Imitate God
Ephesians 5:1: Therefore be imitators of God as dear children.
The Apostle Paul was very aware of this truth in his day. He reminded the Ephesians that they were once children of wrath even as the rest. They and we inherited a sin nature from our father, Adam. But Paul has explained that when we accepted Jesus Christ we received a new nature – we experienced regeneration. We now have a nature like our heavenly Father. The old man is gone, behold the new man has come! We are no longer in Adam but in Jesus Christ. And Paul says something startling as he continues to admonish the believers to conduct themselves in a manner worthy of the calling with which they have been called. He commands all of his readers to “imitate God.” Now that is extreme!
The Greek word that has been translated “imitators” is mimētēs (mim-ay-tace'); and is defined as, “to follow in manners; to copy in form, color or quality. We imitate another in dress or manners; we imitate a statue, a painting, a sound, an action, when we make or do that which resembles it. We should seek the best models to imitate, and in morals and piety, it is our duty to imitate the example of our Savior.” In the King James Version the word is translated as “followers”. It means the same! From the word mimētēs we get the words mimic, mock, mime, imitative, imitation, simulate, and copy in our English language. To become something you must study that which you would become in order too mimic it. The problem has been, we have failed in past times to teach the children to mimic Jesus (God), thus we have mimicked the world more and more. In order to imitate God, we have to know God!
God of the Whole Earth, Isaiah 54:5; for He created everything, therefore everything belongs to Him.
God is love, 1 John 4:16; And we know (understand, recognize, are conscious of, by observation and by experience) and believe (adhere to and put faith in and rely on) the love God cherishes for us. God is love, and he who dwells and continues in love dwells and continues in God, and God dwells and continues in him.
Pity & Compassion & Tenderness and Mercy, James 5:11, “You know how we call those blessed (happy) who were steadfast [who endured]. You have heard of the endurance of Job, and you have seen the Lord’s [purpose and how He richly blessed him in the] end, inasmuch as the Lord is full of pity and compassion and tenderness and mercy.”
A lie (deception, beguilement, deceit, bluff, or subterfuge) something that misleads or deceives; contains enough truth that it will be believed. Deception has been the greatest weapon in Satan’s arsenal. It was a cleverly devised story in the Garden east of Eden that caused Eve to eat of the “the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and blessing and calamity.” Genesis 3:1-5, tells us that Satan is more subtle and crafty than any living creature that God has made. Satan excels at deception!
Deception must always cause you to question the truth. Once the truth becomes questionable then that which is untrue, will become truth. Paul wrote about the problem of deception in 2 Corinthians 11:3, “But [now] I am fearful, lest that even as the serpent beguiled Eve by his cunning, so your minds may be corrupted and seduced from wholehearted and sincere and pure devotion to Christ.” The problem has never been that of knowledge; it has always been what you do with knowledge. The problem has never been good and evil; we are evil because we don’t do that which is good. The problem has never been blessing and calamity; it is calamity because we do not bless others. Paul saw how many were telling half-truths to the new believers, the charlatans; you know the spin doctors of that day. We have them today! The ones who try to take the death and resurrection out of the story! With cleverly devised wording they spin their stories, but it only holds enough truth to be believable, and we fall into self-deception. Self-deception is defined as, “a process of denying or rationalizing away the relevance, significance, or importance of opposing evidence and logical argument.” It has been theorized that humans are susceptible to self-deception because most people have emotional attachments to beliefs, which in some cases may be irrational. It was the emotional attachment of Eve to be like God, the one who created her, that she believed the half-truth of Satan.
The problem has always been one of deception. We weave a tight web of dissimulation, half-truths, secret information, camouflage, disguise, dazzle, simulation, mimicry, fabrication, distractions, betrayal, forgery, fraud, hoax, lies, media manipulation, misdirection, selectivity, spin (public relations), and social engineering all to satisfy our own interest and personal gain. We have become emotionally selective in our faith because it is what we want to hear instead of the truth. The truth is God’s word, the Bible. We believe these half-truths because we do not spend time reading God’s word. It was the same in Jesus’ day; the religious leaders had betrayed the faith of their fathers and were priests because of what they could get out of it. They had the best seats, the best foods, lived in the best homes. The priest would tell the people that the more things they had showed how favored you were by God. They had become greedy; forgetting the needs of the people. In Jeremiah 8:10, it is stated in this way: “Therefore will I give their wives to others and their fields to those who gain possession of them; for everyone, from the least even to the greatest, is given to covetousness (is greedy for unjust gain); from the prophet even to the priest, everyone deals falsely. (The amplified Bible, Jeremiah 8:10).” Change had to come. Jesus was born. He lived, He taught, He died, and He rose from the grave. God gave us the example to live by Jesus Christ. Then change came! As time moved forward; we have moved backwards. Timothy told us it would be like this in 1 Timothy: “BUT THE [Holy] Spirit distinctly and expressly declares that in latter times some will turn away from the faith, giving attention to deluding and seducing spirits and doctrines that demons teach, (Amplified Bible 1 Timothy 4:1).”
God tells us in Ezekiel 13: “And My hand shall be against the prophets who see empty, false, and delusive visions and who give lying prophecies. They shall not be in the secret council of My people, nor shall they be recorded in the register of the house of Israel, nor shall they enter into the land of Israel; and you shall know (understand and realize) that I am the Lord God.
10 Because, even because they have seduced My people, saying, Peace, when there is no peace, and because when one builds a [flimsy] wall, behold, [these prophets] daub it over with whitewash,
11 Say to them who daub it with whitewash that it shall fall! There shall be a downpour of rain; and you, O great hailstones, shall fall, and a violent wind shall tear apart [the whitewashed, flimsy wall].
12 Behold, when the wall is fallen, will you not be asked, Where is the coating with which you [prophets] daubed it?
13 Therefore thus says the Lord God: I will even rend it with a stormy wind in My wrath, and there shall be an overwhelming rain in My anger and great hailstones in wrath to destroy [that wall].
14 So will I break down the wall that you have daubed with whitewash and bring it down to the ground, so that its foundations will be exposed; when it falls, you will perish and be consumed in the midst of it. And you will know (understand and realize) that I am the Lord.
15 Thus will I accomplish My wrath upon the wall and upon those who have daubed it with whitewash, and I will say to you, The wall is no more, neither are they who daubed it,
16 The [false] prophets of Israel who prophesied deceitfully about Jerusalem, seeing visions of peace for her when there is no peace, says the Lord God.” (Ezekiel 13:9-16).
Jesus in Matthew 23:27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, pretenders (hypocrites)! For you are like tombs that have been whitewashed, which look beautiful on the outside but inside are full of dead men’s bones and everything impure.” Yes, from the outside we look like the greatest thing since cornflakes, but when you enter the sanctuaries of the churches around, you see the dead dry bones, and smell the decomposing flesh of the dead. We lift up people out of the pit to the top rim, place their hand on the edge and leave them their weak and helpless to get the rest of the way out. We have a lot of pity but no compassion! We have a lot of tenderness but no mercy! We need to put pity and compassion, tenderness and mercy back together and live the example that God gave us; Jesus Christ. We no longer imitate God, but we have become empty shells without any love, or any pity and compassion, or any tenderness and mercy!
Imitate God’s pity, compassion, tenderness, and mercy! Jesus was our example!