Our next section (5:1-20) deals with Godly Living. While the section will provide some specific ideas about what Godly Living entails, Paul starts us off with a very basic truth: Godly Living means living and loving like Christ.
Piety or Godliness, in Paul's definition, is very simple - it is about becoming becoming imitators of God in Christ and living a life of love.
But Paul gives us a two good reasons to do this:
1. We are not trying to live Godly lives to satisfy the whims of some stern deity in heaven. We are living Godly lives because we are "dearly loved"! Paul is using the same Greek word here as is used in Matthew 3:17 where God speaks at the baptism of Jesus and says "This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased..." Little boys imitate their fathers because they know their dads love them. We imitate God because we are "beloved."
2. We live a life of love because Christ loved us and led by example. He loved us and gave Himself as a sacrifice. When we live lives of love, we are simply small reflections of what He has already done for us.
Godly living is imitation and love. Our motivation is that we are much loved and Christ has already set the ultimate example.
The rest of this section really just spells out what that might look like...
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Theo Groeneveld theo@emmanuel.org.za
You can see past EmmDevs at http://emmdev.blogspot.com/
