A Word in Season: Holy Imitation (Ephesians 5:1)

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A few years ago, after I became a father for the first time, a friend of mine drew attention to a particular photo, which

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I now have on a card in my study. It's quite an old photograph, probably taken in the 40s or 50s.

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It has two men in it, walking away from the camera, fairly sharply dressed, hats on their heads and hands clasped behind their back, locked in conversation or thought.

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And a few steps behind them is the young son of one of those men. He's got his short trousers on and a little jacket, and he's got his head bowed in the same pose of fierce concentration, his hands clasped firmly behind his back as he walks in the footsteps of his father.

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This friend drew my attention to this photo because he wanted me to understand what it meant now for me to be a father to my son.

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In the same way, you and I need to remember what it means, if we're Christians, to be the children of our

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Heavenly Father. We come into that relation through the forgiveness that we have received in His Son, the

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Lord Jesus Christ. In Ephesians chapter 4, at the end of that chapter, we're told to forgive one another, just as God in Christ has forgiven us.

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And having been brought then into the family of God, chapter 5 and verse 1 of the same letter, therefore be imitators of God as dear children, and walk in love, and so on.

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Having been brought into the family of God, we are now to be imitators of God as dear children.

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Not mere spectators of God, not even admirers of God or applauders of God, but truly imitators of God.

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Brought into His family, we are to devote ourselves to learning what it means to walk in His ways as dear children.

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Now you cannot imitate God until you are one of His children. You have to be brought into His household.

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You have to be granted the gift of the Holy Spirit. You cannot be like God until you have been delivered by God from your sin, until the

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Lord Jesus Christ, who brings us out of bondage, gives to us His gracious Spirit to dwell within our hearts and to work

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Christ -likeness, godliness in our souls. And so if we are to be in any sense

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God -like, we need first of all to come to Him with repentance and with faith, trusting in the

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Lord Jesus that we may have peace with God, we might be declared righteous in His sight and we might be adopted into His spiritual family.

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And having done that, we now devote ourselves to the imitation of God.

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That's an eminently practical task. Yes, it means first of all that we need to know

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God, that we need to study that glorious character as it is seen in the pages of Scripture and pre -eminently in the person of His beloved

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Son, His only begotten, the Lord Jesus Christ. And as we consider

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Him, as we look to God, as we consider His works and His ways and study out the character that He shows, the heart that He has, the work that He does, we ought to be asking ourselves and encouraging one another and helping one another to be what

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God is in His character, to walk as Christ walked.

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That's why the Apostle Paul puts this exhortation between the reality of the forgiveness of sins and the commandment to walk in love as Christ also has loved us and given

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Himself for us. All of us are going to be, in some measure, imitators.

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There's a danger in that. There's a danger in thoughtless imitation. There's a danger in the wrong models and mentors.

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But no one ever went astray when sustained by the Holy Spirit they were imitators of God as dearly beloved children.

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If you're a Christian, God has set His love upon you and God has called you to be with Him and to be like Him.

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And so it is good and right for us to consider God, to see

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Him as He makes known His love in Christ Jesus and studying that example to learn to walk in His ways.

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Yes, we might be like the little child in the short trousers and the little jacket stumbling along behind dad and doing our best to look like he looks and walk like he walks, but that is the great goal and the great desire that more and more we will prove ourselves imitators of God as dear children.