Ephesians 5:1-2: The Love Children Copy

Follow God’s example, therefore, as dearly loved children and walk in the way of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.

Ephesians 5:1-2 (NIV)

The Love Children Copy

Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God, and that is the original Paul hands the Ephesians to copy, as dearly loved children walking in the way of love. Children are dearly loved a long time before they start copying the people who love them. They pick up how a house does things without ever deciding to, and by the time someone points it out, it’s already how they stand at a counter and what they do with their hands while they wait.

The road down off the mountain has a grade sign at the top and eleven miles of switchbacks under it. The man driving the old car down it at four in the afternoon doesn’t trust its brakes. He keeps it in second the whole way and lets the engine hold it back, hands at the same two places on the wheel, the way he was driven down this road from the back seat before he had any opinion about brakes.

The walking Paul asks for starts outside the person doing it. Christ loved us and gave himself up, and it was finished before the Ephesians were ever told to imitate a thing. They belong to the household first. The imitation is what people in a household do with their hands, without being able to say afterward when they picked it up.

He is doing something now that he never once decided to do, and whoever taught him is in the car the whole way down.

Two miles along, the road is closed for gravel work and a detour sign sends him back the way he came. He turns around in a pullout with the mountain on one side and the drop on the other, and starts the eleven miles over in the other direction. He is in second gear before he thinks about it, going up a mountain that can’t run away with him.