The letter to the Ephesians tells us to imitate God, let's see the context of the explanation: "Then we will no longer be infants, tossed back and forth by the waves, and blown here and there by every wind of teaching and by the cunning and craftiness of people and their deceitful scheming. Instead speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ". Ephesians 4:14-15
This verse explains that imitating God is first of all, moving away from the forms of error, speaking the truth in love" is to be precise and accurate.
The spiritual gifts are "way, truth and life" as is explains in John 14:6 ("I am the way, the truth and the life"). The spiritual gifts are way because they are progressive, the gifts are the truth because they are the precise and the accurate, also the gifts improve the life.
God is the perfection itself, we cannot attribute imperfections to God like the error, the sin, the passions. The holy spirit does not commune with the error.
The idolatry of money, the simony, the law of the talion are form of the error (heresies) that take us away from the path of mercy, of piety.
Imitating God is first of all not following heresies, imitate god is to live the spiritual gifts we inherit form God: "Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and live in love, as Christ love us". Ephesians 5:1-2
To imitate is to replicate a behavior, imitate god is to live the mercy, the piety, the rectitude of God, this is the true meaning of living in the love of charity, the love of God.
The gifts that define the imitation of God are: righteousness, mercy, piety and spiritual gift of fortitude.
Mercy is affability, compassion, benevolence, amability
Piety or Fear of the Lord is constancy, firmness, devotion
The spiritual gift of fortitude is continuous improvement or progressive work
The rectitude is to act according to the goden rule in Matthew 7:12: "do to others as you would have them do to you"
Thomas Aquinas defines thiese gifts as the spiritual gifts of the will. The gifts that define the likeness to god, are the spiritual gifts that we received in the second birth, these the gifts of knowledge: spiritual gift of wisdom, of discernment and understanding.
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