Ephesians, chapter five. Ephesians, chapter five. In an
effort to get the feel of this text, let's start reading in
chapter four. Versus 24, excuse me, verse twenty
five. Ephesians four, twenty five through
five to. Therefore, having put away falsehood,
Each one of you speak the truth with this neighbor, for we are
members of one another. Be angry and do not sin. Do not
let the sun go down on your anger and give no opportunity to the
devil. Let the thief no longer steal, but rather let him labor,
doing honest work with his own hands so that he may have something
to share with anyone in need. Let no corrupt talk come out
of your mouths, but only such as is good for building up, as
fits the occasion, that it may give grace to those who hear.
And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God by whom you were sealed
for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness and wrath
and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, along with
all malice. Be kind to one another, tenderhearted,
forgiving one another as God and Christ forgave you. Therefore,
the imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love as
Christ loved us and gave himself up for us a fragrant offering
and sacrifice to God. Now what we've seen here is that
Paul is moving into a way of now affirming that the gospel,
the power of Christ in the life of the church, to display the
manifold wisdom of God, to give glory to Him, to the praise of
His glorious grace, now he begins to do a contrast and a comparison
with the ones who are not in Christ with those who are in
Christ. So the world and its ways and
the old man and the dead man, now therefore we have Put away
the dead man, for we've been made alive in Christ, and these
things are ours." As Paul, if I steal away from Philippians.
These things are ours. This mind is ours in Christ.
These abilities, these attributes, these characteristics, this impression,
this reflection is ours in Christ. So therefore, treat each other
Treat each other with kind words. Be gracious in our speech. Go
and do what is supernatural, not what is natural. See, that's
what Paul is expressing to us. And then, because of all this,
as you forgive one another as Christ has forgiven you, therefore,
now be imitators of God as beloved children and walk in love as
Christ gave Himself up for us a fragrant offering and sacrifice
to God. Now, if you break these two verses
down, this is a conclusion, a conclusion of the argument of chapter 4.
about the new life that is in Christ. These are not rules to
follow. These are not things that we
ought to work on, as we've seen throughout the series. These
are not things that that we have the power and ability to accomplish
apart from Christ, though we might accomplish them in the
sense of morality. We will not accomplish them in
righteousness. And also, no matter how we accomplish
them, they are not credited as righteousness. There's a big
difference. Christ came to save us from morality
by making us righteous for the righteous acts of mankind do
not justify redemption, but rather sort of. Make even more difficult
the judgment of God, because we know what we ought to do. With that, we have two specific
things. We have Paul saying, the imitators
of God, because of this power at work in you, and you are little
children. So as loved children, as beloved
children, imitate God. And then the second thing that
Paul is saying here is that in our imitation of God, it is best
seen in this way, as Christ loved, so we love. This is the argument. He does not finish this argument.
He continues this argument on through the end of chapter five,
starting in verse twenty two, where he speaks to wives and
says, be subject to your husbands. And then in verse twenty five,
his husbands love your wives. And then he says how, as Christ
loves the church and gave himself up for her. And so in some few
months or a month or so down the road, when we get there,
you'll see this argument is continually built by Paul. This is something
that he's showing us that is at work within us and that we
know that he, God, is able to do far more than we could ever
think or ask. so that the glory of God is seen
in the church and in Christ Jesus. So we in Christ now are then
fully imitators of God, specifically in our love for one another. Sound familiar? Jesus Himself
speaks these same words. What is the greatest of all the
commandments? To love the Lord your God with all your heart,
mind and soul and some strength. but the second of equal standing
is to love your neighbor as yourself. All the laws of the prophets
Jesus say hinge on these two. So if this is the natural answer
that God gives us and that the apostles give us is that the
love of God prevails, and we'll see what that looks like in a
moment, it makes us understand, and listen very carefully about
what I'm about to say, It makes us understand. How there's two
extremes in the so-called body, and I say that very lightly in
the so-called body of Christ and the establishment of churches
of America, there are two extremes. There's the extreme of of worldly
affection, calling it Christian love. We do anything and everything
to make people comfortable and happy, so we show them the love
of Jesus. And then there's the other extreme
is that we hate everybody who's not like us. And I would say
that both are deadly. We're not to compromise and meet
in the middle. I'm just saying these are extremes and there's
wrong extremes even through the center. There's another there's
another realm for the church. The church ought to not be there
on that scale. It ought to be someplace else.
