LIFE IN THE FOOTSTEPS OF LOVE

Posted by Pastor Greg Allen on July 23, 2023 under 2023 |

Bethany Bible Church Sermon Message; July 23, 2023 from Ephesians 5:1-2

Theme: We are to imitate our heavenly Father by walking in love according to the pattern of our Lord Jesus.

(All Scripture is taken from The New King James Version, unless otherwise indicated).

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This morning, we begin to study from a new section of the Book of Ephesians. And the key theme of this new section is our ‘walk’.

If someone were to be able to trace the course of our footsteps throughout the day, those footsteps would reveal the character of our daily conduct in objective ways—the places we go, the things we do, the things we say, the values we prioritize, and even the things we think. And that’s what the focus of this new section of Ephesians is about. It’s about the character of our life as revealed by our daily conduct—where we place our feet—our ‘walk’.

Our ‘walk’ is a very important focus in our Christian life. Our Savior Jesus died on the cross for us, not only to save us from our sins, but also to transform our ‘walk’. In Ephesians 4:1, the apostle Paul summarizes the whole point of this letter—a letter about Jesus’ work for us—when he wrote;

I, therefore, the prisoner of the Lord, beseech you to walk worthy of the calling with which you were called … (Ephesians 4:1).

And in this new section—in Ephesians 5:1-17—he takes up the whole subject of what specifically that ‘worthy walk’ should look like as followers of Jesus. Read it along with me; and please pay attention to how often Paul makes reference to our ‘walk’ in it. He wrote;

Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma. But fornication and all uncleanness or covetousness, let it not even be named among you, as is fitting for saints; neither filthiness, nor foolish talking, nor coarse jesting, which are not fitting, but rather giving of thanks. For this you know, that no fornicator, unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, has any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and God. Let no one deceive you with empty words, for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the sons of disobedience. Therefore do not be partakers with them.

For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light (for the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness, righteousness, and truth), finding out what is acceptable to the Lord. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them. For it is shameful even to speak of those things which are done by them in secret. But all things that are exposed are made manifest by the light, for whatever makes manifest is light. Therefore He says:

“Awake, you who sleep,
Arise from the dead,
And Christ will give you light.”

See then that you walk circumspectly, not as fools but as wise, redeeming the time, because the days are evil. Therefore do not be unwise, but understand what the will of the Lord is (Ephesians 5:1-17).

You’ll notice that Paul specifically mentions our ‘walk’ in Christ three times in this passage—once in verse 2, where we’re told to “walk in love”; once in verse 8, where we’re told, “Walk as children of light”; and once in verse 15, where we’re told to ‘walk circumspectly’ (that is, carefully and with our eyes wide open).

He mentions some things along the way that might seem very controversial to people today. But this all reminds us that a genuine, saving relationship with Jesus Christ by faith ought to—and in fact must—result in a lifestyle that is markedly distinct from the ways of this fallen world. If we truly have been saved by God’s grace through faith in Jesus, then it must show itself in a holy ‘walk’. You can put it this way: if everything that the apostle Paul tells us in Ephesians 1-3 is true of us, then everything that he goes on to say in Ephesians 4-6 ought also to become true of us—and that we must ‘walk worthy of the calling with which we were called’.

If you read through it carefully, you’ll see that the way this passage presents the matter to us is through four basic divisions: In the second division, in verses 3-7, we’re taught to ‘walk in purity’; in the third in verses 8-14, we’re taught to ‘walk in light’; and in the fourth in verses 15-17, we’re taught to ‘walk in wisdom’—and all so that the people in the watching world around us will know that we are genuine children of our heavenly Father through faith in Jesus His Son.

And notice how it begins in the first division—which is what we’ll look at today. I love how it sets the tone for all that follows. It begins by urging us—in verses 1-2—to ‘walk in love’. Paul says;

Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love, as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma (vv. 1-2).

The things that this new section sets before us may—at certain points—seem harsh. But it’s all in the context of the call to walk in the pathway of love that God the Father has set for us through His Son Jesus. It’s very important that we keep our eyes on Jesus as we learn from it.

