A Word in Season: Imitating Christ (1 Corinthians 11:1)

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As a preacher of the gospel, Paul was concerned to give no unnecessary or unrighteous offence either to Jews or to Greeks or to the

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Church of God, but rather to, in the proper sense, please all men in all things, not seeking my own profit, but the profit of many that they may be saved.

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In other words, the Apostle Paul was willing to suspend many of his own liberties in order that he might put no unnecessary obstacles between the men to whom he preached the gospel and the gospel that he preached.

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And that attitude and those actions were really rooted in Paul's concern that he should be like Jesus Christ.

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And so he was able to say in 1 Corinthians 11 and verse 1, on the basis of that kind of life, imitate me just as I also imitate

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Christ. Now the root of Paul's exhortation is clear.

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It was a life of the imitation of Jesus Christ. Now Paul knew

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Christ in a number of ways. He knew him from the Old Testament scriptures, from the beauty of his character and his work that was set out through the law and the prophets, all the writings of the old covenant, all showing something of the beauty and the glory of Messiah.

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Paul studied that book with his eyes opened by the spirit of Christ. Paul knew

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Christ directly. He had seen him in his risen glory on the road to Damascus. Paul also knew

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Christ by immediate revelation. He was not someone who got his gospel at second hand, but he had had these things revealed to him immediately and directly.

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And from all these sources, and perhaps others too, the apostle Paul had set out to model all his thinking, all his feeling, and all his doing on the

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Lord Jesus Christ. It consumed him to be more like the

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Lord Jesus, to be conformed even to his sufferings and death. And with that goal in mind that the apostle pursued persistently and consistently, he was therefore able also to say, imitate me just as I also imitate

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Christ. There's a chain going on here. The apostle Paul is doing everything in his power to imitate

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Christ as a man who's now energized by his spirit and in whom God is at work to conform him to the image of his son.

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And Paul says, where and as far as and in whatever way I have attained to any kind of success in that,

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I want you also to imitate me. And every believer ought to be able to say at least something of that.

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First of all, that we are imitating Christ, that our great study is to be what

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God has called us to be, to lay hold of that for which Christ Jesus has laid hold upon us to be more and more like God in all things.

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And as we do that, and so far as we do that, we should then humbly but sincerely be able to say to others, now you imitate me.

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I'm walking in the footsteps of Christ. Now you walk in my footsteps also, because it's a safe and a secure and a happy path in which to go.

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So are you then imitating the Lord Jesus Christ? Are you engaged in a conscious and deliberate, persistent and consistent approach to your life in which you are constantly subjecting yourself to the word of God, under the power of the spirit of God, in order that you may be like the

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Lord Jesus Christ? And as you grow in maturity, as you are conformed to his image, are you both willing then and able to call others to come alongside and after you and to say, walk after me as I have walked after Christ?

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That ought to be both the goal of our lives for ourselves and then for others also, that we might pass on the baton of godly living, that we might be able to call others to walk as we have walked, following the

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Christ who walked in righteousness and holiness. Are you doing that today, both in terms of your imitation of Christ and then increasingly your capacity to call others to do it with you?