers are viewed, not only as owning that there is one God, but as being in relationship with God as His children. The whole passage exhorts us to walk as becomes children. The “therefore” of the first verse connects this portion with the last verse of the preceding chapter. God has acted towards us in kindness and grace, and now it becomes us to act towards one another as God has acted towards us. We are therefore exhorted to be imitators of God “as dear children”. We are not to seek to imitate God in order to become children, but because we are children. Walking as “dear” children implies a walk governed by affection. A servant may walk rightly in legal obedience, but it becomes a child to walk in loving obedience. We are not servants but sons.

Verses 1, 2. The first verse hangs on the preceding chapter; as God has forgiven you, forgive one another. "Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children." The general principle is - Be ye followers of God, follow Him, walk in His steps, act on the same principles as He does. Inasmuch as we are the family of God, we ought to be like God our Father. There is something very sweet in this principle, and very different from that of the law; it produces in the heart quite other feelings; it is affection, it is the goodness of God which constrains us to walk. The apostle here introduces a principle which flows out of the last verse of the preceding chapter; that is to say, to walk in love, to imitate God, to follow Christ. If God is love, Christ is also the expression of this love toward us; we ought also to leave all for our brethren; 1 John 3:16. The motives of this conduct are expressed in the first and second verses, which we have just read. We ought to imitate God according to the heart of a child; and the effect of this love of God in the heart of a Christian is, that he gives up himself to the needs of his brethren. This is what was seen in Christ. Having the life of Christ, the divine nature and the power of Christ, we ought to offer ourselves up to God; Rom. 12:1. It should also be remarked, that that which descends from God in love re-ascends always to God in love and devotedness to Him. What a blessed thought; and why do we not thus live? for this is what we ought to be in our service for God.

Secondly, there is another element of Christian walk here. "Your bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost." Thus we get, "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God;" that is, I now get the new thing, God Himself dwelling in me, and I am sent out to walk as Christ walked. It is not here carrying the Father's word as a testimony, but go and act like God. The apostle goes on to say, "Be ye therefore followers of God as dear children." My path now is to walk as one who imitates God, because I am His child. So in another place, not only forgive, but "love your enemies," as He did. Did He not love you when you were enemies? Yes. Then go and act like Him. Here it is, "And walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us, and hath given Himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour." Christ is the measure of it; you give yourself entirely up to serve other people; Christ did. If you want to learn what the character of God in a man is, go and look at Christ's life down here. He gave Himself up entirely, and to God; that is love. Well, you go and do the same. You are to be like God in love, and now in chap. 5 you are "light in the Lord." Another characteristic of God is light, God Himself is the pattern of what we ought to be in the world as love and light. "Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light." Mark, it is "thou that sleepest," not dead, for Christians cannot be dead, but you cannot get any activity or intelligence from a sleeping man, any more than in a dead one. A sleeping man is no better than a sleeping dog; if you want to put him in a man's place, you must wake him up. Christ is the measure of your walk, and the light to lighten you in the path; wonderful measure! God has so brought us to Himself in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that He brings us out to walk through the world as the expression of what Christ is. The path of the Christian is altogether above law. The law said, "Love thy neighbour as thyself." Christ says, "Do not let there be one bit of self in you." There was none in Christ. The world would be a paradise if men loved each other as they do themselves. I must get a love that is sufficiently above the evil to walk in it, to love people even if they do not love me; that is what the Lord Jesus did. I must have the character of love that can show what God is, when all the people around me are quite the opposite. I may have Christian friends; but His was holy, divine goodness in the midst of a world that was all the opposite. As Christ was the expression of perfect goodness here, so can we be imitators of Him; there is the path, "Imitators of God as dear children." It is wonderfully blessed that He brings us into a path where we are to empty ourselves and live Christ. In Hebrews Christ is before me; in Philippians, I get Christ come down, walking in this world, not setting Himself up. It is wonderfully blessed to be so brought into the place of children of God, that we are called to imitate Him; to go out from Him in the sense that we have Christ's place; to walk through this world as the expression of Him. In John, Christ gives me the Father's word, the word of Him who has received His Son on high, because the world rejected Him.

Verse 1. "Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children." God becomes the pattern of our imitation (mimetai, t. Th.) the moment we accept, by faith, the gracious declaration of His love to us in Christ. To aim at such conformity while remaining in ignorance of His free forgiveness of our sins, is nothing but the presumptuous folly of a darkened understanding. What God does can be truly imitated by those only who are born of God. Having accepted us in the Beloved, the title which naturally could be only His, is now by grace applied diffusively to all His saints. It is as "dear children" that we are called to show to one another some faint reflection of that love which He has so abundantly bestowed on us in Christ. Let it be noticed, that in making this appeal to our hearts, the Spirit of God encourages us in our appropriation of a greeting, the terms of which are apt to make us stagger under a freshly awakened sense of our own unworthiness, by a direct and simple reference to the cross. It is because God has forgiven us, in Christ, as stated at the close of the preceding chapter, that these words of Divine endearment become rightfully our own. The Son has made us free into the fellowship of His own liberty. In receiving Him by faith, we have received power to become the sons of God (John 1:12)

The imitation enjoined is not artificial but natural. Here are children playing in the market-place. They hold an imaginary court. This little maiden, arrayed in cheap finery, is impersonating a queen. She imitates queenly manners as best she can, but it is all very crude and artificial. There however is a small lad, minutely observing his father. Presently friends are smiling at him and observing how very like his father he is. His imitation is largely unconscious and wholly natural, for he is the son of his father, possessing his life and nature. Now it is as children of God that we are called upon to be imitators of God.

