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Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.
It is in Christ that God has given his people their “redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of their sins” (Eph. 1:7), just as it is in Christ that God was “reconciling the world to himself” (2 Cor. 5:19). The KJV rendering, “even as God for Christ’s sake hath forgiven you,” goes back to Tyndale, from whom it was taken over successively by Coverdale and the Geneva and Bishops’ Bibles; it expresses a most important part of the apostolic meaning, but not quite all of it.1
1 F. F. Bruce, The Epistles to the Colossians, to Philemon, and to the Ephesians, The New International Commentary on the New Testament (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1984), 365.
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, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.
Be King
Be compassionate
Be forgiving
Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.
Other moralists, including Greek and Roman non-Christians, appealed to the imitation of God for a standard of ethics. But non-Christian writers of Paul’s day could not cite the example of a god who had lovingly sacrificed himself for his people (4:32–5:2)1
1 Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, Second Edition. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2014), 550.
Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you.
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children; and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.
On God’s accepting someone as a fragrant aroma, cf. Ezekiel 20:41 (his saved people); Ephesians 5:2 means that God accepted Jesus as a pleasing sacrifice (see Gen 8:21; Ex 29:18).1
1 Craig S. Keener, The IVP Bible Background Commentary: New Testament, Second Edition. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic: An Imprint of InterVarsity Press, 2014), 551.