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This after all is but a homely way of expressing the more doctrinal passage:--
"Put on the new man which AFTER GOD is created" (Eph. 4: 24).
"The lie" finds its pattern in the devil:--
"I speak that which I have seen with My Father: and ye do that which ye have seen
with your father . . . . . Ye do the deeds of your father . . . . . If God were your Father, ye
would love Me, . . . . . Ye are of your father the devil . . . . . he is a liar and the father of
it" (i.e. "the lie") (John 8: 38-44).
It will be seen therefore that to fail to "put away the lie" gives "place to the devil",
while "putting on the new man" is doctrinally expressed by the words "after God" and is
practically shown by becoming "imitators of God".
The word "follower" in 5: 1 is mimetes. This word occurs seven times in the N.T.
and is therefore marked with the seal of spiritual perfection. The word will be recognized
as the source of our English word "mimic". This element of imitation is expressed in
verse 32, where we are exhorted to kindness and forgiveness, "Even as God for Christ's
sake hath forgiven you", and is carried forward into 5: 2 in the words, "As Christ also
hath loved us".
The love of Christ, the object of our imitation, is not an abstraction. The reader will
call to mind many passages speaking of both the Father and the Son, where the words
"loved and gave" come together. So here. Christ loved, and that love we are to imitate,
Christ loved and gave, and that kind of love we are to imitate. Christ loved and gave
Himself. This is the essence both of loving and of giving:--
"Praying us with much entreaty that we would receive the gift . . . . . not as we
expected, but first gave their own selves to the Lord, and to us . . . . ." (II Cor. 8: 4, 5).
The love we are to imitate, moreover, has further qualities. He gave Himself for us
. . . . . to God. All our loving and giving must be of this character. It is not merely
philanthropy or what is now called "charity", that might (though we doubt it) fulfil the
first clause "for us". It is, on the other hand, not that cold and lofty disdain of all things
human and kindly that may in self-deception be called an exclusive offering "to God".
We are sure God has no pleasure in monasteries or nunneries, neither in the hypocrite's
claim "It is Corban" (Mark 7: 11); the twofold offering "for us . . . . . to God" alone
satisfies the case.
Lastly, this love manifests itself in the giving of an offering and a sacrifice. It will be
seen that there is no contradiction of the Psalmist who said, "None of us can by any
means redeemed his brother", for redemption is by blood (Eph. 1: 7). Into that part of the
Saviour's work no man enters, but Paul knew what it was to fill up what was behind of
the afflictions of Christ in his flesh for the sake of the church, he knew what it was to be
offered upon the sacrifice and service of faith (Col. 1: 24 and Phil. 2: 17). Moreover,