Walking In Love

WALKING IN LOVE Spring Valley Mennonite; June 6, 2021; Ephesians 5:1-2 One of the most effective anti-smoking commercials ever made features a father and his young son who was about 4 years old. They are walking down path the dad is a few steps in front of his son. The dad stops to pick up a flat stone and skips it across a pond. The little boy in imitation picks up a rock and tosses it into the water. The father stoops to pick up a fallen leaf, and his son mimicks his actions. Then the dad pulls out a cigarette package, pulls out his last cigarette and lights up, then throws the package on the ground. The little boy picks up the package and looks inside. The implication is apparent. If there had been a cigarette inside, there was no doubt what the son would have done in imitation. For better or worse, our children imitate us. Wise parents realize this and strive to be good examples. I am so thankful for the good things my parents modeled by their lifestyle. I was never in doubt of their love and their love for God. Our text this morning tells us that as beloved children of God, we should imitate Him. Our best example is the Lord Jesus Christ. Our gift from God's Word this morning is further instruction in how to walk in a worthy manner, that introductory statement at the beginning of the practical "how to" section of Ephesians. The text we are exploring is the first two verses in chapter 5. Turn in your Bibles to Ephesians 5, and follow as I read these first two verses: (Read 1-2) I. RETURNING TO BASICS I love the story attributed to the legendary Vince Lombardi, coach of the Green Bay Packers. Disgusted by the performance of his team, he gathered them around and announced, "Today we are going to return to the basics," and holding up a ball, said, "Men, this is a football!" It is good for every believer to return to the "basics" of the Christian life, things easily overlooked in the complexity of modern life. In these verses, Paul gets down to a very basic and fundamental issue when he tells us to "Walk in Love." When Jesus was asked which of the Old Testament commandments was the most important, His answer was simple: love God first, then love your neighbor. We live in complex times and our lives are filled with issues and choices which are often perplexing. Even the Christian life has been made elaborately complicated. Yet Jesus said all the Law and the Prophets were able to be summarized in two principles: love God and love people. Of course, we know these two principles. If I had asked any adult here and even most of the children "What is the greatest commandment?" the right answer would have been given. One doesn't read very far in the Bible before finding the theme of God's love for mankind. What is the first verse we learned as children? "For God so loved the world..." I John 4:19: "We love, because He first loved us." Love is one of the most basic of God's characteristics. Yes, God is holy; He is all powerful; He is sovereign; He knows all things, but His attribute which relates most to us is His love. Why did God create mankind? Was it not in great part to have an object for His boundless love? We best express His life-changing power when we love Him supremely and love one another. 1 John 3:11: "For this is the message which you have heard from the beginning, that we should love one another." Yet our problem is not knowing we are to do it, but in actually doing it! We have something which seems to block our ability to love God and others. What is it that blocks our ability to love? To clarify the issue, let me pose a question: "What is the opposite of love?" We automatically might say "hate." Wrong answer: the opposite of love is selfishness. We find some answers in our text. II. NOW, WHAT IS IT I'M SUPPOSED TO DO? Verse 1 begins with "Therefore" which sends us back to the previous verses. What is the reason we are to be imitators of God and walking in love? In the verses previous to "Therefore" we were given seven signs of a growing, mature believer. These seven signs were descriptive of one who had "put off the old and put on the new", one who is continually renewing his mind, continually practicing the rejection the old ways of thinking and embracing the new thought patterns given by the Holy Spirit. Understand this is a continuing process in our lives. These changes are summarized by these two statements in 5:1-2: be imitators of God and walk in love. Once again, in a different form, we see the great commandment of Jesus: love God (by pursuing godliness) and love our neighbor (walk in love). The imitation of God is closely related to spiritual growth-a theological term for imitating God is "Sanctification", which simply is the word describing God's lifelong process of making us progressively more like Himself, of conforming us to the image of Christ. We are to grow in likeness to God, as modeled by the Lord Jesus Christ while here on earth. Through the new birth, we have been remade in the image of Christ, spiritually speaking. John 1:12 says that by receiving Christ we are given status of being Children of God. Verse 1 says we are to imitate God as beloved Children. And just as children resemble their parents, as children of God we carry the spiritual genetics of our