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Jun 29, 2024 06:00am

Be Imitators

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When I was young, I had a toy bubble push-mower. I was only maybe eighteen months old, but I took great joy in imitating my dad pushing his giant red mower up and down our yard. I was intrigued by the iridescent orbs shooting out of my mower while also feeling great pride in being just like my dad.

Similarly, I used to be allowed to watch my dad while he weight-lifted in our home gym. It fascinated me as a four- or five-year-old to see him bench-press 250-pound barbells as he listened to records on the record player. When I got old enough to safely lift weights, he took me to the gym and taught me proper technique. To this day in my 40s, I still love lifting weights and do it three to five times a week. By imitating him, I gained a lifelong love of fitness.

It is natural for us to want to imitate our parents, but as believers we are to imitate our heavenly Father. The apostle Paul says, “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children” (Ephesians 5:1).

In order to imitate God, we must be near him and spend time with him. We do this through reading his Word, spending time in prayer, and hearing the Word preached. His Word is the only way we can know what he is like and, therefore, what we are to imitate.

In the previous verse (Ephesians 4:32), Paul gives us some things we are to imitate. He says to be kind to one another, tenderhearted, and to forgive one another just as God in Christ forgave us. We are to do things the way God does.

We are to be kind. Our earthly parents will not be the perfect people for us to imitate no matter how good they are. God says that even evil parents would not give their child a serpent if they asked for a fish or a scorpion if they asked for an egg (Luke 11:11–13). How much more will our heavenly Father be kind to us when we ask him for something! We are to imitate his kindness.

We are to be forgiving. Jesus says we are to forgive people not just once, twice, or seven times but seventy-seven times (Matthew 18:21–22). The Bible teaches in numerous places that we should forgive others because we have been forgiven so much. We are the unforgiving servant in Jesus’ parable (Matthew 18:23–35) who was forgiven an exponential amount of debt and should therefore offer that same mercy to those who owe us a debt. We are to imitate God’s forgiveness.

Most of all, we are to imitate God’s love. Paul says that showing love is the most important thing in all we do. “If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give away all I have, and if I deliver up my body to be burned, but have not love, I gain nothing” (1 Corinthians 13:1–3).

The apostle John says that God loved us by sending his Son, Jesus, to be the propitiation for our sins, and that “if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another” (1 John 4:11). Because we can see God’s love for us clearly demonstrated in the sacrifice Christ made on the cross in our place, we know how we are to love others—sacrificially. As we strive to imitate our good and loving God, we must “walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God” (Ephesians 5:2). “We love because he first loved us” (1 John 4:19). Let us be imitators of that love.