Imperatives and indicatives

Wonderfully clear post from Tim Chester:

Think how you would summarise Ephesians 5:1 in your own words: 'Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children.'

I wonder if your summary focused on the call to imitate God or the description of Christians as 'dearly loved children'?

It is all too easy for us to hear only the commands of Scripture and miss the descriptions out of which they arise. The prescription to behave like God only makes sense as the outworking of the description that we are God’s children. The imperatives (commands) of the New Testament always arise out of the indicatives (description). We are already God's dearly loved children so let's live as God’s dearly loved children by imitating our Father.

Reading Paul, and to a lesser extent other Biblical writers, as arguing from indicative to imperative, is probably one of the most important things I've ever been taught. But I sometimes struggle to spell out exactly what it means. It is easy to trot out "be what you already are", but it is more difficult to explain what that really means.

Melanchthon in his commentary on Colossians 3:1 helpfully breaks it down into three things:

1. cause to effect - what will make us be
2. what is due from us - what we ought to be
3. what is possible - what we have the resources to be

I find that quite helpful in actually applying it to my life.

BTW this is my 500th post on this blog. Crazy stuff!