Ephesians 5:1-2 ESV
Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.
The bible talks about imitating God which means to reproduce God’s character or behavior. This implies that God, has a character or behavioral pattern which believers can able to reproduce.
By the way, how can you imitate someone you don’t know?
How can you imitate someone you can’t predict?
The “flaws” in most believers conduct is mainly dependent on how they see God or understand God’s conduct.
Since we are to imitate God’s character, we will be seen reproducing what we know about God.
Hence a believer who see God as one who can curse and bless at the same time will have to imitate the same thing. ie. that fellow will curse and also bless because that’s how he knows God.
Another believer who knows God as one who kills will also imitate the same thing. That believer can kill.
But the question we need to ask is this, does God have DUAL character?. Is he negative and positive?.
Answer is, No! And I say a big NO! God has ONLY once character. He doesn’t change and cannot change.( Ref James 1;17)
In the eyewitness account, John will record the character of God in such way.
John 1:14-17 ESV
And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. (John bore witness about him, and cried out, “This was he of whom I said, ‘He who comes after me ranks before me, because he was before me.'”) For from his fullness we have all received, grace upon grace.
John record that He’s full of Grace. The word “glory” here means the “weight of something”. So here it is implied as “the weight of God” which is He’s full of GRACE and Truth. “Truth” also denoting the fact that he’s plain or knowable by his attribute or character.
Let’s look at Jesus’s testimony:
Matthew 5:41-43 ESV
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven. For he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust”.
Jesus made it clear that to be son’s of your father in heaven then the character you must demonstrated is LOVE.
John 13:34-35 ESV
“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another: just as I have loved you, you also are to love one another. By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.”
Jesus also points out the fact that Love is the only character that will cause all to know that one is of God.
Now we know that Scriptures teaches that Jesus is the image of God.
Colossians 1:15 ESV
“He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation”.
Hebrews 1:3 ESV
He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power. After making purification for sins, he sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high,
Jesus is the EXACT representation of God’s being. “Exact” meaning the precise or real. There couldn’t be any farther. Jesus is God’s character.
Therefore, whatever Jesus did not do/ can not do, God did not do and cannot so.
The epistles written by the Apostles never explained God outside Christ. From which we know God as not wicked or one who can do evil.
God is LOVE( 1 John 4;16 ESV)
Hear Paul’s testimony of Love as he explains what love means:
1 Corinthians 13:4, 6-8 ESV
“Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things. Love never ends. As for prophecies, they will pass away; as for tongues, they will cease; as for knowledge, it will pass away”
As we’ve read; love is kind and patient – it never said love is kind and murderous, or kills, or curse.. but love is all that which is good. And whatever love is explains God just as John has said already in 1John 4;16.
So to imitate God is walk in love, Because love is God’s character. Anyone who preachers a killing God, a cursing God , and God as capable of doing the evil that the Scriptures teaches that God forbids man to do( or forbids believers to do) is destroying the image of the father in his Son’s.
Such preachers are responsible for the evil character’s believer imitate.
Hope this helps?
Jesus is Lord, we win.
Victor Bauchi of RJCM.