What Does Ephesians 5:1 Mean?
Become therefore imitators of God, as beloved children.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Be ye therefore followers of God, as dear children;THE KEY
God’s likeness is not the price of being loved; it is the family resemblance of a child already called beloved.
THE MEANING
You are addressed as a beloved child, called to reflect God’s pattern in your life now. Following God is a likeness that grows from belonging, not a way to earn it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
You have to become like God before you can be loved by God. The verse names the children beloved as it calls them to imitate.
THE ROOT
μιμηταί
mimētai
GROWS FROM
μιμέομαι
miméomai
to imitate or reproduce a pattern
“imitators” in this verse is mimētai. The Greek word translated “followers” carries the sense of imitation: taking on a pattern, not merely trailing behind someone. The verse joins that imitation to being beloved children, so God’s likeness appears as family resemblance.
ALSO GROWS
mimētēs: One who reproduces another’s pattern
μιμητής
This is the singular form of the noun used here; it makes “following” an active likeness.
mimeomai: To follow someone’s example
μιμέομαι
This verb appears in 3 John 1:11, where the same word family describes taking on the pattern of what is good.
ἀγαπητά
agapēta
GROWS FROM
ἀγαπάω
agapaō
to love, value, or cherish
“Dear” here means beloved: the children are named as loved while the verse speaks of imitation. The word holds love and likeness together, so resemblance is not a condition for belonging but its expression.
ALSO GROWS
agapaō: To love or value
ἀγαπάω
The verb gives the word family its language of love, placing the call to imitate within a relationship of love.
agapētos: Loved or dearly valued
ἀγαπητός
This related form names someone as beloved, the same identity the verse gives the children.
THE PATTERN
Life received from God becomes visible as likeness to God’s own pattern.
And God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created him, male and female he created them.So that you may become children of your Father in the heavens, for he makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the aligned and on the crooked.Beloved, if God loved us in this way, we also owe one another love.THE THREAD
Become imitators of me, even as I also am of the Anointed One.The same Greek word, μιμηταί (mimētai, imitators), appears in both verses as “followers.” Together they show likeness becoming concrete: a life can reflect God’s pattern through the example of someone reflecting Christ.
This reading is from Selah Verse.
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