Imitating God

koot van wyk (DLitt et Phil; ThD)

Kyungbook National University

Sangju Campus

South Korea

Conjoint lecturer of Avondale College

Australia

26 March 2010

Imitation is a must

Babies imitate their mothers. Parents find their little daughter walking with mother's shoes! My brother and cousin imitated my father. They saw him opening the petrol cap and putting in gasoline with a container. Next day, while he was taking his fiesta in the afternoon, they helped him. They used the  container to put in water in the tank. The car could not start the next morning since the pipes were frozen. Imitating.

The Bible wants us to imitate God. Ephesians 5:1 asks us to imitate God. In 1 Corinthians 11:1 it says we should imitate Christ. If you have a father-son relationship with God, then you can imitate God (Seventh Day Adventists like Hans la Rondelle follows here Calvinists like G. Berkhouwer [his teacher] and T. Vriezen simply because it is biblical). In fact, without that relationship it is not possible to imitate God. It is not an artificial gag concert imitation. It is self-evident when you are a child of God. The Calvinist W. de Boer thought that the Old Testament says nothing of the imitation of God. However, as Hans la Rondelle showed, the Sabbath command in Exodus 20:8-11 asks us to imitate God.

We imitate God when we keep His Sabbath

We imitate God when we keep His Sabbath after we realize that we are saved by God and redeemed by Him from our sins. Only because we remember that the Lord God led us out of bondage, therefore we can keep His Sabbath and imitate Him to rest as He did on the Seventh Day after He completed His work of Creation.

Artificial law grace antithesis

The Calvinist W. de Boer in 1962 made an artificial contrast between law and grace and said that in the father-son relationship we are not under the law but as a child we are under grace. The solution for him was "don't do" "just be". De Boer denied that one can imitate God (De Boer 1962: 38). The Seventh Day Adventist position is that the Bible expect us to be more than just be, it expects us to act as well. Be a son of God and act as a son of God, thus, imitate God. Because we have this father-son relationship through redemption, therefore a covenant relationship exist and this doing is the imitation of God.

Says Deuteronomy 13:4

"You shall walk after Yahweh your God

and fear Him,

and keep His commandments

and obey His voice,

and you shall serve Him

and cleave to Him"

In the verse before this one, the walking after God is requiring a love to God as response of His love to us.

Deuteronomy 13:3

"For Yahweh your God is testing you, to know whether you love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul".

To Moses, perfect obedience was not impossible and it was an ideal that could be done and not only hoped for or strived after.

To be perfect is to imitate God and by imitating God His children are perfect.

Deuteronomy 11:1

"You shall therefore [because of the Exodus salvation] love Yahweh your God, and keep His charge, His statutes, His ordinances, and His commandments always".

How long? Just until Christ came in 31 CE and stopped the law? Always. Is always only until the cross? Always is beyond the cross and beyond us and beyond the Second Coming. 

Is perfection sinlessness?

Cheap grace is a grace that Edward Heppenstall warns us to be aware of, namely that they say they are saved by grace but live lives that abandon God.

Perfection is also righteousness. A righteous person will be perfect. The Psalms and Wisdom books of the Bible tells us that a righteous person is perfect. The opposite of the righteous person is the wicked who says that there is no God.

The Psalms are very clear:

a sincere believer

cannot live without atonement

cannot live without the need for forgiveness

cannot live sinless (H. la Rondelle, Perfection [1971, 1984]: 113 at footnote 72).

If we cannot live sinless, how can we be perfect and if God expects from us to be perfect and imitating Him, how can we do that if we are not sinless? What is going on here?

Psalms teaches us that the saved sinner will need the necessity for continual forgiving and continual keeping in redeeming grace. Psalm 19:12-14.

"But who can discern his errors [shegiot]

Clear me from hidden faults [nistarot]

Keep back your servant also from presumptuous sins;

Let them not have dominion over me.

Then I shall be blameless

and innocent of great transgression".

David does not say that sinlessness is an inherent sinlessness but he does say that it is a persistent walk of life in dependence on Yahweh's forgiveness and restraining grace.

Like the Calvinist N. Ridderbos said and also the Seventh Day Adventist Hans la Rondelle, we have to pray for forgiveness of hidden sins.

Hidden sins, what is it?

There are sins which is unconscious and could then later become conscious. For this there was perfection and solution. "Clear me from hidden faults". It is possible. We sometimes act in pain and suffering on others, a result that we are not aware of and are thus unconscious of. In the Old Testament the Israelite could atone for these sins according to Leviticus 4:27-31.

In Psalm 51 David is cleansed from his sin and his heart is transformed into a clean heart, a clear conscience and a new obedient spirit. His guilt is taken away, the power of sin is conquered, broken and subdued in him. 

David will not see any act similar to what he has done any more. But, their remains a deep consciousness of sin in him. Why?

Although there is no more sinful acts, he remains a sinful being. This creates the consciousness of sin that we all have and should have.

The joy of salvation that Psalms talk about, is that this consciousness of our sinful being, is forgiven for us by God.

Now, personal perfection that the Bible expects from us, is no longer described in terms of a sinless nature but of a gracious fellowship with a holy and merciful covenant God (H. la Rondelle 1984: 117).

The interesting thing about David, is that he offers Psalm 51 as an offering to God and hope that it will be acceptable to Him. It was and for us it is still today.

Lord,

I want to be perfect but my sinful being makes me feel conscious of sin every day, even though I do not do sinful acts. Satan tries to run me down how bad I am, but You o God, wants me to know that You forgive this sinful state that I am in and that you wants me to experience the joy of salvation. Accept my prayer as an acceptable offering to You Dear God. We all pray in Jesus name, Amen.

Response from dr. Hans la Rondelle

"H.LARONDELLE"  to Koot

27 March 2010

Thank you for your sermon sharing with me.

God gave us a consoling and admonishing gospel, so that we might seek a daily walk with Him.  This walking with the LORD distinguished Enoch and Noah from the other people.

God has His Enochs also today!  They are becoming ready for the moment of translation.

Warmly, Hans LaRondelle