If someone does something well that we are interested in doing, we seek to imitate how they do it.
To seek to imitate them is to honor (and, in effect, glorify) them, and the more time and effort we commit to imitating them the more we are honoring/glorifying them.
In Ephesians 5:1 we read, “…be imitators of God, as beloved children.”
The word translated “imitate” comes from the greek word indicating “the positive imitation that arises by admiring the pattern set by someone worthy of emulation, i.e. a mentor setting a proper example.”
So what does it mean to be an imitator of God?
In first John 1:5 we read that the essence of Jesus’ message was that God is light, which I take to mean, God is good.
Furthermore, I suggest that his goodness is defined by the essence of who he is — self-giving, self-sacrificial love. And it seems to me that God’s love and life are synonymous. In other words, to have God’s life in us is to be living self-giving, self-sacrificially loving lives and vice versa. And we could say that that is also what it means to have God’s word dwelling within us.
Consider the following from John 5:36. Note the relationship between Jesus’ references to the word of God, eternal life, and the love of God.
He says to the Pharisees, “I have testimony weightier than that of John. For the works that the Father has given me to finish—the very works that I am doing—testify that the Father has sent me. 37And the Father who sent me has himself testified concerning me. You have never heard his voice nor seen his form, 38nor does his word dwell in you, for you do not believe the one he sent. 39You study the Scriptures diligently because you think that in them you have eternal life. These are the very Scriptures that testify about me, 40yet you refuse to come to me to have life.
41“I do not accept glory from human beings, 42but I know you. I know that you do not have the love of God in your hearts.”
Hence, to seek to imitate God, we must have his word dwelling in us, which means we have his life in us, which means we have his love in our hearts, which means we share his goodness.
Conversely, to share God’s goodness means we have his love in our hearts, which means we have his life in us, which means we have his word dwelling in us, all of which is to say, we have “Christ in us the hope of glory.”
In other words, we become “imitators of God.” The message of our lives truly honors and glorifies God, and that fulfills our hoped for glory!