And that's the love of Christ. And the love of Christ is God. God is love. Christ is love. Christ is light, as John says
in his first epistle. And so this is the message that
we've received from him, from Christ, John says, that God is
light and there is no darkness. This is it, that God is love.
And so if we are to say we are indeed, as John argues in his
first epistle, if we are in the light, we walk in darkness when
we don't love our brothers. And if we don't love our brothers,
we lie and we do not practice the truth. If we do not love
our brothers, the truth of God is not in us. The love of God
is not in us. If we close our heart to those in need, to our
brothers in need, we lie. And so you see how extremely
easy it is to fall into the we must do all we can for all people. But then yet in the practice
of Jesus Christ and His gospel ministry, we saw Jesus. with compassion. We saw Jesus with affection.
We saw Jesus, even when He was angry with the Pharisees, He
grieved in His heart toward their unbelief. He was sorry for them. He hurt for them. How easy is
it for us to be angry with unbelievers? Friends, we need to be angry
with sin. We need to be angry with the spiritual blindness.
And more importantly, we need to be angry with the sin in the
church. Primarily the sin of hatred. The sin of self-righteousness
and the sin of spirituality, the sin of morality and Americanism
and patriotism above the Kingdom of Heaven. We need to be weeping
and we need to be angry because the Spirit of God, as we saw
just a few weeks ago, when righteous anger is anger that God feels. When the Spirit of God in us
is angry, our anger is never attached to the people. to the
person, but it's always attached to the absolute blasphemy rebellion
toward God. And friends, the world is going
to do what it is supposed to do, which is sin. The church should do what it's
supposed to do, which is fight sin and worship God. And so we need to be angrier
with ourselves For we have failed to see the reality of what true
imitation of God is. People think that imitating God
is not being drunk or not being sexually whatever or not being
a thief. Now, of course, we who are in
Christ do walk away from those things for those specific things
are actually spoken of and sexual immorality and impurities are
going to be spoken of next week. But this does not make us imitators
of God. For many of the world, many people
who do not believe in Christ, many people who reject the very
existence of a creator walk this way. So what's the difference? I'll tell you what the difference
is. The difference is in supernatural affection versus a worldly affection. A gospel driven, and I hate to
use terms like that, but a gospel driven love versus any other
type of love. Imitate God as children who are
loved, as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant
offering and sacrifice to God. So to be an imitator, friends,
this is not, and I have to be very careful here, don't hear
what I'm not saying. I'm not saying that we should
not walk in light or should not walk in righteousness. What I
hope that you see is that imitating God is so much more than our
behavior. It's at the root of our affections.
You know, social pressure can actually change behavior. The legal system can change behavior.
Consequences can change. Fear can change behavior. The
weather can change behavior. You've got a trip plane to the
beach and there's a hurricane. You're not going. You may. She'll suffer the consequences. But what changes the heart? Ezekiel
36, as I read right before service, I will put in you a heart of
flesh. Now, that's not the flesh that
the apostles talk about. That's not the flesh that's dead. That's
not the flesh in the context of our sinful condition and our
depravity and our radical corruption and our complete wickedness.
That's flesh as being alive. Because what God says through
Ezekiel there is that you, Israel, have a dead, stony heart that
has no life in it, and I'm going to put inside of you a life A
heart that is alive. And that live heart loves what
God loves. It loves holiness. It loves the
true essence of His being. It loves the Word. It loves practicing
the Word. It loves studying the Word. And
it loves the people of God. And God said through Ezekiel,
I will cause you to obey my statutes. How is it that God can cause
us? We have the freedom to disobey Him. How is it that He causes
us to obey His statutes? Because He changes our affection,
where we no longer really love sin, but we love righteousness.
