Ephesians 5:1 says, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children”
As Christians, it is our duty to serve God with our lives and often times we see God as unreachable as he is truly out of reach of our comprehension. However, the Bible is His word and it is through it that we learn who He is.
In Paul’s address, he encourages Christians to imitate Christ. If we stop there, we may not be sure what exactly to imitate. God is who we worship; He is who our lives are for. So what do we imitate?
Three qualities we are going to look at that we as Christians can imitate are: how God is constant, how God is forgiving, and how God is loving.
CONSTANT:
In James 1:17 it says, “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above,” and people usually stop right there but it continues and gets even better, “coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.”
Not only are we as Christians comforted by the fact that all and only good things come from God but, that with every good gift and every perfect gift there is no change. God is constant. 1 Corinthians 12:5-6 expands on this.
In the body of Christ, we know there are many different roles that make up the body and regardless of what we do for the cause of Christ, it is God who empowers us to do everything we do. We also know from Hebrews 13:8 that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” How encouraging is it that our way, truth and light are constant? It is a quality that we should strive to imitate.
FORGIVING:
In Ephesians 1:7, Paul writes to the church in Ephesus about the second quality of God we are going to look at, saying, “In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.” Christ does more than we could ever wish and that is to forgive us.
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Forgiveness is further demonstrated quite loudly in the parable of the unforgiving servant found in Matthew 18:21-35. We see in this parable a man who owes his ruler such a large amount of money that it would take lifetimes of labor to pay off, but the ruler forgives him of this debt and let’s him go. However, when a fellow servant owed him pennies compared to what he owed, and he does not repay the favor, the ruler calls him back.
At the end of the parable Jesus says, “Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me.
And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”
This parable does more than simply lay out a quality of God we need to imitate. It tells us that our God forgives us of anything when we come to Him and ask for forgiveness. But if we do not, in turn, imitate Him in doing so for those around us, we will not receive forgiveness. We should not and cannot hold grudges; we must forgive others of their trespasses. We know from the beatitudes that “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” We know he is merciful because of the love he has for us.
LOVING:
Love is most certainly the first quality society associates with God. We know that we love because he first loved us (1 John 4:19). Read Romans 8:35-39.
There are two points to take from this. First, God’s love is inseparable. This does not mean you cannot transgress His love. What this means is that so long as we are constant in the ways of Christ, we will never escape his love. The second aspect to take from this is that there will be hardships to come between us and God and if we trust in His love wholly, we will never be separated from it.
The Psalmist in psalm 136 really emphasized the quality of God and how his love is both merciful and constant. In the first two verses the psalmist says, “Give thanks to the LORD, for he is good, for his steadfast love endures forever. Give thanks to the God of gods, for his steadfast love endures forever.” If you continue reading, every verse ends with “his steadfast love endures forever.” This technique used by the psalmist is to further emphasize the idea that God’s love does endure forever. But not just his love, but his steadfast, firm, unwavering love.
He is constant. His mercy is constant. His love is constant and merciful. We must imitate these qualities and many more. Despite those aspects of God though, we are human and we all fall short but assuming that “you have heard about him and were taught in him, as the truth is in Jesus, to put off your old self, which belongs to your former manner of life and is corrupt through deceitful desires, and to be renewed in the spirit of your minds, and to put on the new self, created after the likeness of God in true righteousness and holiness” (Ephesians 4:21-24).
–Zachary Rominske