* * * * * * * * * *

Now; as I began studying this passage, my mind kept going back to something that the Lord Jesus once said. In Matthew 24, He was talking about the prophetic promises concerning the future—and concerning the time of His second coming. He talked about all of the things that would characterize the world before that time comes—sorrows, tribulations, persecutions, false prophets arising, nations rising against nations, earthquakes and famines and pestilences … dreadful things! And in verse12, He said,

“And because lawlessness will abound, the love of many will grow cold” (Matthew 24:12).

I don’t have the wisdom or insight to say for sure whether these are the end-times. But even so, doesn’t that indeed sound very much like the times in which we’re living? All sense of ‘law-and-order’, it seems, is being pushed aside. People have grown increasingly to be a ‘law’ unto themselves. The rules and commandments that God has given us for an orderly life are often mocked and rejected; and people are choosing to define ‘right and wrong’ according to their own wishes and desires. And as a result, the love of many in this world truly seems to be growing colder and colder.

That’s the kind of world that you and I—dear brothers and sisters—are living in right now. And yet, right after Jesus said those words about love growing cold, He then said—in verse 13; “But he who endures to the end shall be saved.” And it seems to me that this means that, in such times as these, the true followers of Jesus are to stand out by the fact that they continue to exhibit—among other things—genuine, fervent, sacrificial love. Jesus even once said;

“By this all will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35).

So; that shows us that these opening words in this new section are very important. As Jesus’ followers in this world, we must be characterized by a ‘walk in love’.

But as soon as I say that, I also have to be honest with you and admit that I’m not where I should be in all of this. This passage convicts me deeply. I know that, as a follower of Jesus, I’m to put this call to ‘walk in love’ into daily practice. I’m not to just have mere feelings of affection for others. Rather, I’m to love as the Lord Jesus loved—in sacrificial, self-giving, active ways. But when the opportunities come to do so, I often find myself drawing back. There are times when I say to someone in need, “Is there anything I can do to help?”; while secretly hoping that they’ll say, “no”. There are times when love would require that I make that call to someone who is hurting; but secretly, would prefer not to. There are times when love requires that I share something I have with someone in need; while selfishly preferring to keep it for myself if I can. Jesus’ kind of love requires active sacrifice; and all too often, I’d rather not put my feet where His kind of love would require that I walk. If I’m not careful, I can allow ‘love’ to grow ‘cold’ in me.

I know that I need to be transformed in this area of life. And that’s why keeping my eyes on the crucified and risen Lord Jesus—as He walks before me and beckons me to follow in His steps—helps to change my heart. The apostle John put it this way in his first letter:

By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoever has this world’s goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him? My little children, let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth (1 John 3:16-18).

I’m asking the Lord to transform me in my daily walk. I hope you’ll join me in doing so. And I want to begin with what these first two verses teach us—that we are to imitate our heavenly Father by walking in love according to the pattern of our Lord Jesus.

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Now; the first thing that these two verses say is …

1. IMITATE YOUR HEAVENLY FATHER.

Do you notice how it begins? It begins with the word “Therefore …”; saying, “Therefore be imitators of God as dear children.” That word “Therefore” points our attention back to what Paul had just written. He had written about a whole pattern for life change—a whole pattern of ‘putting off’ the old man of sin, being renewed in the spirit of our minds, and ‘putting on’ the man made new in Christ. In verses 25-32, Paul elaborated on that three-fold pattern when he wrote;

Therefore, putting away lying, “Let each one of you speak truth with his neighbor,” for we are members of one another. “Be angry, and do not sin”: do not let the sun go down on your wrath, nor give place to the devil. Let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good, that he may have something to give him who has need. Let no corrupt word proceed out of your mouth, but what is good for necessary edification, that it may impart grace to the hearers. And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. Let all bitterness, wrath, anger, clamor, and evil speaking be put away from you, with all malice. And be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, even as God in Christ forgave you (Ephesians 4:22-32).

If you read through those verses carefully, you soon realize that they’re calling us to behave in the ways that our Father behaves. He is the God of truth; and we’re to imitate Him by speaking truth to one another. He is a God of justice and mercy; and we’re to imitate Him by being angry—and not sinning. He is a God of integrity and generosity; and we’re to imitate Him by ceasing to steal, and by learning to give instead. He is a God of purity and holiness; and we’re to imitate Him by no longer letting impure and unedifying words come out of our mouths. And He is a God of kindness and grace; and we’re to imitate Him by putting away all harshness and malice—and being kind, tenderhearted, and forgiving. Really, what Paul tells us in Ephesians 5:1 is a summary of all that he has told us in Ephesians 4:25-32 … put into action by imitating our Father.