Father! We have the capacity for godliness and the ability to walk in His steps. Again, as Jesus said, we express this love for God by keeping His commandments. We obey as beloved children seek to please their parents-such obedience is not coerced, not done gritting our teeth and doing it to escape punishment but is done in response to the love of our parents: "We love because He first loved us." We love God and we love one another. III. WE IMITATE CHRIST AS WE "WALK IN LOVE" "Walking" means "to live, or to conduct ourselves in a certain way." The verb tense tells us that this is to be done continually and habitually. To walk means that one is to make progress, otherwise we would be standing. Walking is more than a mental exercise; it is active. Love is to characterize our daily actions, and we should be making progress at it, getting better at doing it. But, if this is true, why is consistently demonstrating love such a struggle at times? Our confusion on how to love God and man consistently is hindered by our tendency to identify love with emotion. Love certainly does have an emotional component-I don't discount that for a moment! For instance, emotional love is what lends energy and excitement to a marriage relationship. Yet it is difficult to sustain the emotional component of love at a high level for very long. Emotions are a good servant, but a poor master. True love is based on commitment, not emotion. And while our love of God at times is expressed in an emotional response, Jesus told us, "If you love Me, you will keep My commandments." We demonstrate our love for God through obedience. Godliness is the product of obedience, or in another way of putting it, in imitating God. Likewise, our love for others is demonstrated by actions; there may be an emotional element, but often not. The problem is that our old nature does not naturally love. The love of the old nature is either "I love you because..." or "I love you if..." Old- nature-love is selfish and self-seeking. Of the three Greek words used for love (eros, phileo, and agapeo) the love referred to in verse 2 is Agape love. Agape is God's unselfish love. We are told to love others with God-style love! But the problem is that we cannot "agape" anyone on our own, only with God's enablement. Only as we put off the old and put on the new God-given life-rejecting the "I'll love you if" and "I love you because" of human loving and embracing the new "I love you...period"-as we renew our minds, surrendering to God's will and ways, and to the control of the indwelling Holy Spirit-then we can unselfishly love others. We can "agape" others. Drawing the two ideas together, imitating God and walking in love, we are to imitate how God loves. How does God love? God's initiates His love. He loves first, as Romans 5:8 states: "But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." God took the first step toward us with His love; this is the meaning behind the statement that "Christ was slain before the foundation of the earth." In eternity past, God decided to pay for the sin of the human race-- even before we existed! Such love is incomprehensible! How do we imitate God's love in this aspect? We are to take the first step toward loving people. Remember the notes on the playground in the third grade? A fellow would write "Do you like me?" on a note and give it to a friend who would deliver it to a gal he admired. He wasn't about to commit himself until he knew his interest would be returned! How many recesses were spent in this early exploration of relationships! Maybe you didn't do this is Kansas, but it was very popular in Missouri! Walking in agape love means that we take the first step toward loving people. We don't wait for them to indicate receptivity. "You mean we are to love even those people we don't like?" you ask. Jesus said we are to love even our enemies! Once again, our emotions trip us up. Perhaps someone has acted hatefully to us; we say, "They have hurt our feelings." God's Agape love takes the first step, as God did toward us "while we were still sinners, while we had offended Him by our sin. To walk in love is to be seeking out people and loving them toward Jesus. If we are going to be obedient to God, we will imitate this aspect of initiatory, reaching-out type of love. Another aspect is reaching out to strangers with God's compassionate love. We are receiving an offering toward two mission churches this morning. These congregations consist of people we do not know, but we give because God gives so bountifully to us. We love because He first loved us. The love Christ demonstrated is also sacrificial. So often we limit our actions of love to when it is convenient and when it doesn't cost us time or effort. But look at the latter part of verse 2: We are to love "Just as Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma." There is a deep truth here: Jesus said that one no one took His life from Him; our Lord gave up His life voluntarily. He turned His face toward Jerusalem, knowing He would be crucified. He purposefully confronted the Jewish leaders during that last week. He handed Himself over to the mob in the garden of Gethsemane. He didn't use His flawless logic and persuasive teaching during His trial, but was like a lamb led to