There is a good way of wanting to be like God and a very bad way.

Genesis 3 is an example of a very bad way of wanting to be like God.

Part of what prompted Eve to reach out and eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil

was the serpent's promise that if she did, she would become like God. It was a lie, of course.

Tragically, that desire to be like God proved to be Adam and Eve's undoing. And yet, when you

read Ephesians chapter 5, the Apostle Paul seems to be actively encouraging Christians to try and be like God.

It quite clearly says, be imitators of God.

So which is it?

Are we forbidden from seeking to be like God, which is what Genesis chapter 3 seems to imply,

or are we commanded to be like God, as it says in

Ephesians chapter 5? The answer is, both. We're forbidden from trying to be like him in one sense,

but we're commanded to be like him in another. Or to put it another way, there's a good way of saying,

I want to be like God, but also a bad way of saying the same thing. And that's because God has what

theologians call communicable attributes and also incommunicable attributes. There are some ways in which we can never

be like God and we should not try to be. These are his incommunicable attributes. I'm thinking here,

for example, of God's omniscience, omnipotence, omnipresence, and so on. When we try to be like God

in those ways, it never ends well. Think about the people who built the Tower of Babel or King

Nebuchadnezzar or Adam and Eve. But there are other ways in which we should try to be like God.

Because we're made in God's image, there are certain ways in which we are positively designed

to reflect him, ways in which we must seek to reflect him if we want to please him and flourish.

These ways that we can be like God are called his communicable attributes. Now usually when we talk about communicable attributes,

we're talking mainly about God's moral qualities. I'm thinking here, for example, of God's

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