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

 

“Imitators . . . of Christ.” By these words Christ urges us to mold our lives and characters in the image of his. But how can one imitate Christ?

Anyone who meditates on that unique life sees a great gulf between him and us, the gulf between perfection and sin. Consider his single-minded devotion to the Father, and to the Father’s will, from which nothing would deflect him though it meant the pain and dereliction of the cross. Then consider our wanderings, our willfulness, our feeble and flabby compromises.

Or see his strong self-mastery and tender compassion to the needy, which we pervert into hard-heartedness toward the weaknesses of others and softness toward our own. The gulf is wide indeed, even impassable. How can we imitate him?

 

The Importance of Becoming Like Christ

 

Yet in spite of the obvious problems, we have no liberty to drop the subject in despair. Two factors should weigh with us.

1. Christlikeness is what God wants to see in us. If we had to sum up in a single brief sentence what life is all about, why Jesus Christ came into this world to live and die and rise, and what God is up to in the long-drawn-out historical process, it would be difficult to find a more succinct explanation than this: God is making human beings more human by making them more like Christ.

God created us in his own image in the first place, which we then spoiled and skewed by our disobedience. Now he is busy restoring it. And he is doing it by making us like Christ, since Christ is both perfect man and perfect image of God (Col. 1:15; 2 Cor. 4:4).

The continuing of the Christian life has the same essential character and purpose as its beginning, for it is the maturing of the newborn child, the bursting of a bud into blossom, the ripening of a seed into fruit. This process of growth into holiness we usually call sanctification. But what is holiness except Christlikeness? We are to learn to “live just as Jesus Christ lived” (1 John 2:6 GNB).

And the end, which we often refer to as heaven? Though we do not know in any detail what our final and glorified state will be like, we do know this: “We know that when he appears we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is” (1 John 3:2). “Just as we have borne the image of the man of dust, we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven” (1 Cor. 15:49, cf. Phil. 3:21). God’s whole purpose, conceived in a past eternity, being worked out for and in his people in history, to be completed in the glory to come, may be encapsulated in this single concept: God intends to make us like Christ.

2. Christlikeness is what the watching world wants to see. The name of Jesus Christ is constantly on Christian lips. We speak of him, sing of him, pray to him, bear witness to him. Therefore the world has a right to see in us this Jesus of whom we talk so much. In fact, nothing hinders the testimony of the Christian church more than the wide gap between our claims and our performance, between the Christ we proclaim verbally and the Christ we present visually.

This is true everywhere, but never more dramatically so than in countries in which a non-Christian culture prevails. In such situations the difference between those who profess to follow Jesus and those who do not should be startlingly evident. When it is, people are attracted to Christ. When it is not, they are repelled.

Having considered the need for Christlikeness, because of both the purpose of God and the expectation of the world, we are ready to learn from Scripture how we are intended to grow into it.

 

Beholding the Glory of Jesus

 

Here is Paul’s teaching to the Corinthian Christians: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being changed into his likeness from one degree of glory to another; for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18, italics added).

What, then, is he like—this Jesus of the New Testament apostolic testimony? This Jesus whose glory is here displayed before our wondering eyes? This Jesus who is set forth as our example, that we should be “changed into his image” and become “like him”? Only the briefest sketch of him can be attempted.

1. Jesus Christ our model is the one who “emptied himself” and “humbled himself.” He emptied himself of rule, and humbled himself to serve. He refused to cling to the prerogatives of his own eternal deity. He laid aside his heavenly majesty. He renounced his status and his privileges. The apostles lay much stress on the humility and the generosity of Jesus as displayed in the incarnation, and they set these things before us for our imitation (Rom. 15:1–3; 2 Cor. 8:7–9; Phil. 2:5–8).

2. Jesus Christ our model is the one who served other people in their need. Self-humbling without the service of others may be but an empty gesture. Christ humbled himself to serve. He had not come to be served, he said, but to serve. And serve he did, responding with unfailing compassion to human need in its bewildering diversity.