We love Him, and out of our affection for Him, we obey Him. That's
why Jesus says, if you love Me, this is a conditional statement,
if you love Me, then you will obey My commands. And John says,
and 1 John, That the law of God is not burdensome. To the church. It does not burden us to walk
in righteousness, it gives us joy. How is that in you? So what is
imitating God, imitating God is a work of God, a work of God,
just as John says in our Jesus says in John three, the Nicodemus,
that those who come to the light do so so that it may be clearly
seen that their works have been carried out in God at the very
last verse of that chapter three. Imitating God means that we have
we have been given the image of God. Listen to this church.
Now, you say, well, the image of God, as God says in Genesis,
let us make man in our image. Well, yes, but that image is
tainted. That image is broken. That image
is seen through a dim glass. It's seen through a shattered
mirror. That reflection, though it's not gone, it's shattered.
And then when we have been reborn, that image is restored. We're born again, we're born
into Adam condemned, shattered. In the image of God, in some
sense, yes, but not fully, and then we're rebirth and one day
then through sanctification, as I'll talk about in a moment,
we're completed. We have, but yet we have not. Yet we still wait for what we
long for. And so this image, we have been
made in His image and we have been remade in His image. And
so in that, the new birth, the image of God is seen clearly. What does John say? No one has
ever seen God. He who is at His side has made
Him known. We have seen the glory of God. And from His fullness, we have
seen Him. We have seen God in Christ Jesus. In Colossians 1,
Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God. And all that
there is Material, immaterial, thrones, dominions, powers has
been made in Him, through Him, and for Him. Nothing was made
that He has not made. Paul says it in Colossians 1.
John says it in John 1. We see it in the Hebrews. We
see it everywhere. And so the church has been made
by God. And we've been made in that image
that we might imitate Him. In reflective nature, that we
carry the characteristics of who God is. Righteousness. Yes, in obedience, but it's not
our obedience that reflects the righteousness. It's the created
work of God in us that declares us righteous in and through Christ. That's what reflects His nature. That's what it means to imitate
God. And then the outcome of that new life results in affection
that cannot be explained in the world, that cannot be explained
by those who are not in Christ. How is it that you can love me
after what I've done to you? Because Christ has called me
to love you because of the great love in which he loved me. And so what this means then to
imitate God is that we then walk in the love of God, in the way
Christ walked before the Father, out of affection. So we walk
in love as beloved children. What does this mean to be children?
There are many people who are children. Everyone in the world
is a child of someone. And there are many people in
this world as children who have not been loved. Some of us hearing
this message today may sit here today and say, I was not loved.
I am not beloved as a child. I was not loved. And that's OK.
For even the greatest loving parents will fail in their love
to their children. And I'll be honest with you,
I think it's great when we can then see as reborn believers
the full and perfect love of our father through Jesus Christ. If any of you think that your
parents love you greater than God does, you've seen a poor
picture of God. What does it mean to be children,
not just children who are tolerated, but told children who are embraced
and loved and and cared for children who who the father is willing
to sacrifice one of his own to say. Well, in the very beginning
of Ephesians, chapter one, we hear these words. V. 3, Blessed be the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with
every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as He chose
us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should
be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us
for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ according to the
purpose of His will, to the praise of His glorious grace with which
He has blessed us in the Beloved. And so God has created us to
save us in Christ that He may prepare us and declare us holy
in Christ and through Christ and call us beloved and adopt
us so that we would be holy and worship Him to the praise of
His glorious grace and that His holiness requires and demands
justice. So God in His love, He forbeared
that justice and put it on Christ and crucified Him that we might
be saved. That's love. And we've been adopted. We've been adopted by God through
Christ. We've been saved. God sought
us out and saved us. The Scriptures say that He snatches
us out of the domain of darkness, that He causes us to be brought
to life. He's caused us to be born again,
Peter says. Because of His great love for
us, He's caused us to be born again. Because of His great mercy,
He's caused us to be born again. It doesn't say that God is desperate
for children. It says that God is actively seeking
and finding and saving children. God is not desperate for anything. God always, as it says there
in Ezekiel, He does exactly what He has planned to do and everything
He plans comes to pass without fail. For if any man can thwart
the final plans of God, the intricate plans of God, the what we would
think minute plans of God, if any man in the history of time
in which God does not sit, can thwart the plans of God, then
God is not God and needs to be brought down a notch or six. What I want you to see is that
the love of God in redemption and then in redemption, God adopts
us. This is how we're loved. You
don't have to turn there. I'm going to real quick rip through
some Scripture. Write them down. Galatians 4,
4-7, But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth
His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those
who were under the law, so that we might receive adoptions as
sons. And listen to verse 6, And because
you are sons, God has sent His Spirit of His Son into your hearts,
crying, Abba, Father. So you are no longer a slave,
but a son, and if a son, then an heir through God. In Romans
8, 14-17, for all who are led by the Spirit of God are sons
of God. For you did not receive the spirit
of slavery to fall back into fear, but you have received the
spirit of adoption as sons by whom we cry, I have a Father.
