“IMITATORS OF GOD”
SMW This first verse of chapter 5 is a very profound verse, “Be ye therefore imitators of God”. I am not sure of how much I can say through experience as to that. We may get some help as together. In our reading on the previous chapter we spoke of putting on the new man, which verse 24 says, “is created in truthful righteousness and holiness”, and then too, it goes on to speak of being sealed with “the Holy Spirit of God”, v 30. I need help as to how we are exercised in this, as this first verse says, being “imitators of God”.
I wondered too if we could get help as to the character of it, “as beloved children, and walk in love”, then later on where we read, “walk as children of light”.
ILB We had meetings elsewhere yesterday on the verse, “God is light” (1 John 1: 5), and this chapter takes that matter up. The things that are spoken of here, from verse 3 onwards, relate to what is dark. It says of God that He “is light, and in him is no darkness” (1 John 1: 5), and that is brought out later on in the chapter. “Beloved children” relates to what derives from God Himself: “as many as received him, to them gave he the right to be children of God”, John 1: 12. This springs, of course, from the divine side, but our side is to “walk in love, even as the Christ loved us”. The reference to the burnt-offering speaks of the delight that God found in His beloved Son. In one sense we are left here, are we not, that such features that were found in Him should be seen in us at the present time? We must realise that it all relates to the way that God has moved in love to secure those who are unworthy; and yet they are able, as having received Him, to be called children, which relates to derivation and also dependence.
DAB Chapter 1 refers to adoption (v 5), and we spoke in the service of God this morning about adoption, how we are brought into relationship with God and indeed with His beloved Son as well. He “has sent out the Spirit of his Son into our hearts” (Gal 4: 6), that we might fulfil that relationship. We associate the idea of sonship with adoption, do we not? But the idea of children is not on a lower level. It corresponds to what John speaks about, being “begotten of God” (1 John 3: 9), and what Peter speaks about as to “partakers of the divine nature” 2 Pet 1: 4. I thought it was interesting to see in this passage that simply having the divine nature is not enough: we have to walk in these things, walk in love and walk in light. They are God’s nature, but if we are going to walk in them, that requires overcoming of those things that belong to our fallen nature. I was thinking of the enquiry about how we should be in the good of this. Paul does not present it as enough to appreciate that the relationship exists, but there has to be positive committal to walking in it.
ILB There is what we speak of as status, is there not? But then there is the requirement on our side, and there is every resource that we should walk according to the place that we have been given. We might wonder, from verse 3, that Paul should have to say such things to the Ephesians, but we know what our own hearts are, and therefore it is a constant matter, and the resource of the Spirit is the only power by which we can, in any way, be “imitators of God”. But “children of God” is our status, is it not?
DAB Reference has been made to John 1: 12, “the right to be children of God”. It is not just a label, is it? The right derives from the way we receive Christ; that is the proof that we are children of God - that we see Christ in the same way as God does. That is what we have here, is it not? He is presented here as an object and a standard that we would aspire to, a very high standard. That aspiration is the evidence of the divine nature being there, but it practically requires the overcoming of all these manifestations of the fallen condition in which we are.
SMW So John in his epistle also says, “See what love the Father has given to us, that we should be called the children of God”, 1 John 3: 1. What the Father has given to us is Christ, is it not? So that we can then “be called the children of God”.
DAB Well that shows how elevated the idea is; it refers to God’s highest thoughts for us. He expresses His very nature to us, He would count us as members of the divine family; and those things should act, do you think, as a very strong lever to see the contrast with these carnal things that he speaks of?
GMB In view of what has been said, it would be right to say, would it, that only the children of God can be imitators of God, because only they have His nature? But that does not mean that merely because we are children we are imitating. Is that the responsibility that Paul is bringing out?
DAB Yes, it is an interesting analogy with the natural family: not every son, not every child, is like his or her father. Some of them strike out on a separate course, and they want to be different, and so on. They have their father’s nature, but they do not want to imitate it, and they want to develop their own identity and all those kinds of things. That is the way the world goes on. But there is evidence of something more: there is the status that has been referred to, but imitation is a matter of nurture. It is not only God’s nature, but the nurture in ourselves of His work, and what we do to answer to the love which He has shown us. Is that right?