Now; you and I might read that and think, “Well; how can that even be possible? How could such an imperfect person as me ever hope to ‘imitate’ God the Father?” But that’s why the things that have been taught to us in Chapters 1-3 are so important. They show us that we have been chosen by God and adopted to Him as His own; and that Jesus has washed us clean of our sins by His own blood, and has shared all the richness of His inheritance with us; and that the Holy Spirit now indwells us to guarantee us for eternal glory, and to live the life of Jesus in us. We don’t imitate the Father in our own power. The whole Trinity—God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit—works in us to help us to behave like our Father.

And look at how we’re to do this. It’s “as dear children”—or as it would be better translated, “as beloved children”. A beloved child is so connected to his or her father that he or she can’t help but behave like him. And we are the beloved children of God the Father—“accepted”, as it tells us in Ephesians 1:6, “in the Beloved”; that is, the Lord Jesus Himself. We now have the same depth of relationship with the heavenly Father as our Lord Jesus has. We are now the Father’s adopted and “beloved” children—just as Jesus is the heavenly Father’s beloved Son. And our Father is, thus, the perfect and appropriate example for us to follow.

Did you know that the Lord Jesus was always careful to imitate the heavenly Father? He once said;

“Most assuredly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, but what He sees the Father do; for whatever He does, the Son also does in like manner” (John 5:19).

If anyone living on earth wanted to know what the Father was like, all they had to do was look at Jesus; because Jesus only did on earth what pleased the Father. And like Jesus—trusting in His help; knowing that we are destined to share in His heavenly glory forever—we are also to now imitate our Father. As the apostle Peter put it in 1 Peter 1:13-16;

Therefore gird up the loins of your mind, be sober, and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the revelation of Jesus Christ; as obedient children, not conforming yourselves to the former lusts, as in your ignorance; but as He who called you is holy, you also be holy in all your conduct, because it is written, “Be holy, for I am holy” (1 Peter 1:13-16).

* * * * * * * * * *

So then; in keeping with the call to imitate our loving Father, Paul next says to …

2. WALK IN LOVE.

Those two things go together. Paul said in verses 1-2, “Therefore be imitators of God as dear children. And walk in love …”

Now; I don’t know whether or not you put much thought into ‘walking’. It’s a process that is very much ‘automatic’ to most of us. But it actually involves a remarkable decision-making process that (forgive the pun) can only be performed ‘one step at a time’. You have to keep one foot on the ground to stabilize yourself while you lift the other foot in the air and make a decision where to place it. Once you’ve placed that second foot down, you’ve made something of a commitment to that decision; because then, you have to shift your weight onto that second foot, while you again lift the first. Then, you make another decision of where to put that first foot; and once you’ve committed to that decision, you then repeat the process.

Physical walking is a series of ‘decisions’. It’s a process that we hardly ever have to think about. But I suggest that it’s a great analogy for what it means to ‘walk in love’. You see; it would seem like an impossible task to say, “Be imitators of God as dear children, and live in a constant, continual, unending state of love all the time …” That wouldn’t be like ‘walking’. It would be something more like ‘floating’. But the Holy Spirit has led the apostle Paul to put it in the form of the command to ‘walk in love’; and that breaks it down to the level of individual decisions of life in which you and I can trust God.

All day long—and throughout the course of our lives—we encounter situations that require decisions from us. They are like opportunities that require us to ‘place our foot’ somewhere in our interactions with other people—and then, to ‘place our other foot’ somewhere else after that. We can always be confident that those situations are under the sovereign hand of our heavenly Father for His good purposes; because it tells us in Ephesians 2:10;

For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them (Ephesians 2:10).