The Spirit Himself bears witness with our spirit that we are the
children of God. And if children, then heirs,
heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, provided we suffer
with Him in order that we may also be glorified with Him. In 1 John 3, 1-2, see what kind
of love the Father has given to us that we should be called
the children of God, and so we are. The reason why the world
does not know us is that it did not know Him. Beloved, we are
God's children now, and what we will be has not yet appeared,
but we know that when He appears, we shall be like Him because
we shall see Him as He is. In John 1, 12-13, but to all
who did receive Him, who did who believed in his name, he
gave the right to become children of God, not who were born, excuse
me, not of the blood, nor the will of the flesh, nor the will
of man, but the will of God. And so the outcome of regeneration,
the outcome or one of the outcomes of redemption is adoption. We
become beloved, not tolerated. Not worker bees who are always
on the precipice of being judged and smited. That is not the God. Sinners in the hands of an angry
God. Saints in the hands of a loving God. And no one will snatch us
out. Perfect love drives away fear,
John says. We do not fear. We come bold
before the throne of grace, though we recognize and we do fear he
who can throw both body and soul into hell. We have no reason
to fear. But we do and we should, but
it is not a fear that drives back and cowers. It's a fear
that causes us to stand knowing who it is that God is and how
it is he saved us. By grace, through faith, we are
given the nature of Christ, this is imitating God, the nature
of Christ, righteousness that is his forgiven, not ours. So
we become adopted for things I want you to understand about
adoption with all that text that I just read, even the text in
Ephesians chapter one. And then here we see that we
are beloved children. Just remember these things. I've
preached them through the year. Remember them. Remember that
adoption means that we become sons and daughters, we become
children. We become children. And then
we bear the name of God. In Revelation 3, verse 12, I
will write on Him the name of my God. We bear the name of our
God. We are His. Second, because we are sons and
we've been saved, we've been redeemed, we are now saints.
We've been made righteous in Jesus Christ. We are righteous
in Christ. We are righteous in Christ before
God. So therefore now we are sons
and daughters and beloved and we have the name of the Lord
and we have the nature of the Lord. Righteousness. We've been
declared righteous even with the fullness of the wickedness
that we still see at war within our members. We are declared
righteous for even that current battle and that future battle
and the future sin before God is already atoned for in the
body of Jesus. And the third thing that we see
in adoption is that we are able to cry, Abba, Father, Daddy. If we are sons, we are loved
children who have a father in Christ, not an overlord, though
he is Lord, but a father. And if he is our father and we
are his children, what is it that Paul said in Galatians 4?
We have an inheritance. What did Paul already teach in
Galatians 2? That God has an inheritance.
His church. And if we are his inheritance,
then we have an inheritance, too. What is it? The kingdom
of light. We have light, we have eternity, we have fellowship. What is the kingdom of light
if God is light? Intimacy with God forever. How
does that work? God's a spirit. Christ is in
the flesh. We behold the Lamb of God, we
behold God, we have seen the glory of God, glory as the only
son of the Father, full of grace and truth. And from that fullness,
we all receive grace upon grace. So we are adopted church. And
if we are adopted, we see here then in Ephesians chapter 5,
we are imitators of God in adoption as beloved children. That's how
we imitate God, because we've been given His name. We've been
given His nature. We've been saved and redeemed.
