EPHESIANS 5:1-2 (MSG)
Watch what God does, and then you do it, like children who learn proper behavior from their parents. Mostly what God does is love you. Keep company with him and learn a life of love. Observe how Christ loved us. His love was not cautious but extravagant. He didn’t love in order to get something from us but to give everything of himself to us. Love like that.
To imitate God is to MIMIC His BEHAVIOR.
Luke 6:36
Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
1 John 4:16b-17
God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in him. In this way, love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the Day of Judgment, because in this world we are like Him.
To love like Christ loved is to love EXTRAVAGANTLY.
1 John 3:16-18
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down His life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers. If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him? Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth.
Jesus moved from what was COMFORTABLE into an earthly NEIGHBORHOOD to bring BELIEVERS back to His comfort ZONE.
1 Corinthians 15:47-49
The first man was of the dust of the earth, the second man from heaven. As was the earthly man, so are those who are of the earth; and as is the man from heaven, so also are those who are of heaven. And just as we have borne the likeness of the earthly man, so shall we bear the likeness of the man from heaven.