Walk in Love: Christ’s Fragrant Self-Offering

Believers are called to imitate God as beloved children and to walk in love because Christ loved them and gave himself for them as an offering and sacrifice to God, a fragrant aroma. Against that self-giving pattern Paul sets sexual immorality, impurity, greed, degrading speech, and idolatrous covetousness, while thanksgiving marks the renewed life.

Where this fits in the story: “fragrant aroma” is sacrificial language deeply rooted in the Torah. Ephesians gathers that vocabulary around Christ’s voluntary self-offering and then makes his love the ethical pattern for the church.