Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us. For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their end is destruction, their god is their belly, and they glory in their shame, with minds set on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven, and from it we await a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like his glorious body, by the power that enables him even to subject all things to himself. Therefore, my brothers, whom I love and long for, my joy and crown, stand firm thus in the Lord, my beloved.
Philippians 3:17-4:1
If we wish to experience the same degree of contentment that St Paul enjoyed, we need to follow his example in every area of our lives. ‘Join in imitating me’, sounds a rather audacious invitation, one we may not appreciate from many pastors today, especially if, like Paul, they're in prison and being rapidly deserted by their followers.
I don’t think it’s going too far to interpret Paul’s invitation as really meaning, imitate me as I’m imitating Christ. Earlier in his letter to Philippi, Paul described all that Christ gave up on His way to crucifixion, all His rights and privileges as God, and then explained what he had given up to cooperate in Christ’s great mission of redemption. It’s this sort of imitation of Christ that Paul now calls his readers to imitate.
I think we can usually distinguish Christian leaders who make us feel bad about ourselves, guilty and needing to do better, from those who quietly inspire us by their persistent lifestyles. I'm not even referring to Christians who are persuasive in recruiting workers or who seem to have an especially
effective gift of preaching or praying for people. I mean Christians who makes us
want to be holy! While I'm sure that I must have missed many such examples due to my own lack of spiritual perception, one thing that gradually became clear to me about those I have noticed is that their godliness was independent of their theology.
I must be careful about this point. I’m not saying that it doesn’t matter what we believe: quite the contrary! After all, the entire New Testament was written so that we can have a sound theological basis for our faith and intimacy with Jesus. But it seems to me that whatever theological bias Christians have, it does not seem to keep them from genuine fellowship with Christ and profound godliness. The few I’ve known have come from different Christian traditions and backgrounds.
I must be careful about this point. I’m not saying that it doesn’t matter what we believe: quite the contrary! After all, the entire New Testament was written so that we can have a sound theological basis for our faith and intimacy with Jesus. But it seems to me that whatever theological bias Christians have, it does not seem to keep them from genuine fellowship with Christ and profound godliness. The few I’ve known have come from different Christian traditions and backgrounds.
I’d like to think that when we see Christians with their minds set on earthly things, feeding themselves to their own destruction, that we would know better than to imitate them. It is, of course, too easy to sit in judgement on these 'enemies of the cross' but there was nothing judgemental about Paul’s attitude towards them: the thought of them made him weep! They had not stood firm ‘in the Lord’.
Somewhere between these examples we know to avoid, and the examples we should imitate, come most of us. In Luke 18, we read a parable that Jesus told to encourage His followers, ‘that they ought always to pray and not lose heart’. I think the simple conclusion from that statement is that if we pray, we don’t lose heart but stand firm. If we fail to pray, however, we’re vulnerable to losing heart and a fall may follow. If we pray but lose heart, it’s because we’ve not prayed effectively: perhaps, like the Christians that James criticised, we may have prayed for something ‘to spend it on [our] passions’ (James 4).
Somewhere between these examples we know to avoid, and the examples we should imitate, come most of us. In Luke 18, we read a parable that Jesus told to encourage His followers, ‘that they ought always to pray and not lose heart’. I think the simple conclusion from that statement is that if we pray, we don’t lose heart but stand firm. If we fail to pray, however, we’re vulnerable to losing heart and a fall may follow. If we pray but lose heart, it’s because we’ve not prayed effectively: perhaps, like the Christians that James criticised, we may have prayed for something ‘to spend it on [our] passions’ (James 4).
Our challenge is to imitate St Paul, not just by striving for his quality of contentment, as if we can achieve this in some sort of isolation from every other aspect of our lives, but only by comprehensively imitating him in imitating Christ.
© Copyright Philip Evans 2015.
What is freely received should be freely shared and not sold for profit, so please feel free to copy these Reflections freely and without cost to others. Unless otherwise stated, Scripture quotations in these Reflections are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
