Biblical Imitation

Paul wrote to Christian believers in 1 Corinthians 11:1, "Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ."  Like Jesus, Paul's exercise of liberty was love of God and others--and they would do well to follow in Christ's footsteps as Paul did.  It is said, "Imitation is the most sincere form of flattery," but this is not what is meant by the imitation Paul spoke of:  flattery has nothing to do with it.  We follow Christ and imitate Him from a heart of love, admiration and worship.  Jesus no longer physically walked the earth when Paul wrote his epistles to the Corinthian church, and as Paul submitted to the life of Jesus lived out through him, following Paul's example by the empowerment of the Holy Spirit was the real thing.

In his book The Call, Os Guinness had valuable insights to share concerning the importance of imitation in the Christian walk:

"Paul's use of the word imitators is important.  Modeling--observing and copying--is vital to discipleship because of the biblical view of the way disciples must learn.  There is always more to knowing that human knowing will ever know.  So the deepest knowledge can never be put into words--or spelled out in sermons, books, lectures, and seminars.  It must be learned from the Master, under his authority, in experience.  When we read in the Gospels that Jesus chose twelve "to be with him," their being with him was not some extra privilege they enjoyed.  It was the heart and soul of their disciples and learning.

The theme of tutoring and imitation, which goes far deeper than current notions of "mentoring" is conspicuous in the teaching of the early church.  We grow through copying deeds, not just listening to words, through example as well as precept, through habit and not just insight and information.  Calling therefore creates an ethic of aspiration, not just of obligation...Clement of Alexandria wrote, "Our tutor Jesus Christ exemplifies the true life and trains the one who is in Christ....He gives commands and embodies the commands that we might be able to accomplish them."

Clement's last sentence is noteworthy.  Some Christians are suspicious of imitation because it sounds like a form of self-help spirituality.  Modeling seems to smack of a foolproof method of growth that is as mechanical as the instructions for assembling a model airplane.  But they misunderstand imitation.  For one thing, genuine "originality" is God's prerogative, not ours.  At our most "creative," we are only imitative.  For another, imitating a life is far from wooden.  Real lives touch us profoundly--they stir challenge, rebuke, shame, amuse, and inspire at levels of which we are hardly aware.  That is why biographies are the literature of calling; few things are less mechanical...

Importantly, imitating Christ is not a form of do-it-yourself change because it is part and parcel of responding to the call--a decisive divine word whose creative power is the deepest secret of the changes.  Think of Ezekiel's vision of the valley of the dry bones or the astounding miracle of Jesus calling the dead Lazarus out of the tomb.  Can anyone listen to that voice, see what it effects, and still say the hearers responded by themselves?  Do dry, brittle bones ever reassemble into a body on their own?  Can a corpse shake off death by itself?

No more do we change by ourselves as we imitate Christ.  The imitation of Christ that is integral to following Him means that, when we calls us, he enables us to do what he calls us to do." (Guinness, Os. The Call: Finding and Fulfilling the Central Purpose of Your Life. Thomas Nelson, 2003. page 81-82)

The imitation Paul called disciples of Christ to was not be more like Paul, but to be more like Jesus.  We can know this is God's will for Christians as we read in Hebrews 13:20-21:  "May the God of peace, who through the blood of the eternal covenant brought back from the dead our Lord Jesus, that great Shepherd of the sheep, ²¹ equip you with everything good for doing his will, and may he work in us what is pleasing to him, through Jesus Christ, to whom be glory for ever and ever. Amen." (NIV)