And we have an inheritance that is His to give. 1 Peter chapter
1, verse 3. Blessed be the God and our Father,
Lord Jesus Christ, who has caused us to be born again to a living
hope. to the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to
a living hope that is undefiled, unfading, unperishable, kept
in heaven, who you, kept in heaven by God's power, are being guarded
for the day of redemption, for the day of salvation. You are
sealed in Christ and you are a child. And as a child, you
imitate God. See, that's what Paul is saying.
So now test it. Do we see God in us? Do we see
Christ in us? What is the nature of beloved
children? Well, verse two tells us this. Walk in love. How is it that our lives are
to reflect the nature of God and imitate him? We walk in love.
God walked in love as Jesus Christ. God walks in love by his divine
decree and his purpose before the world began to save the church. Walk in love. See, God, as I said, did not
need us, but desired to find and save us. We are not worthy
to be adopted. But he did it anyway. So the
nature of beloved children is that we walk in love. So God
loves us and we should walk as God does in love. This is the
mandate. This is the outcome. Nothing
more should we be really striving for. Do you see how overly simplistic
this could be if we're not careful? If we misdefine or redefine love
apart from Scripture, we will define love from a worldview
that is not biblical. And if that is the case, we may
find ourselves loving in a way that's not loving. Walking in love. Though there is a book by this
title that I would highly regard as heresy, love does win. But not for everybody. It only
wins for those who, by faith, believe in Christ. Love does not win for those who
reject the gospel. Judgment will. But ultimately,
love prevails in the same way as Christ loved us, he gave himself
up, you know, 1 Corinthians 13, if you want to turn there and
go there. Thirteen verses. And Paul says here that, you
know, in Ephesians, Jesus lived and died for the sake of the
elect to save them to the praise of His glorious grace. And He
loves us. And in that same way He loves,
we ought to love. We ought to walk in love. And
here's what Paul teaches to the Church of Corinthians about what
love looks like. Jesus says there's no greater
love than this, that a man would lay down his life for a brother.
Jesus says in John 3 that God loved the world in this way,
that He gave His only Son. That whoever believes is believing,
will not perish, but those who do not believe have perished
already. And Paul says in 1 Corinthians
13, if I speak in the tongues of men and of angels and have
not love, I'm 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 as to remove mountains, but do not
have love, I'm nothing. If I give all that I have away
and I deliver up my body to be burned, but I have not love,
I gain nothing. And then he explains what love
is in verse 4 of 1 Corinthians 13. Love is patient and kind. Love does not envy or boast. It is not arrogant or rude. It
does not insist on its own way. It is not irritable or resentful.
It does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth. Love
bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures
all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies,
they will pass away. As for tongues, they will cease.
As for knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and
we prophesy in part, but when the perfect comes, the partial
will be gone and pass away. When I was a child, I spoke like
a child. I thought like a child. I reasoned like a child. When
I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror
dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, then I shall
know fully, even as I have been fully known. Remember Jesus'
words. Depart from me. I never knew
you. Jesus knows his sheep and they know him and they hear his
voice and they obey it. So now faith, hope and love abide
these three, but the greatest of these is love. Do we love
in this man? I'm not going to exegete that
text. I'm not going to preach that. You know what it says.
Love is not rude, it does not insist on its own way, it is
not proud, it is not arrogant, it bears all things, it endures
all things, it is patient, it is kind. See, we've already been
taught that last week. We looked at the kindness of
Christ and we ought to exercise our love toward others in kindness. We don't feel vindicated by feeling
we've been wronged. We die to ourselves and we lay
down our lives so that the other person or persons can see our
affection for them and that though we might even have a right to
do so, we lay down our rights. This is the manner in which Christ
loved. We die to ourselves and submit our lives. We submit our
hopes and our hearts to God in Christ Jesus. So, no more then. You see the comparison now? No
longer live as the Gentiles did. In the futility of their mind,
in the darkness of their heart. But live in love. live in Christly,
supernatural affection. We no longer live in the futility
of of selfish ambition and personal interest, but in dying for and
unto and for the blessings of others, because the power of
the gospel in us, in Christ, who gave himself up for us, empowers
us to do that. Does this sound familiar to you,
maybe those who have studied Romans chapter 12? I appeal to
you, brothers, therefore, by the mercies of God, to present
your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to God, which
is your spiritual worship. Do not be conformed to this world,
but be transformed by the renewing of your mind that by testing
you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable
and perfect. See, Christ, look at that text. and walk in love as Christ loved
us and gave Himself up for us. Listen. In closing, the mind of Christ
which is ours, Philippians 2, is that Christ willingly and
joyfully laid Himself down for His sheep. Now, I've not met anybody in
this life that I've had that I've had the privilege. And it's
a sort of self-explanatory of meeting who had given their life
physically for someone. I've never known someone who
then did that. I've read about them. I've seen
videos of them. I've read their books, but I've not known anyone. And so from that, I don't know
that there is a huge list of people throughout the world who
are dying physically for the salvation of others, though there
are many. In our world, it's not common.
