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The Church is a Picture of the GospelEphesians 4:25-5:2Introduction – The Most Important Thing About the ChurchContinuing with this series of homilies on the book of Ephesians and the Church, I’d like to start with the end of our New Testament reading and work my way back to the beginning.This is because the end of this passage tells us maybe the most important thing about the Church, that which is most foundational to her identity and mission. Listen closely:‘Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.‘Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.’Ephesians 4:32-5:2Paul tells the Ephesians there to do four things to one another: be kind, be tenderhearted, forgive, and walk in love. But what’s the motivation? ‘Forgive one another, as God in Christ forgave you’… ‘Be imitators of God…walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us.’Those verses tell us that Christianity is different to moralism or legalism.Moralism says, ‘I will make myself good through an effort of my own will’.Legalism says, ‘I will keep the rules so that I might be superior to other people who can’t’.Christianity says something altogether different: ‘You are a sinner just like the rest of the world. That is the truth and you must face up to it. But God loved you so much that he sent his Son Jesus Christ to die on the cross for you. He has given his most precious and beloved son to suffer and die for you. Now, the only appropriate response is to be transformed by that love and to become an imitator of God.’Can I give you a silly comparison to show you how this works in the human heart? When I was a teenager, one of my friends introduced me to a certain heavy metal band. Hard to imagine, I know, but I was hooked from the moment I first heard one of their songs. I spent the next few years working in a fish restaurant to afford to buy their albums. I bought an electric guitar and started playing it day and night. And I tried to start a heavy metal band of my own.What was going on there? Well, my heart had been captivated by this music. I loved it. And so my desires, my actions, and my will were transformed. And I wanted to become like those guys. I wanted to imitate them.Notice I wasn’t trying to imitate them for any other reason: I didn’t want, for example, to fit in with others with liked Metallica, and I wasn’t doing it to bring myself some kind of material advantage. No, my young heart simply loved the music and loved them for making it. I was transformed and became an imitator of the love that had transformed me.Do you see what I’m saying about the Gospel? When we contemplate the love of God in sending Jesus Christ to save us from our sins by dying for us, when we hold that before our eyes and we are captivated by it, we begin to love God for his goodness towards us. That love can’t help but transform us, and so we become imitators of him.One of my favourite films is called ‘Of Gods and Men’, a true story of French monks living in Algeria amongst Muslims in the midst of a brewing civil war. They are a truly Christlike, gentle presence in the midst of a turbulent and dangerous world. In an early scene, one of the brothers, an aging doctor called Luc has a conversation with a young Muslim girl who asks him what it is like to fall in love. He gives a beautiful description and says, ‘Something inside you comes alive, but you’re in turmoil, especially the first time’. She responds that she’s not felt that love and doesn’t feel it for the boy her parents want her to marry. She asks Luc if he’s ever been love and he answers, yes, several times, ‘But then I experienced an even greater love and I answered that call. Sixty years ago’.That is what I am talking: the experience of a love so great, so wide and deep and vast and holy, that is changes you from the inside out. Once you’ve experienced such