The Rev. Dr. John Tamilio III, Pastor

 © 2022, Dr. Tamilio

I

They say that “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.”  But we do not just imitate others to compliment them.  We also imitate others for our own benefit — because we want to be like them.  Maybe we admire the way they talk, or the way they do something that we enjoy doing, too: playing a musical instrument or a sport, for example.  I cannot tell you how many hours I have spent listening to the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Mark Knopfler, and David Gilmour to improve my skills as a guitarist.  My parents know.  Boy, do they know!  Even when I became half-decent, their ears suffered from me crunching chords and playing leads through my amplifier.  (And I sometimes wonder why I am losing my hearing.)

The Bible talks about imitation, too.  Look at the Epistle Lesson for today.  Paul tells the believers in Philippi, “Brothers and sisters, join in imitating me, and observe those who live according to the example you have in us.”  Even though he was a persecutor of the Church at first, Paul became its most ardent disciple.  Paul authored more of the New Testament than anybody else.  His epistles gave instruction to fledgling congregations and conveyed his faith in the one who saved him on the Road to Damascus: none other than Jesus Christ!

II

Paul telling his readers to imitate him is a tall order — though not nearly as difficult as Jesus saying, “Be perfect…as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matt. 5:48), but a lofty goal none the less.  But imitation does not mean duplication, necessarily.  As I’ve said many times before when Jesus tells us that we need to be perfect as God is perfect, he knows we will never reach that goal, but we will be better off for the trying.  And frankly, imitating Paul is a lot easier than imitating God!

But such imitation does not mean being exactly like Paul, or anyone else for that matter.  Imitating Paul means following his example.  Paul had a deep, unwavering faith in Christ.  He faced prison and persecution for it.  Are we willing to do the same?  Paul dedicated his life to converting others — to make Christians out of pagans.  Are we willing to do the same?

And the passage continues.  Paul compares himself, and his fellow workers, to those who live as enemies of the cross.  These people have bothered Paul so much that he now speaks to the Philippians in tears.  He tells us what the enemies of the cross are like: “Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame.  Their mind is set on earthly things.”  In other words, their focus is on this world, on the flesh.  You may have heard before that the Bible has been used to support slavery.  Indeed, many passages, taken out of context, seem to support this and a whole host of other horrific practices.  Paul’s letters are among the manuscripts used for this.  Paul was not promoting or justifying slavery.  He believed that Jesus would return soon, so we shouldn’t worry about earthly concerns.  Setting our sights on heavenly ones is more important.  It is about the sacred over the secular — the glorious life to come as opposed to this life full of trouble, trials, tests, and temptations.

Paul understood that too many people focus on their bodies and everything we use to fulfill our earthly desires: be it power, prestige, money, sex, you name it.  I love how he refers to the God these people “worship” by saying, “their god is their stomach.”  What a great image!  It makes one think of gluttony, one of the seven deadly sins.  Our sight needs to be on the one true God — the God revealed in Jesus Christ.  He is “the way and the truth and the life” as he himself says in John 14:6.

In the next verse that follows in the reading from Philippians, Paul contrasts the way of the Christian, saying, “But our citizenship is in heaven, and it is from there that we are expecting a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ.”  Indeed, we are part of this world and must struggle in every way to make it better.  We should be concerned about war, oppression, and the environment.  We should be bothered by homelessness, drug addiction, and child abuse.  But as we do, we need to keep our eyes on the real prize: the life that is to come.

In the next verse, Paul tells us what will happen when we become permanent residents of our heavenly home.  Jesus, he writes, “will transform the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, by the power that also enables him to make all things subject to himself.”  Therefore, he concludes, we must “stay firm in the Lord.”  The footnote in my Bible reads, “In the face of libertine practices…the Philippians should follow Paul’s example…having their minds set on heavenly things.”[1]

III

Again, Paul is a good example to follow, but Jesus is an even better one.  He is the one Paul followed.  Jesus is the blueprint Paul emulated.  We can and should look at Jesus the same way.

Look at the actions of Christ.  First, he wasn’t in it for the money.  He was an itinerant preacher.  As he himself said in Matthew’s Gospel, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has nowhere to lay his head” (Matt. 8:20).  Second, he associated himself with the dregs of society: the sick, the poor, the widow, the orphan, the tax collector, the Samaritan, the prostitute.  You would be hard-pressed to find a more rag-tag group of people.  Jesus healed them, broke bread with them, and, most importantly, loved them.  Third, he laid down his life for others.  Remember what he said in John’s Gospel?  “Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for his friends” (John 15:13).  Indeed, Jesus laid down his life for his friends, but he did far more than that.  He laid down his life for all of humanity.  By paying the price that we should pay, Jesus offered himself for the life of the world.

Even atheists find a good ethic in the Gospels.  Granted, they do not accept the grace through faith Paul says is necessary for salvation in his Letter to the Ephesians, but the lessons of love, compassion, charity, self-sacrifice, and crossing the barriers we construct to differentiate ourselves from others jump off the pages of the Gospels.  As Earl Kimbrough writes, “Christians are called to God’s service through the gospel for the purpose of imitating Jesus in their lives.  Those who think Christianity consists of anything less than imitating his teaching and example have missed the point.”[2]

I think of Jesus as the blueprint.  Any contractor who is going to build a house looks at the blueprints drawn by an architect to make sure that he gets it right.  Paul is one of those architects, as are the other New Testament writers, such as Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Peter.  The words the offer are the blueprint we are to follow as we build a Christian life, true to Jesus and true to the faith we proclaim.

Follow Paul.  Follow the Word.  Follow Jesus.  Amen.

[1] NIV Study Bible (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2020), 2089.

[2] Earl Kimbrough, “Jesus Our Perfect Example,” from Truth Magazine (online), 1994.