In our world, the American world, in the third worlds and the other
places, it's every day. So it's not just unto death physically,
but it's death emotionally and death spiritually and death financially. In other words, we die to our
own way that we might bestow grace and life and joy and affection
to someone else. It is a sacrifice. And the only
sacrifice that pleases God is a willing sacrifice. You can't love because you're
supposed to. It is worthless. It is worthless. And you'll try and you'll fail
and you'll feel horrible. You can't love because you have
to. You cannot love out of obligation.
There is no such thing as obligatory affection. It is a false love. It is a fake affection. As Christ
gave himself up. That's what was a pleasing, fragrant
sacrifice to God. As Paul says in Romans 12, we
ought to give ourselves up to God as a spiritual act of worship.
And he goes on to say, for by grace given to me, I say to everyone
what is good and acceptable, excuse me, everyone, you not
to think of yourselves highly than he ought to think, but to
think with sober judgment, each according to the measure of faith
that God has assigned. For, as in one body we are many members,
and the body do not all have the same function, so we, though
many, are one body in Christ, and individually members of one
another, having gifts that differ according to the grace given
to us, let us use them. If prophecy in proportion to
our faith, in service and our serving, if one who teaches in
his teaching, and one who exhorts in his exhortation, and the one
who contributes in generosity, the one who leads with zeal,
the one who does acts of mercy with cheerfulness, And so that's
how we measure our affection and our usefulness and our unity
and our spiritual bond of peace in the church. We see each one
as vital to each other as individual members of one body. And we rejoice
in the services of others, we rejoice in the measure of grace
given to one. We don't compare. We rejoice. We build others up at the cost
of expressing our own energy and our own giftedness. And then
as we do that and we feel ourselves winding down to, oh my goodness,
I'm at the end, someone else will come and feed us grace as
the same body. If your arm goes to sleep and
you can't move it and you can't feel it, you'll wake it up. Such
as exhortation. Keep doing the same thing. Strive. Push. And I exhort you, church,
to keep loving. Loving as Christ loved you and
gave Himself up for you. Remember that. If you are in
Christ, Christ died for you to be righteous, to reflect His
image, Why? For the overarching purpose of
vindicating the holiness of the Father. Romans 3, verse 21 through
the end. For God put forth Christ as propitiation
in order to display his righteousness. It's the same thing God said
through Ezekiel in chapter 36. Now, the question is, do you
see the love of Christ given to you? And if you do, do you
see the love of Christ flowing from you? Let's pray and then
we'll worship. Focusing on the love of Christ,
God, we are so thankful for your love for us. Help us to fight sin. Help us
to fight the flesh. Help us to realize that we are. So far. Fallen from your glory. But God in Christ, you brought
us straight back up to the top. Lord, let us reflect your love. Let us reflect your forgiveness.
Let us reflect your mercy. Your gentleness, your kindness. which is in us, in Christ, who
is in us, who is God, who is in us, who created all things.
And Father, if you can create all this world, and that same power, that same
Creator is within us, recreating us, that's spiritual. That's supernatural. It is not
something the world can do. It is not something we can do. We thank You for the faith You've
given us in Christ, to be made like You, for Your namesake and
for Your glory. In Jesus' name we pray, Amen.