The beginning of Eph. 5 begins with a lofty call to imitate God. However, as soon as we hear this call to imitate God, how does our flesh want to strongly object?—“But we aren’t God, we are sinful, weak humans. Therefore, that’s an unfair standard to place upon us.”
To combat that, we must first note that this mimicking God concept is not isolated to this text alone. Paul has already taught in Eph. 4:24 that the new man has been created according to God’s righteousness and holiness. Listen also to Matt. 5:43 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ 44 But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, 45 so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven; for He causes His sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. 46 For if you love those who love you, what reward do you have? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? 47 If you greet only your brothers, what more are you doing than others? Do not even the Gentiles do the same? 48 Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect. Furthermore the Apostle Peter writes this in 1 Peter 1: 14 As obedient children, do not be conformed to the former lusts which were yours in your ignorance, 15 but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; 16 because it is written, “You shall be holy, for I am holy.” That last part is a quote from Leviticus, meaning that this concept of copying God was embedded as far back as the earliest books of the Bible.
So what do we do with these texts? Well, we can try to dumb them down and pretend the authors of Scripture were using these teachings to ONLY point us to our need for the imputation of Christ’s righteousness to gain acceptance in God’ s sight. Certainly they do that, but they also provide the standard of holiness for us to shoot for. Is this not what Paul testified to in Php. 3:12-14?—”I know that I’m not perfect and haven’t attained the level of obedience God expects, but that doesn’t stop me from pressing on towards that goal.” So Paul clearly knew he wasn’t living in perfection, but listen to what he says in 1 Cor. 11:1—Be imitators of me, just as I also am of Christ. Paul teaches here that he is imitating Christ, but he acknowledges elsewhere that he isn’t perfect. We can then conclude that imitating God doesn’t imply perfection. This will help us, like Paul, press on towards the goal of being imitators of Christ as His beloved children.