He fed the hungry, healed the sick, comforted the sad, befriended the dropout, forgave the sinner, raised the dead, and announced good news to the poor. He even assumed a slave’s apron, washed his disciples’ feet, and said, “If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do as I have done to you” (John 13:14–15). Now he sends us into the world, just as he was sent into the world, to witness and serve like him, and to respond in compassionate sensitivity to human need.

3. Jesus Christ our model is the one who loved his enemies. He taught his followers not to repay evil for evil, or even to desire revenge, but to love their enemies, pray for their persecutors, and do good to those who wanted to do harm to them. And Jesus practiced what he preached. As Peter put it later,

 

If when you do right and suffer for it you take it patiently, you have God’s approval. For to this you have been called, because Christ also suffered for you, leaving you an example, that you should follow in his steps. He committed no sin; no guile was found on his lips. When he was reviled, he did not revile in return; when he suffered, he did not threaten; but he trusted to him who judges justly” (1 Pet. 2:20–23; see also Rom. 15:7; Eph. 5:2; Col. 3:13).

 

4. Jesus Christ our model is the one who trusted and obeyed God. He “learned obedience through what he suffered” and “became obedient unto death, even death on a cross” (Heb. 5:8; Phil. 2:8). Instead of taking revenge, he entrusted himself and his cause to the Judge of all mankind. When savagely tempted by the devil to distrust or disobey God, he strenuously resisted. From beginning to end, his life and ministry were marked by trust and obedience (see Rom. 5:19; 1 Pet. 2:23; Matt. 4:1–11).

This is the Jesus whose glory the Holy Spirit shows us in the mirror of the New Testament. He emptied himself, he served others, he loved his enemies, he trusted and obeyed God. Humility, self-sacrificial service, non-retaliation and forgiveness, faith and obedience—these are the outstanding characteristics of Jesus of Nazareth, the Jesus we are to imitate. Having seen his glory, we are to reflect it.

 

The Holy Spirit Changes Us

 

How does it happen? Paul states, “For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Cor. 3:18). The same Lord whose glory we behold is himself changing us into his image and likeness. We are being made like him by him. It is the Lord Jesus who makes us like the Lord Jesus. And he does it by his Holy Spirit.

Paul is referring to the inward, sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit which becomes visible in Christlikeness of character, and without which Christlikeness is impossible. This is certainly what we need. We know from both Scripture and experience that self-centeredness is deeply ingrained in our fallen nature.

We are not interested in skin-deep holiness, in a merely external resemblance to Jesus Christ. We are not satisfied by a superficial modification of behavior patterns. No, what we long for is a deep, inward change of character, resulting from a change of nature and leading to a radical change of conduct. In a word, we want to be like Christ, and that thoroughly, profoundly, entirely. Nothing less than this will do.

William Temple helped people in his day to grasp the Christian way of holiness by drawing an analogy between Shakespeare and Jesus, and declaring the impossibility of copying either. How could we ever write plays like Shakespeare’s? How could we ever live a life like Christ’s? It is impossible. The very suggestion is ludicrous.

But if the genius of Shakespeare were able to enter us, then we could write plays like him. And if the Spirit of Jesus were able to enter us, then we could live a life like him. The good news is that although we cannot have the genius of Shakespeare, we can have the Spirit of Jesus!

The Christian way of holiness is not that we struggle to live like Jesus but that he by his Spirit comes to live in us. The secret is not imitation (Christians imitating Christ’s life) so much as reproduction (Christ reproducing his life through us). It’s not just that we see the glory of Jesus by the illumination of the Holy Spirit but that we are changed into the image of Jesus by the indwelling power of the Holy Spirit.

It is appropriate that we should conclude this meditation by affirming the indispensable necessity of the work of the Holy Spirit. For he is the Spirit of Christ, and his ministry focuses on Christ. He shows us the glory of Christ and changes us into the image of Christ. That is to say, the Holy Spirit is a Christ-centered Spirit.

So if we wish to be Christ-centered Christians, then it is the Holy Spirit we need. We must come daily and continuously to Jesus Christ to ask for the fullness of his Holy Spirit. Only then will he reveal Christ to us and form Christ in us. Only then shall we begin at least to approximate to the Christ-centered, Christlike Christians we long to be for the sake of his glory.

 

 

From Understanding Christ, copyright © 1979 by John Stott. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved.