Biblical Theology for Transformation - 9th Posting

“Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” 1 Corinthians 11:1


Say it out loud. “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” Now, say it like you mean it, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ!” Now, say it to someone you know. Does it become a difficult passage to repeat…out loud…TO SOMEONE? To be honest with you and with myself, this can be a hard thing to say to some people. It is not because we don’t want to be like Jesus because I am assuming that since you put your trust in Him you want to be like Him. It’s a hard thing to say because we may not be sure we are actually imitators of Him. Remember WWJD? It stands for What Would Jesus Do. We should really be saying WDJD, What DID Jesus Do! We have four gospel books that contain 89 chapters of the life, work and ministry of Jesus Christ. We have no excuses for our lack of desire to do the things Jesus did. He was a lover of sinners (that’s you and me, Romans 5:8). Colossians 1:15 says, “He (Jesus) is the image of the invisible God.” Jesus was a perfect representation of the Father. Later, in Colossians 3:10, we are called to be the image of Christ. So, as Jesus imitates the Father, we too are to imitate the Father by imitating the Son.

This is not the easiest of tasks considering we are such wretched sinners. It may seem to us that this was a much easier task for Jesus, but that would be wrong for us to think. Jesus was a man too. He operated His sinless life by the power of the Holy Spirit. If every time Jesus was faced with temptation, He tapped into His divine power to overcome the temptation, He would not be worthy to be the lamb that was slain. Hebrews 4:15 says, “For we do not have a High Priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin.” Jesus faced the same temptations we face today, the temptations to sin. We know that God cannot be tempted, so it was not Jesus’ deity that was tempted, but His human side. Jesus did not sin in the face of temptation by the power of the Holy Spirit. That is why He is able to sympathize with us, because He has been there and offers to us the same road away from sin that He took, by tapping into the Holy Spirit.

It may not be easy to be imitators of Christ in our sinful nature, but Paul claims to have been able to do it, and we should too. Paul also operated by the same Holy Spirit that Jesus did and we too have that same access (Ephesians 3:12).

Beloved, let’s be imitators of Jesus Christ in such a way that we are able to boldly proclaim, “Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.”