And so; to ‘walk in love’ would mean that we break it all down into these individual decisions of life and say, “Dear heavenly Father; I’m confronted with this situation, or with this need, or with this encounter with this particular person under these particular circumstances. I affirm that this has come to me from Your sovereign hand; and all so that I might ‘work’ Your ‘good works’ in it. I confess that I feel that old ‘selfish’ impulse arising again; and I feel myself resisting the demands of love. But help me to see what ‘imitating You’ would mean, right now, in this specific situation. Where should I place my foot in this next step—in obedience to You—so that I truly ‘walk in love’ as You would have me walk?”

* * * * * * * * * *

And the wonderful thing is, dear brothers and sisters, that we’re not left to our own understanding in defining what ‘love’ would mean in those different situations of life. The last thing that the apostle Paul urges us to do in these two verses is to …

3. LOOK TO THE EXAMPLE SET BY JESUS.

Paul writes in verse 2 that we are to ‘walk’ in love “as Christ also has loved us and given Himself for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling aroma”.

The Son of God has demonstrated the greatest possible love for us in the fact that He left heavenly glory, was born into the human family as one of us, took the full guilt of our sin upon Himself, and died in our place. His sacrifice for us was the greatest demonstration of love that the universe has ever seen; because He went the furthest distance, to pay the highest price, for the most unworthy of people, to bring them with Himself to the highest level of glory. We who have been redeemed by His act of love have the greatest example of what it means to ‘walk in love’.

And do you notice that we’re told that He gave Himself for us as “an offering and a sacrifice” to God? Those two words seem like they’re saying the same thing; but there’s an important difference between them. In the original language, the word for “offering” literally means “a bringing to”. It’s a word that describes the act of bringing the offering before God—just as the priest of the Old Testament would bring an animal to the temple for an offering. And the second word—translated as “sacrifice”—refers to the thing that is being offered and placed on the altar. And Jesus is both things for us. He is both the “offering” and the “sacrifice”. The matchless love of Jesus for us is shown to us in the fact that He not only brought the atoning offering on our behalf for our sins, but was Himself the acceptable sacrifice that was offered!

And do you notice further that Jesus gave Himself for us as an offering and a sacrifice to God “for a sweet-smelling aroma”? That phrase points our attention back to the Old Testament instructions about the offerings God commanded the Jewish people through Moses. In Leviticus 1, for example, Moses was given instructions about how the priest was to offer the burnt offering of the herd. A ‘burnt offering’ was to express complete dedication to God. And verse 9 tells us;

“And the priest shall burn all on the altar as a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, a sweet aroma to the Lord” (Leviticus 1:9).

The same thing is said, in verse 13, about the burnt offering of the flock;

“Then the priest shall bring it all and burn it on the altar; it is a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, a sweet aroma to the Lord” (v. 13).

And the same thing is said, in verse 17, about the offering of a turtle dove or a young pigeon;

“It is a burnt sacrifice, an offering made by fire, a sweet aroma to the Lord” (v. 17).

If you read through Leviticus 1-8, you’ll find that the same kind of thing is said about all the offerings that God had ordained. They were a ‘sweet aroma’ to the Lord. And what is meant by that phrase is that these offerings satisfied God’s desire for both justice and mercy. Sin is atoned for, and His people are forgiven, and it is sweet and satisfying to Him. And that’s what Jesus gave Himself to be for us—a sweet-smelling aroma of atonement to God the Father in payment for our sins; and all according to the will of the Father. As it tells us in Galatians 1:3-5;

Grace to you and peace from God the Father and our Lord Jesus Christ, who gave Himself for our sins, that He might deliver us from this present evil age, according to the will of our God and Father, to whom be glory forever and ever. Amen (Galatians 1:3-5).

And I ask you; can there be a greater example of love for us to look to than that? So long as we keep our eyes on Jesus—who actively, and willingly, and self-sacrificially gave Himself for us in obedience to the Father—we’ll never have to wonder what it means to ‘walk in love’.

* * * * * * * * * *

So then; this is our call, dear brothers and sisters. We’re to imitate our Father, and walk in love … just as Jesus has set the pattern of that love before us. I am imperfect in keeping this command—and so are you. But let’s commit ourselves to keep our eyes on Jesus; and let the Holy Spirit transform us by that gaze. As it says in 1 John 4:7-11;

Beloved, let us love one another, for love is of God; and everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another (1 John 4:7-11).

AE