slaughter, not opening His mouth. His love for us was seen in that He voluntarily sacrificed Himself for us. IV. AN OLD TESTAMENT PICTURE OF THE FRAGRANT AROMA OF SACRIFICE When we look at the words "offering and sacrifice and fragrant aroma", we realize Paul is painting a picture which goes back to the Tabernacle in the Wilderness and the sacrifices prescribed for the Jewish people. We find that God established five different offerings, two of which were required, the other three being voluntary. Of the required offerings, the sin offering was to be offered to atone for sin whenever an individual sinned against the holiness and sanctity of God. Violation of the Sabbath is an example. This offering also was given for the sins of the congregation of Israel during the required feasts of Passover, Pentecost, and Booths (or Ingathering) which followed the Day of Atonement. The second type of sacrifice was the trespass or guilt offering. This was for specific acts of sin against an individual where restitution was possible. Theft is an example. While both the sin and guilt offerings demonstrated that sin was costly, requiring the very best animal a person had, the guilt offering required restitution to the one offended . These first two sacrifices resulted in purification and cleansing by God based on the shedding of blood of an innocent animal. Both these offerings were for the purpose of restoring broken fellowship with God. The second class of sacrifices was voluntary: there were three of them: the peace offering, the burnt offering, and the meal or grain offering. These offerings were for the purpose of maintaining relationship with God. These three offerings were called "sweet savor offerings" because they pleased God. The morning and evening offerings on the altar and the incense offerings in the Temple/Tabernacle were of this class of offerings. It is notable that it is never said that the sin or trespass offerings were "fragrant or pleasing" to God, for God hates sin. By contrast, the whole burnt offering, the grain offerings, and the peace offerings (which included free-will and thank offerings) expressed devotion and dedication to the Lord. Other than the whole burnt offering, which was completely burnt on the altar, the other voluntary offerings (minus the blood and fat), the balance of the animal was to be eaten by the offeror, his family, and guests. It was a fellowship meal shared with God. One of the signs of summer is the smell of meat being cooked outside on the grill. There are few things that smell so good! Like the smell of the burning fat from the offerings of the people of Israel, our acts of love toward one another and toward others is like a fragrant odor pleasing to God. Bringing us back to "Walking in Love", our acts of love toward others are voluntary sacrifices to God and are a pleasing aroma to Him. Hebrews 13:16: "And do not neglect doing good and sharing; for with such sacrifices God is pleased. Loving others, putting them and their interests ahead of ourself is very difficult. I imagine going out to my pasture and picking out the finest bull I had for a burnt offering was not easy , but it pleased God immensely. Our acts of love will usually mean inconvenience to us. Walking in love will cost us time, energy and perhaps even cost us monetarily, as it did the Old Testament believer who offered a burnt offering. One more thing about the sacrificial aspect of love: these acts must be done with the right motive. 2 Corinthians 9:7: "Let each one do just as he has purposed in his heart; not grudgingly or under compulsion; for God loves a cheerful giver. We can leave here this morning determined that we will "walk in love." We can do all sorts of loving things but with a grudging attitude. Our heart won't be in it, and no benefit will accrue to ourselves. The other person will receive help, but that is all. A pastor paraphrased the first three verses of 1 Corinthians 13 with these words: "You may speak with great eloquence and even with speech like an angel, such speech is merely noise and rubbish! Or you could have such unusual faith so that you would be capable of ordering a mountain to move from one place to another, and it would obey the command. Such an astounding feat would mean nothing to God if love had not been your motive. Then, too, you could sell all of you possessions and use the proceeds to feed the world's hungry. Yet, such an admirable and benevolent act could be without favor in God's sight if love had not been your motive. Finally, you could sacrifice the ultimate that life has to offer. Youi could be so deeply committed to a worthy cause that you would give you body to be burned in martyrdom. However, if love was not your motive, your great act would be utterly wasted. In God's sight, it would profit nothing." God is not only concerned about what we do, but also with the why we do it. This is why we need the enablement of the Holy Spirit Who indwells each of we believers. As we yield control to the Holy Spirit, He loves through us. But Oh! The joy of loving others with pure hearts and motives! God pours out His joy into our hearts as our acts of love rise like sweet smelling incense to Him. As we love others, we are walking in imitation of God Who first loved us. 2