Word of Salvation – Vol. 14 No.06 – February 1968

 

Be Like God!

 

Sermon by Rev. Rev. K.V. Warren on Ephesians 5:1

Scripture Reading ; Ephesians 4: 17-32(577-2

Psalter Hymnal: 321:1,3,4; 252:1,2,3 (after Law); 412:1,3; 459:1.4; 488

 

Congregation of our Lord,

If there's one thing young people are keen on, it is : to imitate others!  That comes very naturally; they are born copy-cats!  Especially the younger boys and girls.  How they love to be cowboys, Indians, pirates, or just to play mothers or nurses.  It's good fun sometimes to pretend you're someone else, isn't it?

And even our teenagers : THEY still have it in them, someway, somehow copying the way others dress, and walk, and laugh; and don't forget the hair-do's; you know the pop-singer style.

But when people get older, they don't really copy anymore!  They've lost the imagination on the whole, and well, there are more serious things for older people to do in life.  And besides, it doesn't really help to imitate others, for sooner or later you have to come 'back to earth' again, and be your own self.

This morning, however, the Bible comes to us, and whether we like to copy or whether we have grown out of it, the message is the same, for each one of us, young and old.

We HAVE to copy we HAVE to imitate!  It is a MUST, for the whole church, for every Christian.  Sure, the children are in this too, very much so!

Be a COPYIST – Imitate!  No, not Gideon or Samson, or Peter or Paul, but (says the Bible): you must copy the Holy God Himself!  Be imitators of the Almighty!

Oh, this certainly puts a lot of DEPTH into our Christian living!  This raises our religion to soaring heights, for we see here that God will not be satisfied with anything less than PERFECTION!

True, if you were to be like Paul – that would be good; and if you'd try to copy Peter: - fine, or be an imitator of the apostle John – wonderful.  But even THAT is not good enough!  For these people, though giants in the Kingdom of God, they're still IMPERFECT, SINNERS, doing the things they shouldn't do, and NOT doing the things they ought to.  The highest possible, the most pure and perfect, GOD HIMSELF: copy Him!  DO as He does, LOVE as He loves, FORGIVE as He forgives, or to say it in those words of Matthew 5: "Be perfect, as your Father in heaven is perfect."

At times, when parents feel their children need a talking-to about behaviour and things like that, they might say: "Ah, I wish you'd be as polite as Johnny next door." Or, "I wish you would do your homework as well as your brother does."

Well, that's hard enough, to try and be as good as Johnny next door, or like that clever brother of yours, but even so: THEY are not perfect, far from it!  And yet it's difficult enough to try even imitating THEM.

Say, doesn't the Bible ask the impossible: to imitate GOD?  Is this fair, coming to sinners, who can't even copy Johnny next door, people who fail every time again, who live in the midst of an evil world – to ask THIS of them?

Is this not just as foolish as if I were to go to a 3-year old boy whose father is working hard in the garden, digging away, and tell this little chap to go and do exactly the same as his father was doing, working just as hard, just as many hours.  He couldn't do it!  That little boy could not possibly do it!

There is only one way in which he COULD do it, that is: copying his father.  By first GROWING UP – by becoming just as strong and big as his dad.  Only THEN could you say to him: Come on, do what He does!  Then it would be fair.  THEN it certainly wouldn't be impossible any longer.

Now shall we apply this thought to our text?  Be imitators of God, says Paul.  WHO does he say it to?  To unbelievers?  Heathen?  People who still live and walk and think in darkness?  Surely he does NOT; that would have been as if he were talking to the 3-year old child.  No, Paul talks to different people, he talks to CHRISTIANS!  People who are washed in the blood of the Lamb, people who are filled with the Spirit of the Most High, and that makes a vital difference; that makes ALL the difference!

Notice that word in verse 1, that very first word.  THEREFORE...!  Paul not only says: Imitate God, but: THEREFORE you have to imitate God!  There's a reason here: you have to do it because such and such!

And then of course we look at what comes before, in chapter 4, the last verses.  There we must find the reason WHY we must copy God.

And indeed, there it is, in chapter 4:

            GOD IN CHRIST FORGAVE YOU... THEREFORE...!

WHY imitate the Almighty?

BECAUSE He has forgiven us in His Son Jesus.

WHY copy God?

BECAUSE He has saved us from our sinful selves.

WHY be like HIM?

Hasn't there been that cross and that open grave?  Jesus has done so much for you; shouldn't you do just as much for Him?  MAY I?  Yes, you must!  CAN I?  Yes, you can!  Because things are DIFFERENT now.  No longer dead in sin, no longer in our misery, in bondage to Satan, hating God and your neighbour, NO!  Christians are different, with new hearts, new desires, a new purpose, as in 2Corinthians 5:17 "Therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; the old has passed away, behold, the NEW has come."

