Michael Bird
23 June 2024
Many years ago, one of my doctoral students stumped me with a question. He asked, “What is the one thing that Paul said that he taught in all the churches?” Flicking through my mental search engine, I thought it was “justification by faith,” or “God’s grace,” or “Preach the gospel”.
The answer was none of these.
Then my student pointed me to 1 Corinthians 4:16-17, when Paul writes:
“Therefore I urge you to imitate me. For this reason I have sent to you Timothy, my son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church.”
Later in the same letter, Paul exhorts the Corinthians again, “Follow my example, as I follow the example of Christ” (1 Corinthians 11:1). Looking slightly broader, I would argue that that Paul’s letter to the Philippians is replete with calls to imitate Jesus, the example of Paul and his associates, and other Christians who are mature in the faith. Paul says towards the end: “Join together in following my example, brothers and sisters, and just as you have us as a model, keep your eyes on those who live as we do” (Philippians 3:17).
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For Paul, at the centre of his teaching was neither doctrine, nor sacrament, nor experience, but a pattern of life, a way of living, and habit of holiness rooted in Jesus as it attempted to replicate Jesus.
For Paul, Christian faith is mimetic, it is about the imitation of Jesus.
At one level, this is natural to us. We learn largely by imitation. Monkey-see, monkey-do! We replicate what is around us if it works. We rehearse the things that have been handed onto us. Or else, we pattern ourselves after what and who we admire.
Imitation is inevitable, whether it is our parents, our role models, our colleagues, or the things we fill our minds with. We have a habit of copying the best and worst of what we observe around us.
Accordingly, if we take Paul as our starting point, the life of faith includes beliefs, praise, prayer, proclamation and participation, but it is fundamentally imitation. It is a life that seeks to be conformed to the pattern of Jesus, dying to self and living to God, to empty ourselves of all but love, to take the form of a servant, to serve rather than be served, to find joy in giving rather than receiving.
What makes that so hard is that the world constantly assaults us with temptations, distractions, and anti-types that command our attention and obedience. All advertising is premised on persuading people to be acutely selfish, self-centred, and self-gratifying. Remember, the motto of L’Oréal Paris is “Because you’re worth it.” There is Mastercard’s slogan “Priceless” or Nike’s “Just Do It!” All of this is designed to make us impulsive and indulgent.
Yet what makes us holy is that we find the strength to resist these attempts to distort our desires, and to conform us to the pattern of worldly idols. We decide instead to be shaped by the story of Jesus, his life, his teachings, his example, and the instruction of the apostles.
In Reformed theology there is a celebration of union with Christ, a blessed union with a dividend of a twofold grace whereby we receive the righteousness of Jesus for justification and the holiness of Jesus for our sanctification. Yet to that we must add going on with Christ, following him in the way, radiating holiness, announcing the kingdom, keeping his words, announcing him as the Word of God made flesh.
I suspect that the gap in our holiness, the ditch in our discipleship, is a failure to cleave to Jesus as both our Saviour and exemplar. We must have both, you cannot have only one. We must bind ourselves to Jesus as the one who loves us, gave himself for us, and who urges us to take up our cross and follow him.
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Indeed, the purpose of all theology, says Kevin Vanhoozer, is that those who bear Christ’s name, would learn to walk in Christ’s way.
The goal of our instruction, then, is that we would be Christ-formed, a mixture of participation, instruction, and imitation in a Jesus-centred way.
The result is truly evangelistic. We become the only Jesus that may people ever meet, the only window into the Christian life people ever look into, and the only icon of Jesus that comes to life before beholder.
Here I would shift from St Paul to St John, and urge us to consider how imitation the Lord Jesus makes us radiate with love to all around: “This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus”(1 John 4:17).
The Christian life is then is an imitation game!
The Reverend Dr Michael F Bird is deputy principal, director of research and lecturer in New Testament at Ridley College.
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