Ephesians 4:25-5:2
As a teenager, I was an admirer of Robert Kennedy, the Senator, former Attorney General, and brother of President John Kennedy. After he was assassinated in June, 1968, I remember reading two of his friends say of him, “He was always in a state of becoming.”
I wonder if the same thing could be said of you and me. Are we in a state of becoming...someone more, someone finer, someone better, or someone stronger in our relationship with the God we meet in Jesus Christ?
It’s my observation of life that we're either growing or we're dying. We’re either engaged in a process of living or we’re in what I call “suicidal ruts.” (A rut, I’ll remind you, is nothing more than a grave with the ends kicked out.) Are we in a state of becoming?
This is an especially important question for those of us who are followers of Jesus Christ. The section of Scripture from which our Bible lesson for this morning is taken, starting with the eight verses immediately preceding our lesson, is a place where Paul is contrasting the old life that the Gentile converts had lived before they had come to follow Jesus and the new life in Christ they were now called and privileged to live along with Jewish believers in Christ. “Don’t fall into the old ruts!” Paul is saying. “Live the new life that Jesus died and rose to give to His people. Eugene Peterson renders Paul’s words of admonition that come right before our lesson, in this way:
And so I insist—and God backs me up on this—that there be no going along with the crowd, the empty-headed, mindless crowd. They've refused for so long to deal with God that they've lost touch not only with God but with reality itself. They can't think straight anymore...Then comes the verses that make up our lesson, the whole theme of which comes in the next-to-last verse for today. “Therefore,” Paul tells us, “be imitators of God.” The word translated as imitators is, in the original Greek, mimetes, from which we get not only imitate in English, but also mimic. When I was a boy, I can remember consciously imitating my dad. I thought that the way he stood and the way he sat and walked were the right ways to do those things. I wanted to be like my dad. And when I was learning to write, I did that by imitation: I put my hand on a pencil, one of those #3's that were the size of a horse's leg, and my mother would put her hand on top of mine and guide my writing. Later, I imitated the movements that she had taken my hand through for forming my letters. We learn by imitation. Paul says that Christians who are in the state of becoming all that Jesus Christ has freed them to be imitate or mimic God, our Father.
But that's no life for you. You learned Christ! My assumption is that you have paid careful attention to him, been well instructed in the truth precisely as we have it in Jesus. Since, then, we do not have the excuse of ignorance, everything—and I do mean everything—connected with that old way of life has to go. It's rotten through and through. Get rid of it! And then take on an entirely new way of life—a God-fashioned life, a life renewed from the inside and working itself into your conduct as God accurately reproduces his character in you.
Paul helps us to see what that means in a series of imperative statements, most of which are made up of three elements:
Listen to those imperative statements again, this time in Eugene Peterson’s translation:
...no more lies, no more pretense. Tell your neighbor the truth. In Christ's body we're all connected to each other, after all. When you lie to others, you end up lying to yourself.Tell the truth, get past your anger, make a living so that you can help others, use your words to encourage people, and forgive each other. There probably is no major religion in the world and no ethical system that would have any disagreement with those imperatives. But there’s one thing that makes Paul’s list of ethical behaviors uniquely Christian.
Go ahead and be angry. You do well to be angry—but don't use your anger as fuel for revenge. And don't stay angry. Don't go to bed angry. Don't give the Devil that kind of foothold in your life.
Did you use to make ends meet by stealing? Well, no more! Get an honest job so that you can help others who can't work.
Watch the way you talk. Let nothing foul or dirty come out of your mouth. Say only what helps, each word a gift. Don't grieve God. Don't break his heart. His Holy Spirit, moving and breathing in you, is the most intimate part of your life, making you fit for himself. Don't take such a gift for granted.
Make a clean break with all cutting, backbiting, profane talk. Be gentle with one another, sensitive. Forgive one another as quickly and thoroughly as God in Christ forgave you.
