originally published 11/3/19
“Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” 1 Corinthians 11:1
Wow! “Imitate me as I imitate Christ.” That feels like a stretch for me to be able to say that. What about you? Maybe if we understood exactly what Paul was talking about, we could wrap our minds around it better. We recognize that Paul wasn’t perfect, so he obviously wasn’t claiming that people could imitate everything he did. But in the context, he was talking about a very specific aspect of the example of Christ that he apparently felt he imitated well enough to be able to say, “do what I do.”
In the context, Paul is dealing with the sticky issue of if a Christian could eat meat offered to an idol or not. His basic answer was that, the meat is ok as long as (A) the eating of it wasn’t a participation in idol worship and (B) it didn’t some-how offend the conscience of another person who was involved in the situation. This was true even if the person wasn’t a believer. If an unbelieving person simply said, “hey, just so you know, this meat was offered to an idol.” Paul said not to eat for the sake of the conscience of that unbeliever. All of this was the case even though a Christian had liberty to eat such meat with a thankful heart.
This is the general context of Paul’s famous statement about imitating him. The sentence that precedes Paul’s statement sheds the final bit of light we need to understand it well. This is where Paul says, don’t give offense to anyone, “just as I try to please everyone in everything I do, not seeking my own advantage, but that of many, that they may be saved. Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.” (1 Corinthians 10:32-11:1)
The key phrase here is “not seeking my own advantage.” This is where Paul saw his example coinciding so closely with Christ’s. Remember what Paul said in Philippians 2:6, speaking of Jesus, “who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.” The footnote in the ESV says about this phrase “a thing to be grasped” that it could also be translated, “a thing to be held on to for advantage.” So we see that Jesus refused use for His own advantage what He had the power and liberty to grasp. He laid down this freedom of His because He was more concerned about us being able to have free access to the Father.
This is the example of Christ that Paul was imitating so well that he could tell us to imitate him. He tried to please other people for their ultimate benefit of knowing Christ even though he often had to not take advantage of things he had the liberty to do. So the call we have received in this passage is to, like Jesus and Paul, not use our liberty for our own advantage, but to give up our advantages and our preferences for the sake that others “may be saved.” What freedom are you willing to not take advantage of in order to place the church in a better position to help more people be saved? This is the question that Paul’s imitation of Christ forces us to ask ourselves.
