The sermon continues a long-running expository series through Ephesians, now arriving at chapter 5, and is preached on a day set aside for baptism, confirmation, and church attestation for roughly twenty-two members. The preacher frames the whole message around two paired texts: Ephesians 1:5-7, which describes what God has done for believers, and Ephesians 5:1-2, which describes how believers are therefore to live. The argument is that the entire letter moves from indicative to imperative — the first three chapters unfold the doctrine of what God has accomplished in Christ, and from chapter 4 onward Paul turns to application, to how believers must live in light of that grace.

Ephesians 1:5-7 establishes the foundation: God, in love, predestined believers for adoption as his children through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace. Believers were once children of darkness and objects of wrath, but through Christ's blood they receive redemption and the forgiveness of their trespasses, according to the riches of God's grace. This adoption is not a right but an undeserved gift — Christ is the eternal Son by nature, while believers become sons and daughters only through adoption grounded in his atoning death. The sermon draws a direct line from this grace to the command that opens chapter 5: "Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children, and live a life of love." The "therefore" connects back explicitly to Ephesians 4:32, forgive one another as God in Christ forgave you, showing that the call to imitate God is the necessary consequence of having received his forgiveness, not an isolated moral demand.

To be imitators of God, the sermon argues, is not merely external obedience but a matter of identity — humanity was created in God's image, meant to reflect him to the world, but fell into rebellion; now, restored as adopted children through Christ, believers are called to bear a family resemblance to their Father, the way a child's gait or smile reveals whose child he is. The specific content of that imitation is love: "live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." The sermon then unpacks five dimensions of what it means that Christ "gave himself up for us," drawing them out as both the content of Christ's love and the pattern believers are called to imitate. First, Christ gave himself willingly — citing John 10:15 and 18, no one takes his life from him, but he lays it down of his own accord. Second, he did so in submission to the Father's will, receiving this charge from the Father, echoed in Romans 8:32, "he did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all." Third, giving himself up meant entering real suffering and death, as Christ himself predicted in Mark 10:33-34, and as seen in his anguish in Gethsemane and his cry of dereliction on the cross — the eternally beloved Son bearing the Father's wrath against sin. Fourth, he gave himself for the church corporately (Ephesians 5:25) and for each believer individually (Galatians 2:20, "I have been crucified with Christ... who loved me and gave himself for me") — the sermon insists Christian faith is neither purely individualistic nor purely corporate, but both personal union with Christ and shared life within his body. Fifth, he gave himself to reconcile believers to God and to one another across ethnic and linguistic divisions, drawing on Ephesians 2:13-14 and 16-18, breaking down the dividing wall of hostility so that all have access to the Father through one Spirit.

Each of these five meanings becomes an implication for how believers must now live in love: willingly, not under compulsion; in obedience to God's will; at real cost, since love makes the heart vulnerable (the sermon quotes C.S. Lewis on the risk of loving rather than sealing up the heart), illustrated by an appeal to prioritize corporate prayer meetings as an expression of love for God and the church; sacrificially for others, both the church as a whole and individual brothers and sisters; and toward reconciliation, since love among believers is, per Francis Schaeffer, the highest apologetic — the mark by which the world recognizes Christ's disciples. The sermon closes by charging those being baptized, confirmed, and attested that day to hold fast to this truth, that having received such costly love they are now called, and enabled, to imitate it.

Bible Verses Used

• Ephesians 1:5-7: Establishes the foundation of adoption, redemption, and forgiveness of sins through Christ's blood, grounding the command to imitate God.

• Ephesians 4:32: The preceding command to forgive one another as God forgave in Christ, logically connected by "therefore" to the call to be imitators of God.

• Ephesians 5:1-2: The sermon's main text — the call to imitate God as beloved children and live a life of love as Christ loved and gave himself up as a sacrifice.

• John 10:15,18: Shows Christ laying down his life willingly and by his own authority, not by compulsion.

• Romans 8:32: Parallels the Father's giving up of the Son for believers, showing the unity of the Father's and Son's will in the atonement.

• Mark 10:33-34: Christ's own prediction of his suffering, mockery, and death, showing he knowingly gave himself into real suffering.

• Ephesians 5:25: Christ's love for and self-giving to the church corporately, as the pattern for love within the church.

• Galatians 2:20: Christ's self-giving for the individual believer personally, balancing the corporate and personal dimensions of faith.

• Ephesians 2:13-14,16-18: Christ's death reconciling believers to God and to one another across former hostilities, giving unified access to the Father.

• 1 John 3:1-2: Cited to marvel at the greatness of the Father's love in calling believers his children.