“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.” (Ephesians 5:1–2, NASB95)
I know that I’ve heard it, and I’m sure most of you have as
well: “I can’t help it. That’s just the way I am.” For the believer this is
biblical hogwash, so to speak. We are called to live as we are now and not as
we once were. Before coming to Christ we were lost in our trespasses and sins.
Having trusted Christ for our salvation we have been made spiritually alive and
have become new creations in Christ. I know that does not bring with it
immediate outward change in most cases, but it does very much bring deep inward
change at the core of who we are—our spirit. Once this change was made we
entered into a new life of walking with God in the power of His Spirit as we
seek to conform our lives to the image of the Son, Jesus Christ. This inward
change is intended to affect both the way we begin to think and the way we act learn
to act in response.
We surely will continue to struggle in various ways at
various times, but these struggles are not to identify us. Rather, they are to
point to those areas where we are called to focus on putting off the old self
and putting on the new as we understand from God and His Word the difference. Sometimes
the battle might be longer and the habits more deeply engrained, but they are
not unsurmountable barriers to the power of God to enable us to walk as
imitators of Him.
Paul reminds us that we are beloved children. This makes
such a huge difference. When we have the infinitely powerful God of all creation
taking us in as His beloved children, we have His heart and His energies bent
towards us. One of the pictures that came to my mind as I thought of this is
teaching a child to ride a bicycle. There is this time between the training
wheels and them being on their own where fear might keep them from going
forward. But having the hand of a father on them during the transition makes a
huge difference. What was perceived as undoable becomes doable because the
child trusts the father to know what he is doing and to keep him or her from
great harm. The same picture can be played out over and over again in various
situations where children are trusting their parents to help them into new areas
of life. Our Heavenly Father loves us as His children and His strong hands will
never let go. He may allow us to stumble. He may allow us to suck in a bit of
water. He may even allow us to get a cut or a scrape, but He will never let us go.
So, when He tells us to follow His lead or His example, He will be there to
help us to see it through. What He expects of us is that we trust Him in the
process and do as He instructs without shortcuts or diversions.
He loves us, and He demonstrated His love for us in the most
dramatic of ways by sending His Son to pay the price for our sins. Jesus
offering Himself for us pleased and glorified the Father. John MacArthur, in
his study Bible wrote, Christ’s offering of Himself for fallen man pleased and
glorified the Father, because it demonstrated in the most complete and perfect
way God’s sovereign, perfect, unconditional, and divine kind of love. Leviticus
describes 5 offerings commanded by God for Israel. The first 3 were: 1) the
burnt offering (Lev. 1:1–17), depicting Christ’s perfection; 2) the grain
offering (Lev. 2:1–16), depicting Christ’s total devotion to God in giving His
life to please the Father; and 3) the peace offering (Lev. 3:1–17; 4:27–31),
depicting His peacemaking between God and man. All 3 of these were a “soothing
aroma to the Lord” (Lev. 1:9, 13, 17; 2:2, 9, 12; 3:5, 16). The other two
offerings, the sin offering (Lev. 4:1–26, 32–35) and the trespass offering
(Lev. 5:1–19), were repulsive to God because, though they depicted Christ, they
depicted Him as bearing sin (cf. Matt. 27:46). In the end, when redemption was
accomplished, the whole work pleased God completely.
This is the example He set for us, and we are
called to be imitators demonstrating our love for Him by living lives pleasing
to Him as we walk in love with others. From Jesus we have learned the love of
God, and now we are called to live according to that love. Living this way
means a lot more than having emotional feelings toward God. It means giving
ourselves fully to living the way He calls us to live, just as Jesus, being
fully God, obeyed the Father to give Himself on the cross for us. He gave Himself
as an offering and a sacrifice as a fragrant aroma to the Father, and we are
called to live and love in that same way.
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