Part 1: Perspective | Part 2: Action | Part 3: Dependence | Part 4: Thought
One more item in Paul’s list of areas we should give attention to and discipline:
Those things, which ye have both learned, and received, and heard, and seen in me, do: and the God of peace shall be with you (Php 4.9).
He encourages the believers in Philippi—a church that he planted—to imitate his example, to follow his practices. These days we call such a person a mentor, and those who imitate him proteges.
Some people might find this surprising. Isn’t this arrogant of Paul—especially since Christ is the only perfect example?
Good point. And as it happens, Paul says that himself elsewhere:
Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ (1Co 11.1).
He’s clearly not placing his value as an example above that of Christ.
I’ll note that Paul’s exhortation here indicates that he has been careful to set the kind of example that the Philippians should follow. He’s been helped in that, certainly by the fact that he’s an apostle, guided by the Spirit into all truth (Jn 16.13).
Slight sidetrack: Many interpreters would apply Jn 16.13 to all believers. I don’t, because I know that I’m not guided into all truth, and as I tell my students, I have written documentation in a file cabinet in my office that they are not guided into all truth either. I think this is a promise to the apostles that they would be inerrant in their reporting of Jesus’ life and teachings—their proclamation of the gospel. This of course would come to us through the New Testament. But since only three men in the room in John 16 wrote any New Testament, I’m also inclined to believe that the rest of the apostles, though not sinless (Ga 2.11), were inerrant in their preaching—which makes Luke’s description of the Bereans all the more remarkable (Ac 17.11; but cf 1Th 2.13).
But to return.
Paul here encourages the Philippians to imitate his example.
Might this exhortation have broader significance? Should we, two millennia after Paul’s death, imitate him too? It occurs to me that we’ll have a harder time doing so, since we can’t see Paul’s example in his day-to-day life, as the Philippians did. But there are certainly a good many things we can know about him, and those things we can imitate.
But to go a step further. Can we take Paul’s words as a general endorsement of the concept of mentorship? There are a good many Christian books on discipleship that do just that, and I don’t see a reason to disagree with them. Paul’s teaching on spiritual gifts seems to imply strongly that all believers should sit under gifted teachers and should live exemplary lives before their church assemblies.
So, I would suggest, we can all benefit from following the examples of exemplary believers. (The apparent redundancy there is intentional and is not actually redundant.) And Paul’s words here in verse 9 indicate that we should be careful whom we choose.
I suppose it could go without saying that we should choose as models those who follow Christ well, consistently, carefully, graciously. We should choose them not because they’re popular, or good-looking, or socially adept. We should recognize something of the character of Christ in them and then seek to integrate that character trait into our own thinking and lifestyle. We should ask them questions, and we should listen to the answers.
I suppose it’s worthwhile to insert a caution here.
You and I are not called to be anybody else. God has made us all different, and he has gifted us to serve in ways that are the sum of our DNA, our upbringing, our experiences, our sanctification, and yes, our gifting. I’ve known Christians who want desperately to be just like somebody they admire, and those efforts always end in disappointment. We’re called to be ourselves, remade in the image of Christ.
But we ought to follow examples, carefully chosen, in our lifelong journey to be like Christ.
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