Imitator of Christ or a Copycat?

Imitator of Christ or a Copycat?

Which are you?

Have you been trying to imitate God? Are we to imitate Christ’s behavior or functionality?

Is the Christian life a life of imitating or patterning my life after Christ? Should we be trying to imitate Jesus or anyone else for that matter? Are you an “imitator” or a “copycat” for Christ? Christian are to be imitators of Christ but we have interrupted imitation to mean "being a copycat"- “WWJD.”  Many well-meaning Christians have suggested that is exactly what scripture is instructing us to do.   Let’s first take a look at what scripture says in the following passages.
1 Corinthians 4:16 “Therefore I exhort you, be imitators of me.”

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

 Ephesians 5:1  “Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children.”

1 Thessalonians 1:6 “You also became imitators of us and of the Lord, having received the word in much tribulation with the joy of the Holy Spirit.”

1 Thessalonians 2:14 “For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea, for you also endured the same sufferings at the hands of your own countrymen, even as they did from the Jews”

Hebrews 6:12 “so that you will not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.”

Clearly scripture uses the word “imitators.” But does it really mean that we are to imitate Paul, Christ or anyone else? NO! Not in the sense that we are to “mimic” the external behavior of Christ, in an effort “to be like” Christ. In all the of passages cited above, Paul is not instructing us to “mimic” or “parrot,” in a kind of “aping” or “monkey see, monkey do” mentality.  Major Ian Thomas insightfully points out, “The capacity to imitate is vested in the one who imitates, and does not derive from, nor necessarily shares the motives of the person being imitated, who remains passive and impersonal to the act of imitation”  (The Mystery of Godliness).

 

To suggest that man has the capacity to do so, once again promotes the lie of independence and behavioral performance that is so prevalent in religion today.  The idea borders on insanity or the prideful arrogance of Satan and is laughable to suggest that man, who is finite could in fact imitate the infinite God of the universe. It is equally repulsive to think we can produce anything, as all character is derived from the “god” who has dominion over us, either God or Satan.

What the apostle Paul wanted the believers to understand is their functionality as a human being who is now in Christ.  Paul was a role-model or example of how God intended man to live dependent and derivative on Christ as his life.  What he is saying is, imitate the functional design or intent of what God intended man to be. Man lives by faith in the receptivity of Christ’s activity. Man does not produce but rather allows for the expression of Christ’s life. Paul tells the Christians in Jerusalem to imitate the faith of those who have led you or pointed you to Christ. They “pattern” how Christians are to function dependent on God working in them and though them. We were designed to function by faith-receptivity to God’s grace activity. That is what is to be imitated. Not a way of doing but a The WAY of being, being or functioning as God designed. 

 

We are not to imitate another’s external actions (neither Paul’s nor even Jesus), but are to allow for the manifestation of the character and activity of the indwelling presence of Jesus Christ as our life by simple faith receptivity. There is nothing else to imitate! Don’t be a copycat! Don’t try to be like Jesus – that is a diabolical lie of Satan, but rather imitate or pattern yourself after how God designed you to function, abiding in Him. Paul was a role model of what he learned by revelation from Christ. In John 5:30 Jesus said, “ I can do nothing on My own initiative. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I do not seek My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. Again in John 8:28 “So Jesus said, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me. Jesus is modeling what God’s intent was for man or how God intended man to live. We are to imitate Jesus in the sense that we are dependent on Christ in us in the same way that He was dependent on the Father in Him. It is an imitation of functionality not behavior. Don’t be a copycat, “be” who God designed you to be in Christ.

By Don Burzynski