Mark the blessed consequence of this; now I have a new man, I have put off the old man. If I am a Christian, God looks at me (and faith takes this as a truth), not as a child of Adam at all in this world. What are you then? A child of God. The law was a perfect measure for the first man; and now, what measure do we get for "the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him"? I know God. As in Ephesians, "which of God is created in righteousness and true holiness." It is a new nature which is like God, in fact it is Christ as my life. It is the same kind of life as He had (we speak now of that which is communicated). What is the measure of this "knowledge"? Why, what is in God - true spiritual knowledge - I am called to walk according to that; we are to be followers of God as dear children. I get the knowledge of what God's nature and character are in Christ, in a Man; well, then that is the way I am to walk. Did not He love His enemies? You go and love your enemies. Was not He holy? You go and think holiness. Was not He kind to the unthankful and evil? You go and do likewise. There is of course growth in likeness to Christ. The Spirit of God takes of the things of Christ, and shows them to me; very well, that is the way you must walk. It is not merely that I avoid gross sins, but I have to put on the new man. This apprehension of how God has revealed Himself in Christ is a perfectly new thing. I have the mind and spirit of Christ, the new man, and Christ as my life, and the perfect pattern of it, according to which I am to walk. What I get in Christ is alone and unique, perfect goodness in the midst of evil - go and walk like Him.

101 We are called then to be imitators of God as dear children. Being born of Him we are to imitate and follow Him in our actions and spirit, as partaking of the divine nature, and in relationship with Him as children. We are to be followers of God and walk in love. We find a double character of this, by which, as I just now intimated, its divine perfectness is maintained. We are to be tender-hearted and forgive, shew grace to one another as God has forgiven and shewn grace to us. Compare Matthew 5:48, and the preceding verses; see also Colossians 3:13.

The apostle continues by the Spirit his practical exhortations. The whole Christian pathway is summed up in one pregnant sentence, "Be ye therefore followers (imitators) of God, as dear children." How much higher is this than law! In giving the latter God set forth His requirement from man, and it consisted in "Do this and live," but Christianity is a higher and more blessed thing. God has revealed Himself fully too in the Son of His love. This henceforth is the believer's pattern. We do not aim at godliness with a view to gaining the favour of God, or of making out a righteousness: but we walk thus because we are children, partakers of the divine nature, objects of His unbounded affection. It is sweet thus to be reminded of His love! Paul could address the Roman saints as "beloved of God," (Rom. 1), the Thessalonians similarly (1 Thess. 1:4); and the Lord in His prayer to the Father lets us know that we are loved by the Father as He Himself was loved (John 17:23, see also John 16:27). The knowledge of this is to shape our steps.

"Be ye therefore imitators of God." Have I not been right in speaking of the moral elevation of the Christian walk? Be imitators of God! Partakers of His nature and of the indwelling of His Spirit, we are called to imitate Him in the principles of His conduct. But then, as we have said, Christ is the perfect example of it; as the Holy Spirit goes on to say, "And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour." This adds a very precious element to the principles of the Christian walk. Here love has not the character of the divine love which pardons, being above evil, when a wrong is done to us, as God pardons (in virtue of Christ) sin against Him. Here it is devotedness, an offering made of oneself to God. It is no more a law which would have one love his neighbour as himself, which would be blessedness without any remains of evil in the world. It is not loving God with all the heart, which supposes that evil is not there. It is a devotedness, which supposes evil, a necessity which is the occasion for the exercise of love. One is given up for others, one is devoted. But for love in man, there must be a motive, an object. For this love to be perfect, the object, the motive of the love, must be perfect. If one is given up to a man, there may be a noble devotedness in it, but the motive is imperfect: love does not and cannot rise above its object. Just so, that there should be devotedness, there must be needy objects. These two elements are found in Christ. He gave Himself for us, for needy beings, objects of compassion on His part; but He gave Himself to God, infinite and perfect object, which could not have been, had He only given Himself to us and for us.

160 It is thus we ought to walk, ready to sacrifice ourselves for our brethren, always in self-abnegation to serve them, whilst offering ourselves to God Himself, to Christ whose we are. Thus the measure of our conduct is that of God Himself, Christ being our example in His life here below, in order that we should add love, the bond of perfect action, to brotherly kindness. It is not said that we are love, which is God's prerogative. He is love, and He loves, as to us, without any other motive than what He is; which could not be the case with a creature. We imitate Him in the matter of the wrongs that have been done to us. But the love which acts from itself towards others is of God alone.

88 I have got a new nature, and of course have not to pray to get one. The effect of this is most striking. In the Ephesians we are brought to sit in heavenly places, we have put off the old man and put on the new, and we have the Holy Spirit of God dwelling in us. In Ephesians it is, "As God in Christ hath forgiven you." We have got the nature, the state that I am in, to be able to walk: we have put off the old and put on the new; and the Holy Ghost dwelling in us, and then we are told to be imitators of God as dear children. If it be said, How can we talk of imitating God (of course it is not Almighty power, but refers to moral things), how can poor worms such as we talk of imitating God? I answer, is not Christ your pattern? You are to follow that. This shews the absurdity of making it merely the law as our rule of life. If a dear child of God, I am to have a sense of it in my soul and exhibit it in my walk; I am "to walk in love as Christ hath loved us, and hath given himself for us as an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour." "Hereby know we love, because he laid down his life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren"; we are to go and walk as He walked.