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Ephesians 4:30-5:2
Fellow Dearly Loved Children of God,
What a wonderful thing it is to say that. You are all dearly loved children of God. But if you think it means what most people in the world think it means, you might not realize how wonderful it is.
Most people, when they hear the phrase children of God, think only of what we would call the first article. They assume that, if there is a God, then everyone must be his child. Interesting that they would think that even though most of them reject the Biblical account of creation. And, if we stopped at the first article, they would have a point. We confess that God made us, we are his children. He gave us our body and soul, eyes, ears and all our members, our minds and all our abilities. That’s true. But, as Bible believing Christians we know there is more to the story. Adam and Eve sinned. Their rebellious sinful nature has been passed on to everyone. When they had children, the Bible says that those children were born in their sinful image, not God’s perfect image. Ever since Adam and Eve sinned no one is born a dearly loved child of God. Everyone is born a child of sinful Adam, unworthy of God’s love.
So, how can I address you as dearly loved children of God? Because through the powerful word of God connected to the water of Baptism, you have been born again, not of perishable seed, but of imperishable. The Holy Spirit of God has worked the greatest miracle ever in your hearts. He has brought you from death to life, from darkness to light. He has moved and enabled you to see and trust that Jesus lived, died and rose again; that he has paid for all of your sins; that in him and him alone you have forgiveness and eternal life. At your Baptism God put his name on you and adopted you into his family making you an heir with his perfect Son, Jesus, of eternal life. In Jesus, even though you were born in sin and continue to sin every day, God sees you as his very own, dearly loved, child. I hope you know and appreciate how wonderful that is!
How many of you clomped around the house in your dad’s shoes, or stood at the mirror and pretended to shave with him? How many of you tried to wear your mom’s high heels, or got into her make up? If you love your parents, you want to be just like them. You imitate them. And we love our parents at least in part because of all they do for us. They not only gave us life, but they cared for us and fed us when we couldn’t do those things for ourselves. They give us hugs, read us stories, and even give us presents. They often sacrifice a lot for us, putting our needs ahead of their own.
Now consider your heavenly Father’s love for you. He gave you something your parents couldn’t give you, spiritual life. He sends his angels, who are more powerful than our parents, to watch over us night and day. And most importantly, he sacrificed his only Son Jesus to rescue us from a fate worse than death, the eternal fire of Hell. We love because he first loved us. And if we love him, and are thankful for all that he has done and continues to do for us, won’t we want to imitate him?
Assuming we want to imitate God because of all he has done for us, what does that look like?
The Apostle John reminds us that God is Love. Paul says that imitating God means walking, or another translation might be, conducting your life, in love. And as you might guess, the kind of love that John and Paul are talking about is not a feeling, it’s love like God’s that shows itself in action.
Jesus, the perfect child of God, imitated God’s love by giving himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice. He showed the same kind of unselfish, giving love that the Father showed by giving his one and only son for the sins of the world. He and the Father both showed self-sacrificing love, not for friends, but for enemies, for those who hated and blasphemed them. Being imitators of God means to show self-sacrificing, giving love to God and to our neighbor, even if our neighbor hates us.
So, Paul says, Get rid of every kind of bitterness, rage, anger, quarreling, and slander, along with every kind of malice. These are all the opposite of love, things that imitate Satan, not God.
Like Jesus, Paul starts with issues of the heart. Bitterness, hostile feelings toward others, rage and anger, allowed to continue to live in our hearts will come out. They might show themselves first in quarreling and slander. Quarrels with your spouse or your parents are an indication that something isn’t right in your heart. You are allowing it to be filled with bitterness and anger rather than God’s love for you and others. Saying negative things about others, either to hurt them or to make yourself feel superior, shows that you are allowing your heart to be filled with bitterness and jealousy instead of God’s love for you and others. And, if you continue to allow these negative things to fill your heart it will lead to every kind of malice, a Greek word in which we hear the English slang word, Kaka- so every kind of stinking bad thing.
But the worst thing is that such negative, unloving, feelings, words and actions grieve the Holy Spirit of God. The Holy Spirit makes your body HIs temple through faith. He is God’s seal, a deposit indicating that God considers you his child and that you are redeemed by Christ. He is the one who sanctified you, who works through the Word and Sacrament to strengthen and keep you in faith until the Day of Redemption, the day when Jesus comes to take you to live in the presence of the Father forever. So, the last thing we should want to do is the make the Holy Spirit sad, to make him want to leave. We do believe that the Bible clearly teaches that you can fall from faith.
Instead of things that grieve the Holy Spirit of God we want to think, say and do things that are pleasing to him. Paul suggests what some of those things are, be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one other, just as God in Christ has forgiven us. Nothing good can happen in our hearts or our lives until we know and appreciate the fact that God in Christ has forgiven us.
Remember, bitterness, jealousy, slander, all such unloving things are what come naturally, from our sinful nature. Just like getting rid of fat, you don’t get rid of these things by sitting and watching TV. It will take a plan and some effort. It will take reading Scripture and asking for God’s help to overcome our sinful desires. When we fall; when we realize that we have let bitterness fill our hearts; when we realize that we have said or done something displeasing to God and hurtful to our neighbor; when we see our sin, we confess it. We say, “Lord, you know what has been in my heart, you know what I have said and done. I have grieved your Holy Spirit. I am not worthy of your love and forgiveness. Don’t take your Holy Spirit from me. Forgive me for Jesus’ sake, and renew a right spirit within me. Help me to do your will.” Then listen to what God’s word says. God has forgiven you in Christ. His blood cleanses us from every sin. Jesus makes us smell good to God. Then come to the Sacrament and listen to Jesus himself say to you, this is my body given for you, this is my blood shed for you for the forgiveness of all your sins.
As long as we are living in this sinful world we will never completely get rid of bitterness, rage, anger, quarreling and slander. We still have a sinful nature and are influenced by the sinful world around us. But, the more we hear the word and think about how wonderful it is that God has made us his dear children; the more we receive the Sacrament and are personally assured that all our sins are forgiven because of what Christ has done for us, the more often we will be kind and compassionate, imitators of God our heavenly Father, forgiving others as he has forgiven us in Christ.
Be reminded each day that you are a dearly loved Child of God because of what Jesus has done for you.
