One of Aesop’s better known fables is that of The Two Crabs. One fine day two Crabs came out from their home to take a stroll on the sand. “Child,” said the mother, “you are walking very ungracefully. You should accustom yourself, to walking straight forward without twisting from side to side.”
“Pray, mother,” said the young one, “do but set the example yourself, and I will follow you.” The fable concludes with these words of wisdom: Example is the best precept.

In today’s second reading, Paul asks the Ephesians to do something which he never asked anyone else to do in all his other letters, something that sounds like an impossibility. He asks them to “be imitators of God” (Ephesians 5:1). It is true that, as God’s children, God is our ultimate ideal. One of the covenant commands that God gave to the people of Israel is “You shall be holy; for I the LORD your God am holy” (Leviticus 19:2). To be holy means to be godly, and to be godly means to be like God. So it makes good sense to ask Christians, who know themselves to be God’s children, to imitate God. But there is a problem. We need to see before we can imitate. As the Baby Crab reminded the Mother Crab, we need someone we can see to set the example, to walk before us and then we can follow. God is our ideal and our standard, but we need a role model. Paul has an answer ready for us, Christ is our role model. He has set the example for us to follow.

Christ is our model both in regard to the vices, the bad habits we need to uproot from our lives, and in regard to the virtues, the good habits we need cultivate.

As for the vices, we are to put away from us “all bitterness and wrath and anger and wrangling and slander, together with all malice” (4:31). This embraces negative thoughts (bitterness), negative feelings and attitudes (wrath and anger), negative words (wrangling and slander) and negative behaviour towards other people (malice). Just as Jesus did not let any of these negative habits find a place in his thought, his discourse and his conduct, so also should we make no room for them in ours. This includes all the thou-shall-nots. They are things we should stay away from just as Jesus stayed away from them.

On a more positive note, Jesus also gives us an example with regard to the positive habits and attitudes that we should cultivate in our lives. This includes thinking of other people, speaking of them or to them, and treating them with kindness, tenderness and compassion. To forgive means to give up our right to get even. We forgive not become the other deserves to be forgiven but because we need to forgive as God has forgiven us in Christ (4:32). If you find it hard to forgive someone, as many of us do, it is probably because you do not sufficiently appreciate how freely and totally God has forgiven you in Christ and continues to forgive you through the sacraments of the church

Forgiving others is just the first step. It costs us nothing but swallowing our pride and self -importance and letting go of the other. Following the example of Christ goes way beyond that. As the passage continues, it demands that we “live in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God (5:2). To love as Christ loved means not simply letting go of the guilty (forgiveness) but denying ourselves and sacrificing something that is precious to us to help that person. In the case of Christ, he sacrificed his very self. Most likely we are not being asked to sacrifice our very lives, only certain conveniences. If we keep looking to Jesus as our model, we can.

Before we go out and start following in the footsteps of Christ, we need one more thing. We need a spiritual coach, a step-by-step trainer who accompanies us all the way. That is the Holy Spirit. Paul advises us not to grieve or resist the Holy Spirit, our spiritual guide. “And do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, with which you were marked with a seal for the day of redemption” (4:30). We grieve or resist the Holy Spirit when we fail to listen to His directives in our lives or, having listened to his directives, still fail to carry them out. Fortunately, the Holy Spirit not only enlightens us as to what to do but also gives us the spiritual empowerment we need to do the right thing. And so we are enabled to imitate the God we cannot see: by having our Lord Jesus Christ as our role model and the Holy Spirit of God as our step-by-step coach in our spiritual journey through life.