GMB This links quite closely with what we were speaking of last week, as to the “new man”, because we are to be preserved from any thought that what is born of the flesh can imitate God, are we not? The old man has no part in this. But the children of God have His nature; they are born of Him. They are to recognise that there is that within the believer. Someone was mentioning a couple of weeks ago that people in the world tend to say that everyone is a child of God, but the scripture that has been quoted in John 1 makes clear that that is not the case. This is a particular status, but then it means that there is something in us that can imitate God, and that is not true of all, is it?
DAB That idea that everyone is a child of God leads implicitly - although people may not say this - to associating all this kind of profanity which Paul describes here with God Himself, and that is a moral impossibility. We would shrink from the idea. The Greek culture was very profane, and God used the conversion of the Ephesian brethren to show how different moral order is. And yet, people think that they can live in this dissolute way, and still identify themselves with God; that is not possible, is it?
ILB “God is light, and in him is no darkness” (1 John 1: 5): you might have said, “God is light” is enough, but that emphasises what you say, that nothing of this other order can be associated with God at all.
AAC So do we see the first two verses of this chapter as standing over against the first three verses of the previous paragraph - “estranged from the life of God by reason of the ignorance which is in them”, Eph 4: 18? We took account of the activity of love, which is what our passage here is drawing our attention to, as to walking in love. And the key to it is in verse 18 of our passage, “filled with the Spirit”. We cannot be filled with the Spirit and be in ignorance. But as by the power of the Spirit we are able to take on this imitation. We should make clear for the young ones that this is not what we may speak of as imitation by something that is false, but rather it is something which is genuine in its expression of the original. This imitation here is a testimonial thing, is it not? It is apparent. The work of the Spirit within, as distinct from what is natural, is that which stands over against estrangement “from the life of God”. It is not just familiarity with it, but it becomes us. It becomes a demonstration of it.
SMW That is helpful, and the only way is if we are marked by the character of the new man, and, “filled with the Spirit”, which is a challenge. I was thinking too, it is to “walk in love”, that indicates that there is to be movement, do you think? There is the testimonial side; so Christianity is not a stagnant thing. It is a living system that, putting simply, is all centred in a blessed Man.
AAC And again, drawing on our previous paragraph, it is over against those who “walk in the vanity of their mind”, Eph 4: 17. It is a separate walk from the world’s walk, and we cannot mix the two. We cannot seek to walk partly in the way of the world and imitate that which is of God; it cannot be so. As has already been drawn attention to, God is holy, and He cannot be associated with that which is of any other character. Hence this passage would help us as to the need for separation, and setting our face to walk separately, in a different way to that which was naturally our way and the way of the world.
DAS Is the motive for this brought out in the second verse? Christianity is a living system; it is not a legal system either. But the power for it is as we contemplate that we “walk in love, even as the Christ loved us, and delivered himself up for us, an offering and sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour”. Is the contemplation of that a motive, do you think, for the walk?
SMW I think it must be as you say. The “offering and sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour” is more the side of the burnt-offering, which was for God, was it not, as seen in the life of Christ? Maybe you can help us as to that.
DAS We are contemplating, in that verse, the way that the love of God has been manifested to us sacrificially. That would affect the heart of the believer. He desires to answer to that love. What God looks for in that is that we love Him. I wonder whether that is what it means to “walk in love”; as affected by that love, we desire to walk pleasing to God. The old system is pleasing ourselves, and there is a change wrought in the believer, so that we should walk here in answer to the divine love.
DAB Did you have some more thoughts as to the burnt-offering? This is a very high standard, because the offering of Jesus is illimitable, is it not? The fragrance of that offering, the lustre of it, is unique. But the character of it, the spirit of it, is to mark the children of God. I was thinking when you read it of putting it alongside what Peter says, we “should follow in his steps ... who himself bore our sins in his body on the tree”, 1 Pet 2: 21, 24. We cannot go there, but as has been said, Paul is not suggesting that we do what He did, but we do it as He did it. I wondered if we have the burnt-offering here, and the sin-offering there. They stand as illimitable examples, do they not? And yet the character of that is to mark us so that if we do things in love, we express the divine nature in the way we do things.
