START COPYING OFF OF ME
1 Corinthians 11:1 NKJV
1 Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ.
This title is a play on words from my childhood. I have a sister who is two years younger and growing up, a way we would irritate each other was to copy the other one. So the cry was: Stop copying off of me. And you knew when they said that you had gotten to them. You won.
Paul has taken a very different approach with the Corinthians. He is telling them to copy him. His wording is clear: "Imitate me, just as I also imitate Christ." This statement tells us quite a lot.
Imitate me. How many people would feel comfortable saying that? But Paul was confident that he had given the Corinthians a good model to follow. And we can tie this statement in with the last few verses of Chapter 10, where Paul is talking about doing all things to the glory of God. And doing all things to please men so that he might reach them for Christ. Paul is saying to imitate him in these things. Imitate him in how he follows the Lord and what kind of attitude he displays. It may come off as a bit arrogant today, but Paul was convinced that he had given the church at Corinth a good pattern.
Paul was big on examples. He had written to Timothy to encourage the young pastor to live in such a way that no one could think lightly of his young age because of his example. Keep in mind that there was no church culture in Corinth when Paul wrote this letter. There was not a history of believers who had paved the way before them for the young church to follow. So Paul says, follow me, but he does not stop there.
Imitate me as I imitate the Lord. I don't know if I have ever heard many people say this. There is both confidence and humility in that statement. Confidence that Paul was living in such a way that people could follow him. And the humility of admitting that the reason he was in a position to be followed was because he was following the Lord.
APPLICATION
What does it mean to follow the Lord? Obviously, we cannot visually see Jesus. But we can take a cue from His words. In John 8:31, Jesus said, "if you abide in My word, you are My disciples indeed."
So we can follow Jesus by following His word. Jesus also said in Luke 6:46, "But why do you call me Lord, Lord and not do the things which I say?" Doing what He says by obeying His word is how we follow the Lord. So we are following His attitude, His humility, His faith, and His love. As we see Jesus in the gospels and read the revelation of Him in the epistles, we begin to know how to follow Him. We should bring the phrase, I am a follower of Christ, into our lives and into our words and actions. Eventually, we want to be able to say with confidence: start copying off of me as I copy off of the Lord.
PRAYER
Lord, help me by Your Word and Your Holy Spirit to become a better follower of You. I want to be an example to others.