And people like that, they can no longer say: Me?  Imitate God?  Copying the Father in heaven?  Impossible!  Could not even begin to try...!  No, that wouldn't do, for JESUS has come into that person's life; and through Jesus there is that NEW NATURE.

And look now at verse 24 in chapter 4.  There the new nature is mentioned.  And what is it, what is it like?  It is created after THE LIKENESS of God, in true righteousness and holiness.  There it is: the likeness of God, the copy, the imitation.

So, to have been forgiven all your sins through Jesus, congregation, does NOT only mean to be free from Satan, and to be right with God, and to know that heaven is waiting, but it also means: to begin to look like God again!

Be imitators of God, says Paul.  That's a command.  And it's not unfair at all, or unreasonable, or outrageous.  Rather just the opposite: it's very normal and logical that this should be asked of the believer.  For through Christ they're already going to look like Him.  That's inseparably linked up with the new birth.

You know, it's really like this for the believers: slowly but surely it is becoming like PARADISE once more.  SLOWLY, for it takes a lifetime; but also: SURELY, for it is the work of Christ in a believer's heart.  As Adam was, with his Creator; a picture of God, an image of God; like Him, good and pure and holy.  Paradise, says Paul, has just about returned, through the Lord Jesus Christ.  Do YOU believe that?  A world full of hatred and hunger, dictators and an iron-curtain, broken up homes, crowded hospitals, young people running wild, fighting and wars, and yet, the happy news of the gospel: PARADISE IS COMING, it is coming back, it is already here, yes, HERE, in the hearts and lives of those who have been forgiven by God, and it is only a matter of time and Paradise WILL be here in its full glory.  And as for NOW, says Paul (sure, the Holy Spirit is saying it through him), while you are waiting for that, and as you are beginning to look like Christ, like God, well, KEEP at it, try, keep trying to imitate Him as well as you can, by the grace of God.  That is the privilege of the Christian, the duty of the Christian, the glory of the Christian.

Of course, we can only look like God IN A WAY!  When you, boys and girls, have to copy a drawing at school, well, it will only be a COPY; it won't be an exact and perfect imitation, will it?  It'll be LIKE it, but always a copy.

We can never possibly be just as God is.  He: the Creator, we: the creatures.  Or in the words of Romans 9: God is the potter, and we are only the clay.  And how could we be eternal, as God is, or almighty, or all-knowing, or everywhere-present?

But Paul doesn't mean that.  And he does not say that either.  Not: be exactly like God, but: IMITATE HIM.  As a child looks like his father, Christian, do likewise.

And what is more important something we haven't even mentioned yet this command to the Christian is put in a very SPECIAL FRAMEWORK.  When someone makes a nice copy of a painting without a frame, that's not really the proper thing, is it?  And do you know in what sort of FRAMEWORK WE stand, as copies of God, as imitations made by the gracious hand of Christ?  In the framework of LOVE!  Look again at our text a short verse and then look at the verses just BEFORE it, and just AFTER it; that's what we could call the framework really.  Now what do these verses speak about, just before and just after?  About the forgive ness of Christ, and the love of Christ.  And right in between, in the middle, THERE we find this command to us all: THAT is what you, Christian, ought to be like: like God, like this God, this God of LOVE, this God of FORGIVENESS.

Yes, there are several ways of imitating God.  There are WRONG ways, too.  There are people who want to imitate God's power, and His might, and His authority.  You can meet people like that in palaces, in politics, in churches too; and in homes, in Christian homes too!  People who MISUSE their God-given power, their God-given authority: DICTATORS, sending people to their death whenever it pleases them; RULERS OF NATIONS, sending fear into the hearts of many.

LEADERS IN CHURCHES, with cold hearts, forcing things to go the way they want them to go.

FATHERS OF FAMILIES, being hard, impatient, thinking themselves to be authorities on every subject.  But that is no imitation; that is a CARICATURE of God!  Fort that imitation is not put in the FRAMEWORK of LOVE, but rather in the framework of pride and greed and selfishness.

Paul says: you did not so learn Christ!  LOVE is the key-word!  Serving, being humble, forgiving!  Copying: with the picture before us of Bethlehem, God sending down His Son in a stable, imitating: with our eyes on the cross, where Jesus was bruised for our iniquities.

In THAT framework, a framework of forgiving love, that is where we ought to put ourselves as a picture, a copy of the Almighty God.  Is HE the One we imitate?  Is that so in our married lives?  Do we as husbands and wives still have that first love for one another?  Or have we lost some of it over the years, having become somewhat critical, unforgiving, hard to live with?  Oh, if that is true of you, then flee to Christ, both of you, husband and wife, before the throne of God, and find again that love which you may copy!  That love which made Jesus go to the cross!

