Taking A Hard Look

There are lots of places in the Bible I would remove if I could. Whether it's a rule I don't want to follow or a judgment that just seems too harsh for modern sensibilities, my fallen flesh would love to apply a bottle of white out to many verses. There's one place, though, that's nothing like that. It's convicting without doing either of those things. Right in the middle of one of my favorite passages in the Bible sit a few simple words that always make me squirm.

What is this horrible passage? "Brothers, join in imitating me" (Phil 3:17a).

"Wait, that's it?" Yes. I always feel like someone just poured ice water down my back.

It's not that I think Paul's being arrogant. He's not saying, "You don't need to imitate Jesus; just imitate me." He's imitating Jesus, so if they imitating him, they are imitating Jesus.

This passage makes me twitchy because how can you possibly feel comfortable telling people to imitate you? But Paul did. So why don't I?

And that's the meat of it. Why don't I?

If this letter was written while Paul was in prison in Rome, he'd been a Christian about 30 years, give or take. I got off to a bit of a rough start for several years, but I've been seriously trying to follow Jesus for a about 30 years. Which means I've been a believer even longer than Paul was. So what's my excuse?

Talking myself down from the ledge, though, we should acknowledge that Paul straight up denies being perfect in verse 12. He's not claiming to be the ideal example. But he does present himself as an example, and not only he himself but also the others who imitate him (v17b).

Imperfect as he is, he's comfortable telling people to imitate him. So he doesn't think they're going to find anything terribly un-Christlike in him. So again, what's my excuse?

By the time we've got a couple of decades of following Christ under our belt, we should be rather looking like Christ. And maybe we do. I've read more than once that the godliest people are the most aware of their sins, so we're never going to grow out of that feeling that we're sinners. We are sinners and will be for the rest of our lives.

But we should be able to be an example to those who are younger in the faith.

So it's time for some self-examination. Is there anything in my life that I would tell younger believers, "Egad, don't follow that!"? Well then it's high time to fix that.

We want the next generation to follow Jesus, but they learn to do that by following us. So what example do we want to set before them? Because they are watching, whether we present ourselves as an example of not.


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