SMW That is helpful, and it is helpful to make that distinction between the sin-offering and the burnt-offering. As you say in relation to the sin-offering, only Christ could have gone that way; there can be no thought of any imitation when it comes to that, can there? But when we contemplate the way the Lord Jesus went, and that life that was so pleasing to God, we take it up in the same spirit that Christ did.
DAB Leviticus starts with the burnt-offering. We might say if we are approaching a God that we have been estranged from we would start with the sin-offering, but it sets the level of everything for God, that there was that perfection. And what Paul speaks of here as “an offering and sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour”. That colours the whole of our relationship with Him.
SMW And because it was “a sweet-smelling savour”, and so acceptable to God, if we desire to take it up ourselves, it will also be acceptable to God, do you think, as we take on that exercise?
AAC Drawing from Leviticus 1: 4, it says, “And he shall lay his hand on the head of the burnt-offering; and it shall be accepted for him to make atonement for him”. I was helped to see that atonement has in view being at one with God. I wondered whether that is essential for us to see in what the passage before us brings us, that all that was contrary to God’s will has been removed, and we can be at one, as “imitators of God” in the knowledge that the sin-offering in all its attractiveness is essential for the removal of everything. But the Lord Jesus stands as perfect before God, and we recognise that we are at one with Him.
DAB I think it helps to have it drawn to our attention that the reference to being “filled with the Spirit” is the key to this, because if you had said to an Israelite, ‘There is the burnt-offering; now you imitate that perfection’, you would have been implying that you could improve the flesh to that point, but what the flesh is has been covered by the atonement. God does not look on it; He looks on the perfection of the offering. And now the divine nature, by the Spirit, can express something that answers to the burnt-offering, which is a big advance on what was true in Israel.
GEW It says in Romans 12: 1-2, “I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the compassions of God, to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your intelligent service ... that ye may prove what is the good and acceptable and perfect will of God”. I was thinking of that side of it being “a living sacrifice”; it is not a dead system, is it? I found it very searching just the other day, reading that what we see in Christ in His pathway here was One who was fully taken up with both ‘the will and glory of God’, A J Gardiner, Piety and Other Addresses p365-366. I was thinking about what we have here as to the “perfect will of God”, but also what He was occupied with was what was for God’s glory. I find it very searching to speak over these things, feeling how one comes short of it all.
GMB I was thinking of the verse you have quoted, because the verse we have been speaking of brings out that love is expressed sacrificially. I think it has been suggested that that is a general principle as to the way that this love and this walk is manifested, that it is sacrificial. The Lord said, “No one has greater love than this, that one should lay down his life for his friends” (John 15: 13), and we are told as to what love is in 1 Corinthians 13: 5 that it “does not seek what is its own”. That is a suggestion of what is sacrificial, is it not?
GEW It has been said that if we place our bodies on the altar, we do not take them off. So it is very searching in that way, as it is not simply something that may be for one point in the week. What we are saying, brings out the responsible pathway, and that it should really be a permanent thing.
GMB This is something known to the believer, because it is the way that the love of God has been expressed towards him. I suppose if you asked the unregenerate man what it meant to be an imitator of God, sacrificial love is not what would come to their mind. This is the way that we have been brought to know Him.
DAB Would it be right to say that “delivered himself up” is not confined to the way He died, but also the way He lived? We get the same thought later on in this chapter in relation to His love for the assembly. I was thinking about what was said about the will and glory of God, that they came out in His death, but they also came out in the way He lived.
GMB In no one else was the thought of presenting their bodies “a living sacrifice” seen like it was seen in His life here, was it? He never sought what was His own.
DAS That would be confirmed in what He says, “I do always the things that are pleasing to him”, John 8: 29. That was the character of His whole life, and it was a sacrificial life really from beginning to end.
DAB It comes out too in relation to the other part of what was referred to. What you have quoted may reflect His obedience, but He also says, “I do not seek my own glory” (John 8: 50); so that was also seen. Then He says, “I honour my Father, and ye dishonour me” (John 8: 49), there was that contrast with the way He lived and the way it was seen by others.
