Ephesians 5:1 Meaning Be Therefore Imitators of God

To follow God is to work the way creation itself works, and creation begins with a word held as settled before anything answers to it. A child imitates without arguing. He does not first demand proof that the thing is possible. He simply takes the role and lives inside it until it becomes his own, and this is the imitation being pointed at.

God calls the unseen as though it were seen, and it obeys. A person made in that likeness does the same when he assumes the feeling of his wish fulfilled and rests in it as accomplished fact. Following means copying that creative act, not obeying rules laid on him from outside. He treats the desired state as present while the senses still deny it. What is assumed with a child's ease becomes the condition that arrives.

A child copies the parent it loves without being told to, catching a walk, a phrasing, a posture before it can name any of them. The following is not strain; it flows from belonging. A person raised to feel dear imitates the model he was given as naturally as breathing.

Here the self-image shows its plainest work. A man grows toward whatever he keeps his eyes on and feels kin to, and the higher the model, the higher the reach. When a person holds a large and generous pattern in view and feels himself a welcome child of it, he begins to take on its features without forcing. The imitation runs on love, and love does the shaping that effort alone never manages.

Takhalluq: Taking on God's traits as your own character Al-Ghazali taught that a person grows by carrying the meanings of God's names at human size. Being told to be like God sounds too large to start, until a day shrinks it down. Patience with someone slow, generosity with what you have, letting a small debt go: those are the divine traits at the size a person can hold.

Be merciful to those on earth and the One in heaven will be merciful to you: mercy is where the copying starts A saying of the Prophet that names the first trait to reach for. Facing someone who has wronged you, being like God can feel like a fine idea with no handle on it. The handle is small: softening toward the person in front of you, which is also how mercy opens toward you.

Tazkiya: Clearing out what clouds the heart Al-Ghazali compared the heart to a mirror that shows light once the rust is scraped off. Copying God can turn into a long list of traits to add, and the list wears a person out. Most of the work runs the other way, removing the grudge and the showing off, until what was underneath shows through on its own.

He loves them and they love Him: His love comes first A line from the Quran that Sufis return to for the order of those two loves. Anyone told to be like God can start auditioning, working to earn a place that was already given. The love arrived before the effort, so the effort answers it, the way a child copies a parent they already trust.

My servant keeps drawing near until I love them, then I am the hearing they hear with: love takes over the work A saying of the Prophet in which God speaks, describing where small daily efforts end up. Early on, imitating God feels like acting, with one eye on yourself, wondering whether you mean it. After long enough the kindness comes before the thought, and it is simply how that person now hears and sees.