| Introduction The saying, "Love God and do whatever you please: for the soul trained in love to God will do nothing to offend the one who is beloved," is often attributed to the 5th century African pastor Augustine of Hippo. Though this saying is not found in this form in any of his writings, it is consistent with what he taught. More importantly, however, it is consistent with what the Scriptures teach. All the Old Testament Scriptures (and by implication the New Testament Scriptures since they flow from the Old Testament) can be summarized in the twin commandments to love. Mt. 22:34-40 – But when the Pharisees heard that He had silenced the Sadducees, they gathered together. 35 Then one of them, a lawyer, asked Him a question, testing Him, and saying, 36 "Teacher, which is the great commandment in the law?" 37 Jesus said to him, " 'You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.' 38 This is the first and great commandment. 39 And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' 40 On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." In our passage this morning, Paul brings to a close the line of thought he had started in 4:17 with the parallel exhortations to imitate God and walk in love. One could even say imitate God by walking in love. There is something incredibly liberating about walking in love. As Augustine is attributed to have said, "Love God and do whatever you please: for the soul trained in love to God will do nothing to offend the one who is beloved." I. The Overwhelming Task of Imitating God A. The idea that we are to imitate (mimic) God is beyond what we can handle or even comprehend. 1. How can we imitate the infinite, eternal, and unchangeable God? 2. Are we to go around creating new universes? B. I hope that it is obvious to you that Paul doesn't mean that we are to become little gods doing the same kinds of things that the Divine does. 1. The difficulty in conceiving imitating the Father is his incommunicable attributes. 2. We can't really imitate those: self-existence, eternality, all the omnis. 3. But the one way we can imitate God is in love. "To be sure, we cannot imitate God by creating a universe and caring for it day by day, or by devising a method of satisfying the demands of justice and of mercy in saving men from the pit into which they have cast themselves, or by raising the dear, or by creating a new heaven and earth. But in our own finite way we can and must imitate him; that is, we must copy his love." William Hendriksen C. We can imitate God's love because we have been overwhelmed by the love of Christ. II. The Overwhelming Love of Christ A. What enables us to love is that God in Christ has loved us. 1 Jn. 4:19 – We love because he first loved us. B. Christ loved us by giving. 1. It is easy to be generous with other people's stuff. 2. But Christ gave what was most costly to him: himself! 3. Phil. 2:5-8 tell us that Jesus didn't just give up things out of love for us – he gave up himself. Phil. 2:5-8 – Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus, 6 who, being in the form of God, did not consider it robbery to be equal with God, 7 but made Himself of no reputation, taking the form of a bondservant, and coming in the likeness of men. 8 And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the cross. C. And he gave himself as a sacrifice to cover (that's what atone means) our sins. 1. Christ made himself the one who stood in our place where the judgement of the Father on account of sins was concerned. 2. Isn't it what the offerings and sacrifices in the OT were all about, especially the sin offering and the burnt offering? a. An animal stood condemned in the place of the one who brought it to the priest? b. Sometimes the sinner would even lay his hands on the animal in order to symbolize the transfer of the guilty of sin to the animal. c. Then, in the case of the sin offerings and burnt offerings, the animal would be consumed by fire on the altar so that the smoke and smell would reach up to the heavens as the people stood by, hoping that God would accept their offering. d. All of that was to represent a greater sacrifice that was to come – there was nothing efficacious about the animal sacrifices. Heb. 9:11-15 – But Christ came as High Priest of the good things to come, with the greater and more perfect tabernacle not made with hands, that is, not of this creation. 12 Not with the blood of goats and calves, but with His own blood He entered the Most Holy Place once for all, having obtained eternal redemption. 13 For if the blood of bulls and goats and the ashes of a heifer, sprinkling the unclean, sanctifies for the purifying of the flesh, 14 how much more shall the blood of Christ, who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to God, cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the living God? 15 And for this reason He is the Mediator of the new covenant, by means of death, for the redemption of the transgressions under the first covenant, that those who are called may receive the promise of the eternal inheritance. 