SMW In relation to the Lord Jesus here when He was walking amongst men, there is a side of suffering in what it meant to Him to see men away from God. Would that too bear on what you were saying as to the way the Lord Jesus went? He delivered Himself up, and when He was suffering that was what it actually meant to Him to see many in unrighteousness and unholiness before His God.
DAB Yes, I wondered if that is the force of that verse, “separated from sinners”, Heb 7: 26. It is not exactly implied there that He is separated from sinners by going to heaven, but there was something about the spirit and motive and spring of His life that set Him apart from everybody else. The idea is that an independent or disobedient will was working was entirely absent. He “knew not sin”, 2 Cor 5: 21.
GMB I was wondering if there was more in mind, in that regard, about the thought of separation, because the Lord Jesus never took character from the world. We have spoken of the character that belongs to the children of God, but what we have in verses 3, 4 and 5, is the character of the world. Is that more likely to mark us if separation is not maintained?
AAC The importance of that struck me as we looked at this passage. The Lord Jesus “stedfastly set his face”, Luke 9: 51. He was in the world but not of it, and that is said of us, John 17: 14, 16. We are left in the world, but we are not to be of it. We cannot practice these things unless we take account of the need to be kept from it.
GEW You referred in an earlier reading to the “fine flour mingled with oil”, Lev 2: 4. I was thinking of that as you were speaking about this side of separation, that the Lord Jesus, in the entirety of His life here, was absolutely in precious perfection for the satisfaction of God. What a lovely scene it must have been; if we think of the fine flour, how distinctive Christ was in His life here, and that life had to be given up.
AAC Yes, Paul in writing these epistles, was not one who had actually witnessed the Lord’s pathway here, but he knew the Lord Jesus as the One who was wholly pleasurable to God; and what he had learnt of Him directly, in communication with the Lord, would have convinced him that all the Old Testament scriptures speak of Him was true in Him. He writes that there should be something established as a result of the sacrifice that Christ has made that should be true in us; the holiness that is appropriate. We fail in all respects, but we take account of the One who, as you say, was always in the character of that offering of an oblation before God, wholly pleasurable to Him.
SMW We have spoken of this as a living system of things; I was wondering if there can be some help as to the end of verse 5, “has inheritance in the kingdom of the Christ and God”.
DAB I was just looking at the earlier part of that verse, and I think it is important to understand that the descriptions in that verse are characteristic of people. As Paul says in verse 8, “ye were once darkness”. So it is not that someone can lose their place in the kingdom of God, but someone who has not been converted from this character will not have it. It does bear on what was quoted from Romans 12, that this is coming under the will of a new kingdom.
SMW I wondered if that is where the light is known. So as we come into the enjoyment of the inheritance that is ours, it is in the kingdom, and if we frequent ourselves there, that is where we will experience the light, is it?
DAB Perhaps the plague of darkness in Egypt is a picture of this (Exod 10: 21-23), because there was a whole nation that was not affected by that, they “had light in their dwellings”. It did not light up the world exactly, but it showed that they were under a different authority.
GEW The word “dwelling” is quite an exercise. It is not something that we occasionally frequent. Would that bring out what you were saying as to where they were found?
DAB I appreciate that that brings in a dimension which we do not have in this chapter, that believers have that responsibility. So that it is not just that I am to be personally free of these things, but I hold what is mine free of them as well. The kingdom has that side to it; it is not simply that I am a citizen, but my household is identified with it as well. That is changing the subject a bit.
GEW That is helpful; I had not appreciated that. I was just linking on with what had been said as to what is living - to use a simple term, it was everyday life.
GMB I would like help as to the way the kingdom is described here. This is a unique reference, is it not? Why is it not just referred to as the ‘kingdom of God’?
DAB Well, it is God’s pleasure that Christ should give character to it, and that bears on all that we have said about Christ, and the spirit of His sacrifice and His love, and in moral features, and the way that none of the things mentioned here were named in Him at all. Does it bear on what we have been saying about separation, that the kingdom of God does not have these characteristics at all? It is not that they are there and controlled, but the fact that it is “the kingdom of the Christ” would suggest that they do not appear there in any way. Is that right?
