A Word in Season: Walk in Love (Ephesians 5:2)

Christians are to be imitators of God, as his children, as his sons, as those who partake of his character and reveal what it means to belong to him. What does that mean for us? In Ephesians chapter 5 and verse 2 it means first that we are to walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet smelling aroma.

If we, as God's children, are to be God-like, then it means that we are to walk in love. In Paul's letters this language of walking is a simple description of the way in which we go through the world.

It's the pattern and the habit of our life in this world. We are then to walk in love. That's to be our characteristic as God's people. So the next question becomes, if my life is to be a regular pattern and demonstration of love, what will that love look like if I am an imitator of God, if I'm doing what he would do and following in his footsteps?

Who has walked in love? What would that look like? And the answer is, it looks like Jesus Christ. He is the embodiment of the love of God. He is the express image of God. He is God in the flesh. If we want to know what obedience and righteousness look like, then we are to look at the Lord Jesus Christ.

And so it's no surprise that walking in love, imitating God, means likeness to Jesus Christ. So here, walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given himself for us. There is the great demonstration of God-like love, because it is the love of God in his Son, Jesus Christ.

Love looks like someone who loves us and gives himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma. And over and over again in the Word of God, it is this to which we are drawn back and sometimes effectively driven back, that God in Christ is the great demonstration for us of what it means to love.

So if we are to live a life of love, if the pattern and habit of our existence here is to be one of God-like love, then it is Christ himself, in his laying down his life for us, who becomes the model to us.

Sacrifice is the mark of love. That's what love looks like when it works out. And so, having exhorted us to forgive one another, having called us therefore to be imitators of God as dear children, this is what the Apostle insists upon, that my life, your life, if you believe in God and trust in his Son, Jesus Christ, is to be a life of God-like love that is patterned after the sacrificial self-giving of our Lord and Saviour himself.

Now, we cannot love like Christ until we have grasped what it means to be loved by Christ. To begin with, we must come to God through his Son. We must understand and enjoy the benefits of that sacrificial love in which he offered himself to God in order to save us from our sins.

Having been so loved, we then begin to learn to love as those in whom the Spirit of this Christ now dwells. And we need then, with regard first of all to one another, and then with regard to others, to begin to show forth that same Spirit.

So what will that look like for you if you're a husband with a wife, or a wife with a husband? What will it look like if you're a parent with children or a child to your parents? What will it look like in the Church of Jesus Christ with regard to your brothers and your sisters?

What will it look like with regard to your neighbours, both those more close to hand and those who are further away? What will it look like not just in the congregation to which you belong, but other congregations with which you have connections?

What will it look like with regard to the speaking forth of the Gospel? What will it look like with regard to purity of life and righteousness in thought and word and deed? It means, fundamentally, walking as Christ walked, relying upon His Spirit to enliven and enable us, and then labouring to live with the same attitudes, and out of that the same actions, as characterised our Lord Jesus Christ who laid down His life for others.

So let this be a day of sacrifice, and if our life is not laid down as a whole, let every day be a giving of ourselves for the glory of God and the sake of others.