3. So, Christ offered himself in our place to do what no amount of animal sacrifice could do – cover all our sins under the forgiveness of God. 4. And God accepted that sacrifice. a. He was very pleased with Christ. b. Here Paul uses the imagery of God the Father being satisfied with the smell of Christ – sweet-smelling aroma. D. Christ's motivation was love: for his Father and for us. Jn. 13:1 – Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end. "It was the exercise of the highest conceivable love, which ought to influence all our conduct, that Christ delivered himself unto death, and offering and sacrifice well pleasing unto God." Charles Hodge E. It is because we have been overwhelmed by this love that we overwhelm others with love. III. Overwhelming Others with Christ's Love A. We imitate God by imitating Christ in his love for us. B. Two things about imitating God. 1. We are to imitate him as dearly loved children – dear children is not strong enough of a translation. a. The imagery here is of a child who loves his/her father and knows he loves him/her. b. He/she wants to copy what the father does and say. c. That's how we are to imitate the Father. d. But because we have a hard time conceiving of God the Father, Paul says imitate Christ for in imitating him you are imitating his Father. 2. In order to imitate God and Christ, we need to know them. Ps. 46:10 – Be still, and know that I am God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth! a. When I worked at HCS, we adopted a writing curriculum from the Institute for Excellence in Writing called Structure and Style. 1) We spent hours watching videos on VHS tapes of this guy with a funny looking haircut teaching us how to teach good writing. 2) The premise of the curriculum was that in order to produce good writing, one had to know what good writing is. 3) So, the curriculum would have the kids spend considerable amount of time imitating what has been considered good writing through the centuries (overall writing and reading comprehension scores improved considerably). b. This is true with any kind of imitation. 1) The subject of our imitation must be well-known to us. 2) If we are going to imitate the love of Christ, we need to be very well acquainted with it. "Spend time with God! Spend time with God in prayer. Spend time with God in Bible study. Spend time with God in worship. It is only by spending time with God that we become like God." James Boice C. Our passage allows us to think of the love of Christ for us and in turn our love for each other in four ways. a. Christ's love for us is a forgiving love, and our love for each other has been a forgiving love as well. b. But to be able to love others with this forgiving love, we must know the forgiveness of God in Christ. "Do you know that, really know it? So long as you think you are a pretty good person who does not need to be forgiven, you will naturally have a very hard time loving and forgiving others…. Nobody can act as badly toward us as we have acted toward God, and yet he has forgiven us…. If we see ourselves as forgiven sinners, the we will be set free to love others in imitation of God." James Boice c. Have you ever noticed how central to Paul's definition of love forgiveness is even though it is not mentioned by name? 1 Cor. 13:4-8a – Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5 does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6 does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7 bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. 8 Love never fails. a. Jesus gave himself for us and that's the pattern for our love for each other. b. Later on in this letter, Paul elaborates on what this giving love looks like. Eph. 5:25-27 – Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, 26 that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, 27 that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish. 1) It is a sanctifying love. 2) It is a love that points to God. c. This giving is sacrificial. 1) A love that is giving is not afraid of the cost of loving. 2) It is willing to sacrifice for those who are being loved. 3) It is not a love of convenience. 4) By telling us that our love for each must be sacrificial, Paul hints at the messiness of human relationships. a) Love sticks to each other in the midst of messiness. b) Love acknowledges that things are not tidy in relationships. c) Love that is sacrificial will persevere even in the midst of messy relationships in the Body of Christ. 3. Dying love – It is a love that says with John the Baptist, "I must decrease so that Christ can increase." a. Paul exhorts us to walk in love. b. Waking is a favorite metaphor for living – as you go about your life, do that in love. c. When you and I are filled with the love of God and life bumps into us, what spill out is the love of God. d. Loving, then, is not just something that we do at this time or that, but the way we live our lives. Gal. 2:20 – I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me. How can you love others with the same kind of love with which Christ loved you? Think for a couple of seconds of concrete ways to shower God's love to those around you. John Calvin says, "We ought to embrace each other with that love with which Christ has embraced us…." How are you doing that? · By being obedient to the Scriptures Gal. 5:13-14 – For you, brethren, have been called to liberty; only do not use liberty as an opportunity for the flesh, but through love serve one another. 14 For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself." o You might say, "Pastor, my life is already so busy. I can't add one more thing!" o This might be true, which means you need to divest something so that you can love people with your time. · Related to time, by praying for them. · Love people concretely with your words. · Love people concretely by providing for their temporal needs, Eph. 4:28.
We have been loved with an amazing love. "The love of God has been poured out in our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us…." We are filled to brim with Christ. We are jars of clay, pitchers, made to our that love into others.
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