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Ephesians 5:1
“Be imitators of God, as beloved children.”
God’s incommunicable attributes, we have seen, are those qualities that our Creator does not share with us in any way. Our Lord’s communicable attributes, the second category under which we may classify His divine qualities, are those attributes that He can share with or communicate to us in a manner appropriate to our creatureliness. For instance, eternality (1 Tim. 1:17) is an incommunicable attribute of God because human beings have not always existed but have a beginning in time. Love (1 John 4:8), on the other hand, is a communicable attribute of God because human beings have a capacity for love.
Now, when we say that God shares or communicates certain of His attributes, we do not mean that the attributes communicated to us are completely identical to the same attributes in God. The difference between Creator and creature still exists even in the matter of God’s communicable attributes. In an absolute sense, there is none like God (1 Sam. 2:2). Consequently, when we are speaking of communicable attributes, we are speaking by way of analogy. A communicable attribute that we possess, such as love, holiness, or justice, is sufficiently similar to the love, holiness, or justice of God that there is an overlap when man loves, man is holy, or man is just and that God loves, God is holy, or God is just. We receive true information about the Lord when attributes possessed by man are ascribed to God even if there is not a full identity between those attributes in God and those attributes in man. The Reformed theologian Francis Turretin writes in his Institutes of Elenctic Theology, “God produces in creatures (especially in rational creatures) effects analogous to his own properties, such as goodness, justice, wisdom, etc.”
The reality of God’s communicable attributes provides the foundation for teachings such as Ephesians 5:1, wherein Paul exhorts us to imitate God as beloved children. If there were no commonality between human beings, particularly redeemed human beings, and the Lord, then it would be impossible for us to imitate Him. Because the Lord endowed human nature with attributes like His own, however, we can be like Him truly without ever becoming deity. To be sure, human nature is fallen, and apart from grace we cannot imitate God as we ought. Thankfully, in redemption, the Lord is renewing us and enabling us to imitate Him as we are conformed to Christ, the truest image of God (Col. 1:15).
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
What is our deepest desire? Do we want material prosperity above all else? Do we want earthly success more than anything? While it is not necessarily wrong inherently to desire prosperity and success, our aim above all else should be to become like God. We should be seeking to more and more reflect, by the help of the Spirit, all of God’s communicable attributes.
For further study
- Genesis 1:26–27
- 2 Corinthians 3:18
- Ephesians 4:17–24
- 2 Peter 1:3–11
The bible in a year
- Numbers 32–33
- Mark 10:1–31