by Pastor Douglas Brauner

The Importance of Imitating Christ

You can listen to today’s devotion by clicking on this SoundCloud link.

“Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.”
1 Corinthians 11:1 English Standard Version

One of the dangers of writing these Praying With The Eyes devotions is that we writers take a passage of God’s Word out of its context. Paul’s words above to the struggling community of believers in Corinth come at the end of a discussion about whether it is okay to eat food sacrificed to idols or not. I can only imagine that much of the food on the open market in Corinth had been originally slaughtered to some god, some idol.

Should a redeemed child of God who no longer participates in the practices of idolatry eat such meat? It probably was the best meat in the marketplace, the best lamb, beef, and pork. The problem is that eating such meat might cause a weaker believer to sin against God, imagining that idols are real and eating the meat would be a way of participating in the worship of that idol.

The cross of Jesus would thus be nullified in that person’s life.

Paul would not do anything that would put another person’s relationship with Jesus in peril. It was not about whether it was right or wrong to eat meat that had been presented to an idol, it was about what such eating and drinking would do to a person’s relationship with Jesus.

Though we know that we are free in Christ and that as Paul states in 1 Corinthians 10:23 that all things are lawful for us, yet not everything is good for the Christian community. Satan’s desire is that a follower of Jesus stops following. That a person who trusts Jesus stops trusting. That a heart which is bond to Christ would be released from his grip of love.

Paul’s encouragement to imitate him is not an egotistical call to replicate his behavior, but an encouragement that people see Jesus in us. Today, we have an opportunity to imitate Christ by how we live our messy, Christ-filled lives. May our actions bring people into Jesus’s arms and not be an obstacle to them.

Copyright Holy Cross Lutheran Church, Colorado Springs, Colorado