"Therefore be imitators of God as dear children."
Human beings, created in the very image of God, were to be like Him, resembling Him in all communicable graces. Sin turned us into something more akin to devils, than divinity. But all of this is more than compensated for in Christ, His atonement, and the application of the same (by grace through faith) to His church.
Now we who are in Jesus act like Him. In so doing, we are "imitators of God." Because of surpassing grace we now can do what even the pre-Fall Adam could never do: praise God for exalting our nature to the highest extent--in that the Second Person of the Trinity is now both God and man.
[Puritan quote of the day: "A sanctified fancy will make every crea-
ture a ladder to heaven." --Richard Sibbes, in, "The Soul's Conflict with Itself"]