AAC “The Christ” - can we have help as to that?
DAB I understand that “the Christ” is God’s testimony; so that all that God wanted to express about Himself and about His kingdom, will find its personification in Him.
GMB The first feature of the kingdom is righteousness, Rom 14: 17. That would immediately disallow all of these things, would it not? And it is “in the Holy Spirit”, which would emphasise the need of being “filled with the Spirit”.
DAB It is very fine to think that we have a place, or we can have a place, in this kingdom. If you look at the United Kingdom for example, the government of this country is taken up with trying to manage what is evil. But there is a kingdom which does not have those things in it at all, and Christ gives character to it. Our inheritance in it depends on us being free of all those things through conversion, and by the Spirit too.
AAC In that analogy, the United Kingdom is anything but united. But this kingdom is perfectly united.
SMW It is perfectly united because it is all centred in Christ. The subjects of that kingdom will answer to what He is, because “the fruit of the light is in all goodness and righteousness and truth”: those are all three features of Christ, are they not?
DAB And all that is the product of God’s work and the Spirit’s work? Paul goes over things that would not have troubled a carnal Greek at all. They were things that belonged to that culture, deeply engrained in the way they behaved. And Paul is saying here that those who have turned to Christ have left all those things aside, they are not even named among them, and they belong to a kingdom in which those features which are seen in Christ will come into expression in God’s children. So you might say, it is a kingdom administratively, but it is also a family.
ILB I have noticed the references in these verses to thanksgiving (verses 4 and 19). The idea of the kingdom includes that there is thanksgiving from those that are the subjects of it.
DAB I think that is a vital feature of the kingdom. The kingdom is a system of supply; it is a dispensation and so on, but there is also a return; there is also thanksgiving. There is an answer to God for all He gives in His kingdom. We see that in David, “now, our God, we thank thee, and praise thy glorious name”, 1 Chron 29: 13. That is the kingdom working, so that the circle that begins with what is from God is complete.
ILB I was noticing that, interjected between these features of darkness, it says, “as it becomes saints” (v 3), and “but rather thanksgiving”, v 4. We get so used to a kingdom where there are complaints all the time, but that cannot be possibly associated with this kingdom. One of our hymns says,
But to adore? (Hymn 5)
The only result of it is to be thanksgiving.
TNC I was impressed by the praise and response, and the eternal nature of that response. I sometimes think of it as the echoing noise of that response in the eternal day.
DAB Unless these things come out in the saints, God is poorer as far as the world is concerned because Christ is in heaven. That may be a difficult thing to understand but we find thanksgiving in the life of Jesus. He says, “I praise thee, Father” (Matt 11: 25); that was in the midst of the darkness. He is not only down here praising the Father, but the children of God are, and thus you might say that the testimony Godward, that started in Christ, is found among the children of God, which is a precious manifestation of how the kingdom works. It is not simply that the subjects of the kingdom are supported, like a city under siege with supplies getting through to it, but there is an answer to God, as there was in the life of Jesus.
GMB Thanksgiving is presented here as an occupation, is it not? “Giving thanks at all times for all things”. I was struck by what has been brought in, that the opposite to “filthiness and foolish talking, or jesting” is not just sobriety, or something like that, but thanksgiving. There is another occupation, is there not?
SMW What the latter verses we read bring out is that there is great variety, do you think? “In psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, singing and chanting with your heart to the Lord”; it is all the character of Christ but there is a great variety.
DAB The children are rather like stars, are they not? They shine in the night. And it says, “star differs from star in glory”, 1 Cor 15: 41. It also says, the “stars sang together” (Job 38: 7), which is what we have here, that that variety is harmonised in God’s service.
SMW “Submitting yourselves to one another in the fear of Christ” - there may be some impression that is brought in; what we enjoyed this morning, for instance. But we would desire to link ourselves on with that impression, and that would then further the occasion.
Sidcup
14th September 2025
List of initials (all local):-
G M Barlow; I L Barlow; D A Burr; T N Clark; A A Croot; D A Smith; G E Wallace;
S M Webster