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.--Ephesians 5:1-2
To My Beloved Daughters in Him...
How simple this one is! We have no greater purpose than to imitate our Lord. We are to grow in the likeness of Him! He is our Father and we are to resemble Him more and more! Our lives...our walk and our talk should be modeled after our Jesus! We are to be holy, just as He is holy.
For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.--Romans 8:29
But we all, with unveiled face, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, just as by the Spirit of the Lord.--2nd Corinthians 3:18
Christ walked in love and exampled the height of self-sacrificing love by taking our sin upon Himself...giving up His very life so that we might be redeemed from the penalty and power of sin.
But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us. Much more then, having now been justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him. For if when we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life.--Romans 5:8-10
Christ offering of Himself on our behalf was a sweet smelling aroma to His Father in Heaven. "This is my Beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." Christ demonstrated in the most perfect way possible God's divine love for us.
This is the model that we are to follow. This is the kind of love we are to walk in daily. The kind of love that is not concerned with self. Christ did not consider His equality with God something to be grasped...He did nothing from selfish ambition or conceit but in lowliness of mind esteemed others as better than Himself. When we try to hold on to anything but our God and His will for us, we are seeking not His will but our own. The result is sin. We are to look to Him and only to Him for our strength and our direction because our goal is not the furtherance of what we want, but the furtherance of what our Father wants. Christ laid all aside in fulfilling His Father's will and by doing that met each one of us at our point of need. (salvation) Our goal then, like Christ, is to shine our lights here to glorify our God and thereby meet others at their point of need. Our minds and hearts are bowed to Him in grateful submission and whatever He asks we gladly do.