One of the most popular non-Christian views of God is the one that sees Him as “the cosmic watchmaker.” People who hold to this idea of God think that God is like the maker of a watch. He uses ingenuity and creativity in giving life to His creatures, including human beings. But these people say that after their version of God finishes the watch and winds it up, He leaves creation to its own devices. This idea of God is appealing to those who can't tolerate any ambiguity about life or mystery in God. They can't reconcile the notion of a loving, powerful God with the existence of bad things in the world.
But the God Who has revealed Himself through the ages and is talked about in the Bible is no cosmic watchmaker. This God cares so much about us that, after we human beings had brought shame and pain on ourselves by rebelling against Him, God didn’t give up on us. He even became one of us to win us back. One of my favorite passages in the New Testament, found in the book of Philippians, is thought to be the words to a song the early Christians sang together when they worshiped:
Let the same mind be in you that was in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, being born in human likeness. And being found in human form, he humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death— even death on a cross. Therefore God also highly exalted him and gave him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.In Jesus Christ, we see that the God Who made this universe isn’t disconnected from us. He isn't afraid to get his uniform dirty in order to love us right where we are. Quite the opposite!
While channel-surfing on Saturday, I came across a scene from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban. I’ve never read the book or seen the whole movie. But the scene seemed to convey something of the truth about God I’m talking about. Harry and his friend Hermione were surveilling a cottage in which another Harry and another Hermione were talking. For some reason, the Hermione outside the cottage tossed a stone through the open window. It hit the other Harry in the back of the head. But when it happened, the Harry on the outside rubbed his head and told Hermione, “That hurt!”
That's akin to God's sense of identity with us. God is so invested in us that when we hurt, He hurts. When we rejoice, He rejoices. When we die, He mourns. When we believe in the Son, Jesus, we rise.
Knowing this about God, ot should come as no surprise then that when we become children of God through Jesus Christ, we gain more than just a Father in heaven. We also gain a family.
That's where our lesson with all its ethical imperatives comes in. Of course, Christians are called to be forthright with non-Christians, as well as considerate, loving and so on. But our lesson is really about how we in God's family, the Church, are to live toward one another. By faith, we're part of this family. Now, Paul says, live as one family.
Earlier in the book of Ephesians, you’ll remember, Paul called the Church, “the Body of Christ.” He said that all believers in Jesus Christ have been made members of each other. Becoming imitators of God means so identifying with one another that we recognize that when we hurt another member of Christ’s body through self-serving deception, discouraging words, the failure to forgive, and so on, we really wound ourselves. We wound this single Body of Christ. By the same token, when we forgive each other, encourage each other, pray for one another, and offer our lives in service to Christ together, God blesses all of us. We build up the Body of Christ so that it can reach out authentically with the life-changing news of Jesus' death and resurrection.
This past week, I needed to share something with the Church Council. It was something about which I felt badly, a failed attempt by me to be reconciled to another Christian. After I’d said my piece, I was surprised--although I shouldn’t have been--to discover how supportive and encouraging the Council members were. As stupid as it may sound, I, who am always encouraging others to share their prayer needs with the congregation, had been a bit embarrassed about having asked others for their prayers. But Carol, one of our Council members, put things in perspective when she said, “Mark’s a member of this congregation, too. He should be able to ask for prayer just like the rest of us.” When I told my wife--who happens to be the real theologian of the family--about it later, she said, “She's right. After all, Mark, we’re all part of one family.”
We Christians, like the God we imitate, are called, in Paul’s words, to “live in love, as Christ loved us and gave Himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” We’re called to be part of the family that Jesus’ death and resurrection made possible.
When I look at my life, I see many times when I’ve failed to love Christ or His Church. More often than I care to remember, I’ve put myself first and acted as though I were an independent agent. But no believer in Jesus Christ is an independent agent. We belong to each other.
Think of this stunning fact: The Church is the only place God has created for the purpose of helping us all take the baby steps we need to take toward becoming like the God Who sets us free sin and death to live with Him forever.
The Church is the Body of Christ. Let’s live as though we really believed that’s true.
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