Be Imitators of God

My Brothers and Sisters,

In Ephesians 5:1-2, Paul tells the Church in Ephesus that they ought to “be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children, and live a life of love…” Now that would be a pretty good place to put a period, or if you’re like me with great emotion when writing, an exclamation mark! But here’s the problem … or maybe better stated A problem … the issue isn’t so much the notion that we ought to love. The issue is more that we have no idea what love actually is and, by extension, have no clue how to perform it.

When on the subject of love, a subject we talked about in youth group last night, I’m reminded of one of the handful of musicals I like called Moulin Rouge. In the story, Ewan McGregor plays a whimsical playwright who was struck by a popular singer’s beauty so strongly that he began to serenade her. Though this play was set in Paris of 1900, the words he sang were an homage to many love songs from the 60’s to the 90’s. He began the lengthy duet, “Love is a many splendored thing! Love lifts us up where we belong! All you need is love!” The two then went on to reference 40 years of love songs, making a brilliant, while also cheesy, love song medley. When considering how much of our understanding of love comes from romantic relationships, movies, TV shows and, maybe worse, love songs, it’s alarming how much romance has hijacked the word”love!”

Obviously, this was not the definition of love that Paul intended. Furthermore, the Greek word that we call romantic love, “eros,” doesn’t even appear in the New Testament at all. That’s right, there are multiple words in the New Testament for love, family/close-friendship type love and help-someone-out type love, but the word used in Ephesians means something else entirely. While love songs sing of being fulfilled, satisfied, valued, accepted, healed, and cherished, the love Paul is talking about is somewhat opposite from all of that.

We as humans have always had a hard time understanding the command to love. John says that we have had this command from the beginning (1 John 2:7), but Jesus renewed the command with a caveat in John 13:34, “A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another.” This is exactly why Paul did not stop in Ephesians 5:2 by simply saying “live a life of love,” but he continued by saying, “just as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” It is our responsibility to live out the evidence of our faith in obedience to God’s word, to live a life of love by elevating others as more important than ourselves which was Christ’s attitude on the cross (Philippians 2:3-8).

The teens can all tell you by now what I call the catchphrase of Christianity, “It’s not about you; get over yourself.” It’s a bit rough around the edges, but once we work that understanding into our minds, it changes how we define obedience to God, how we even define love when speaking about God or people.

–To love no longer centers on being fulfilled but filling someone else’s needs.
–To love no longer centers on being cherished but cherishing those around us.

This is exactly where the dangers of love songs come into it. It feels good to make people feel good! We call that good feeling we get by loving on people “love” and equate the word with giving gifts, offering affirmations and turning frowns upside down, but these expressions aren’t love. Paul says in 1 Corinthians 13:3 (this entire chapter is famously about love), “If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but do not have love, I gain nothing.” Selfless love always motivates action, but not all actions are motivated by selfless love. We need to live lives of love, not lives that resemble love. We need to love others as more important than ourselves, not as a way to love ourselves. Jesus considered you and me to be more important than His well being when He humbled Himself and became obedient to death on the cross. We are meant to show the world what that love looks like, and in doing so, conduct them to the source of our love so that they can feel the real thing unfiltered. It’s hard, but let’s try with all our might to suffer and agonize, to contend for the faith, by living lives of REAL love.

In His Grip,
BJ