NOTES for Eph 5:1-2

The words of the apostle Paul may seem strange. Can a person imitate God, the Almighty, All-Knowing One who surpasses every human understanding? God, who created heaven and earth? But in the second verse the apostle Paul explains that he is speaking about another kind of imitation.

Would a son who wants to be like his father copy the color of his eyes, his height, his shoe size - inborn qualities that belong to his father's nature? Of course not: he would try to imitate his character, his way of thinking and acting, the way his father builds his relationships with other people...

So it is with our imitation of God: the apostle calls us to love others as our Heavenly Father loves us. The Lord Jesus, the Son of God, in His earthly self-emptying, says that whoever has seen Him has seen the Father - but not because He imitates His invisibility or boundlessness. The main thing in God is love, and it is precisely in this that we can become like Him as beloved children, as His beloved Son does.

When speaking about spiritual life, Paul never tires of repeating that the fullness of the Kingdom is incompatible with any sin (vv. 3-7). Such persistent reminders of this obvious fact were evidently connected with the fact that for many Christians (and, perhaps, not only in Ephesus) it was not obvious at all. Judging by some of the apostle's instructions in his letter to the Ephesian Christians, they were evidently already prepared to accept as normal that sin would remain, to some extent, part of their life (vv. 1-3, 15-21).

This was connected to the fact that many in the Ephesian church looked at Christianity not as life in the Kingdom but as a new religion, perhaps as a distinctive form of Judaism for Gentiles. In that case one would have to make peace with the presence of sin in the life of the faithful, because there are no sinless people, and Judaism never required the impossible from a person. It required only the absolute exclusion of sin committed consciously and voluntarily, not every sin in general. The latter was an unattainable ideal toward which one could and should strive, but which could not be demanded of anyone as the norm of life.

Apparently the Christians of Ephesus looked at the matter in the same way, accepting as a given the sins of some of their brothers. Paul, however, understands perfectly that Christianity is not a new religion at all, but precisely life in the Kingdom, and therefore he insists on the ideal that in the Kingdom can and must become reality. He knows that for a Christian sin means not only deviation from the path of righteousness, but also the loss of the Kingdom, which is not always noticeable at once only because the Kingdom has not yet been fully revealed in our transforming but still untransformed world. The one who sins truly finds himself in that outer darkness which the Savior Himself contrasts with the Kingdom, and if he does not always realize it, that is only because he still has the opportunity to avoid both the final choice that he will have to make at the Last Judgment and the full consequences of the sin he has committed, consequences that remain hidden from a person until the end of time.

But Paul calls his readers to look at the situation through the eyes of a person for whom the end of time has already arrived, and to evaluate each of their actions accordingly, so as to become inhabitants of the Kingdom in full measure here and now.

Very often we simply do not think about what we are doing. Everything happens by itself, automatically. We act as though asleep. In today’s reading, the apostle quotes an ancient Christian hymn: “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead.” It turns out that this familiar and peaceful state is actually death. We live with our eyes closed, in darkness. But Christ’s light is so bright that it is no longer possible to keep our eyes closed. If we decide to step into the light, we will have to look at our life and see what is happening. In Christ’s light we see what is not pleasing to God. We can no longer pretend that everything is all right, and so all our sins are made manifest. At first it becomes frightening, and we very much want to hide again where it was dark and we did not have to think... The light hurts our eyes. But if we risk remaining in the light a little longer, our eyes will begin to adjust and it will become clear that it is impossible to continue living as we did. Then the Holy Spirit will have the opportunity to act within us: by accepting the truth about ourselves, we will be able to begin living in God’s truth.