And is there that love between children and parents?  Is it there in the way we are over against our children, fathers and mothers?  No, not loving them by giving them everything they want, but rather: in wise love, and understanding love, and patient love?  And what do you young people copy, in the home: whom do you imitate?  Jesus and His love?  God and His mercy?  Or do you possibly grumble and complain far too often, looking somewhat upon your father as the one who is good enough to bring the money in and treating mother as an unpaid servant (that's really a slave isn't?), who always has to be ready with this and that and the other.  Do you do what many youngsters do nowadays: take your parents for granted?

If Christ were to come into our homes, today, now, would He say: How wonderfully these people try, every one of them, fathers, mothers, children, how well do they try to copy God!  Or would we hear different words? – having to be ashamed, having to confess that often we don't even TRY, but are out for OUR interests only, as long as we are happy and content.

Don't you think that the HOME is the very first place where God would have us practise imitating Him?  And if we do that in faith, in obedience, prayerfully, we will no longer have covenant- homes where parents unreasonably lose their temper, and have little or no time for the children; then we won't have homes where boys and girls say and do the most unchristian things.

And then we will have no churches either where people bite and devour one another, where the greatest stumbling-block is still this loving one another for Christ's sake, this forgiving the other as God in Christ forgave us!

Oh, let us more and more imitate God, wherever God has placed us.  And do you know that there's really only ONE WAY in which you can ever begin to imitate someone else properly?  And that is: to get to know the other person really well!  I think of that famous actor who – in a film – had to play the part of an important person in history.  He went overseas, to the country where this man whom he had to impersonate, was born; to the village where this person had played as a little child.  The actor tried to taste the atmosphere in which the other had grown up, the circumstances which had shaped his life; He went to the library to read through many books; he searched through all the family correspondence; he studied pictures and old photographs, and he talked to many people; and only THEN he did consider himself ready to imitate the other, to copy him.  Indeed, before he could start his work, he had to get to know the other very well.

And WE, brothers and sisters, young people, can ONLY try to copy God, make at least a start to do it, WHEN WE KNOW HIM WELL!  Through the church, and prayer, and Bible reading; through listening, and study, and meditation.  And the better we know God, the better we will imitate!  The closer the fellowship with the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, the more we will look like God, in our thoughts, words, deeds; the more we will look like the forgiving God, the loving God, Who loved so much that He gave His only Son; AND... the grace to receive Him, to believe in His Name, to become children of God.  We are not just told here, congregation, to imitate God!  Whose God?  What God?  GOD the FATHER!  Who has adopted us to be His children, His beloved children.  We are copying a FATHER – OUR Father!  And that ties in exactly with that verse we quoted before, in Matthew 5.  There it does not say: "You must be perfect as God is perfect," no, but: "You must be perfect as your HEAVENLY FATHER is perfect."  Think of this: when I have put all my hope and my future and trust in Jesus Christ alone, that means I have a Father in heaven, and I am His child, He loves me, His Holy Spirit dwells in my heart, working with mighty power, teaching me to do God's will.

Oh, when you read this: ‘be imitators of God’; when you take that at face-value, you say: IMPOSSIBLE!  I can never do that, I have tried, really I've tried, but I always fail; this is asking too much of a miserable sinner like me.

But wait a minute: don't deny the POWER OF THE CROSS!  When you have come to kneel before that cross of Jesus in full surrender, then the Bible reminds you that you are a child of your Father in heaven; that you are not just left to yourself, but that Christ has come to dwell in you!

Then you shouldn't fear when you see a Bible verse like this, then you shouldn't moan and complain about your weaknesses and your shortcomings.  Oh sure, they are there, but we are not talking about OUR failings, we are talking about the POWER of the risen Lord, who is our Brother, through Whom we MAY be and MUST be children of the Father, through Whom, this Jesus, the Christian becomes a very special person, who may copy God Himself.

Is there this special something about YOU?  Young people, you too?  No, don't be mistaken, we're not talking about living a good and decent life.  Or whether we say our prayers faithfully and go to church regularly.  There are people who do all that and still are not Christians!  And if that were all, what would be so special about us?  No, no, think of it in other terms: IS THERE SOMETHING OF YOUR HEAVENLY FATHER ABOUT YOU?  Do you look like God?

Sometimes in life you meet children who hardly look like their parents.  And people look at them for a while, and they say: "Oh yes, I can see it now, there IS something of his father there after all." Not much, not very much, but there IS SOMETHING!  Something at least!  No, let us never have the idea that we look so VERY MUCH like our heavenly Father.  None of us does.  But is there, my brother, and sister, my young friend, is there at least that something, that beginning?

Is there, in one way or another, some proof in your life that you ARE a child of the Father?

Amen.