Men, Are You Someone to Imitate?

I do not write these things to make you ashamed, but to admonish you as my beloved children. For though you have countless guides in Christ, you do not have many fathers. For I became your father in Christ Jesus through the gospel. I urge you, then, be imitators of me. That is why I sent you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church.

(1 Corinthians 4:14-17 ESV)

Be imitators of Paul. This is a recurring theme that you'll see in Paul's letters (1 Cor 11:1, Phil 3:17, 2 Thess 3:7-9). And since it occurs that much, it must be something important that we should take note of. I find two things that we can pick up from this verse, and I would like to tackle each of them below.

I urge you, then, be imitators of me.

Walking alone is hard when we're answering the call to follow Christ. We're going to be going against the current of the norm. Walking the narrow way would include things that are known to be boring or primitive in our current society. You'll be seen as someone who's backward and most probably be discouraged if you do it alone.  First, having someone to look up to is important in a persons personal growth in Christianity. I'm blessed to have people around me that I can imitate. The people who took me under their wing varied from the stoic readers that would always insist on reading and renewing your mind (Rom 12:2) to the kind hearted man who would spend time and counsel them till they feel at peace. It's important to have someone visible and tangible around us that we could follow and be accountable to. I also find it necessary to have these  people in our lives to be there when we're discouraged and would guide us when we don't know what to do or where we need to be on any given situation. For me, these are the guys that I would call in the middle of the night just to ask if what I'm doing is still in accordance to the walk that I committed my life to. These are the guys that would tell me straight when I'm caught doing no good. These are the guys that I entrust my life to, and these are the guys who helped me where I am now. We need our spiritual fathers and guides in Christ to help us walk the walk they have previously walked and help us steer our way out of trouble as Christ has steered them. 

That is why I sent you Timothy, my beloved and faithful child in the Lord, to remind you of my ways in Christ, as I teach them everywhere in every church.

Now to the other side of the story, can we consider ourselves as someone who can be sent as a reminder of how our fathers have walked?

I would appeal to the men of the faith. We may have walked with others before us, but now that we're here, can we consider ourselves as someone who can take the young people of our time and tell them to watch us? Do our actions and deeds remind us of ways our mentors in Christ have walked before? Can we tell the people who look up to us to imitate us while we imitate Christ? This is something that we should be mindful of because our goal as would be mentors is to point people to the God we're excited about. We need to show and tell them why we're walking this way when others aren't. The world will always be active in trying to capture their attention and would always provide a better option not to follow us and it wouldn't help at all if we're no different than this world.

The best way to lead young people to walk the way we would want them to walk in Christ is to show them how this is done. How we conduct our lives will always be the first thing that the people around us would notice.

For us who have walked before others, let's take a moment to look at our lives and see if we're someone who could tell those who are younger to be imitators of us. Not because we're perfect or we've had it all together, but because we've felt the love of Christ that compels us to love and pursue the call that he has placed before us.