Be Imitators of Christ

Be imitators of me, as I am of Christ.

1 Corinthians 11:1

There is a very old book titled Imitation of Christ, which was hand written and completed in 1441 by Brother Thomas Kempis. This book is so deep and rich that it’s definitely not something to read straight through, but rather a book to take your time with, stopping to let the truths found in it fully unfold. The book is broken up into small sections and each section can be used as a prompt for conversation with God in prayer. It’s one of those books you’ll want to pick up from time to time and re-read.

Recently I was reflecting on this whole concept of imitating Christ. Sadly it is something that has been forgotten by many Christians. Many people view Jesus as a good man who walked this earth over 2000 years ago, who has a lot of good things to teach us about love, but who is not really interested in me personally. There is also a false notion that Jesus’ experiences way back when are not relatable to our lives in 2021. As a result, many people, including many Christians, keep Jesus Christ at a distance. Meanwhile, everything on our social media feed and our unlimited access to pop culture is doing its best to give us innumerable options of what to believe in and how to act. If we are not actively forming our minds to Christ, then we are being formed by the world. Where we are not choosing Christ, something inferior to God is being substituted. Where there is a lack of clarity of moral direction, our human nature falls into the trap of seeking direction anywhere it can because we crave direction.

You cannot serve both God and wealth. 

Luke 16:13

We are all called to choose Christ completely, in all aspects of our lives. We cannot separate out our choice for Christ as only one portion of our lives, while the other parts serve something other than God (most often our own ego). If we truly desire to imitate Christ, we would do well to read daily God’s Word, so that Christ will become our vision and we will become true imitators of Christ.

The question is how do we imitate Christ? There are so many possible ways, but I want to propose four specific ways that speak to me personally at this point in my life. The first way is to imitate Jesus’ humility. In both his entrance into this world and his departure from it, Jesus is robed in humility. The Lord God took on flesh at the very beginning of all human life, in the womb of his mother. In the hidden life of Mary’s womb, Jesus grew and developed until he was able to be birthed into the world. God did not have to come into the world in this way, but he chose to do so in order to reveal an important facet of his nature to us. Another way in which God shows us the importance of humility is in Jesus’ hidden life in Nazareth under the care and protection of Mary and Joseph. Furthermore, at the end of his life, we see Jesus humble himself by the way of the cross, whereby he takes on our sin so that we may be reconciled to God. He is the spotless victim, who gives himself over to death in order to save us all.

In our own imitation of Christ, we often are confronted with situations where we must choose whether or not we are going to humble ourselves before God. When we do this we are allowing ourselves to be hearers of God’s Word. It is only in humility that we are able to hear the Lord speak to us. Pride can hide the Lord’s voice so well. Let’s be real, we are never on level ground with God. He is supreme, thus we must be perpetually humbled before him. We see from the life of Christ, that he was in complete service to the Father, even unto death.

Another way we can imitate Christ is through obedience. Obedience to God is the ultimate act of love of God. It is the fulfillment of the First Commandment. Since obedience is an action, we move forward on our journey from not only hearing God’s Word, to then using our free will to choose to do it.

Be be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves… he who looks into the perfect law of liberty, and perseveres, being no hearer that forgets, but a doer that acts, he shall be blessed in his doing.

James 1:22,25

This is what obedience looks like, to not only know the will of God, but to also follow through with doing it. St James tells us that obedience brings blessings. We also know from scripture that disobedience brings consequences.

Jesus was completely obedient to the Father, even though that meant he would die a brutal death at Calvary. The Agony in the Garden reminds us that although Jesus was fully divine, he was also fully human, and his flesh resisted the sacrifice that God was asking of him. Our flesh too will resist sacrifice, but the more we purposefully deny our flesh, the better prepared we will be to persevere when hardships come our way. We would do well to start now in strengthen our souls. In order to do this we must detach from our passions and desires in an intentional way. This is what the Church teaches us to do every Lent, but as with all training, it is good to be consistent and continue our training in the faith all year long. To imitate Jesus’ obedience to God is to run to the cross instead of running away from it. Although everything in Jesus’ humanity was telling him to run from the cross, his will chose to accept it and enter into it. The events of Calvary are not just one of the events that happened in the life of Christ, but rather the event. We should keep it in the forefront of our vision, so that we may always be reminded of what the fullness of obedience looks like.

To imitate Christ is also done through service to our neighbor. While love of God, which is the First Commandment, is fulfilled in our hearing and doing his Word, love of neighbor, which is the Second Commandment, is fulfilled in our charity to one another. We know that Jesus spent three years in service to God’s people through public ministry, but he no doubt spent his entire life in perfect charity. The three years we do know about his ministry reveal to us the nature of service in which we are all called. Jesus reached out to the poor, the downtrodden, the sick, the dying, the sinners, the unwanted and the abandoned. He not only reached out to them to give them encouragement and physical support, but he reached out to them to call them to reconciliation with God. Jesus called each and every person he met to follow the Father more closely, thus his ministry of service is completely tied to the salvation of souls. For us as well, this focus must never be separated from our good works. 

In order for us to imitate Christ, it is clear that service to our neighbor is involved. The giving of ourselves for our neighbors’ benefit is not simply a gift of our time and energy, but a total gift of self. How deep does our service to our neighbor really go? How much are we willing to give up or sacrifice for our neighbor’s eternal salvation? Although it is only Jesus who does the saving, all service is empty when it is not focused on the eternal salvation of the other. Jesus healed not to validate himself, but in order to redeem the person. Our participation in God’s work is done through both sacrifice and ministry. It is never about us, but all about the eternal salvation of souls. Oftentimes simply praying or sacrificing for someone is all that is being asked of us. Other times helping the person physically is what lifts their soul and points out the call to follow Jesus more closely. But there will always be times when more direct methods of evangelization are necessary in which we must always be prepare for by building up our own faith. 

Finally, to imitate Christ is to suffer. Jesus never promises that we will not suffer. I am not sure when this concept entered into Christianity, but it is quite the opposite.

If any want to become my followers, let them deny themselves and take up their cross daily and follow me.

Luke 9:23

When Jesus speaks of the cross here, he does not mean something that is easy to carry or without pain and sorrow. On the contrary, when Jesus points his disciples to his crucifixion as a way of following him, He shows us that there is something important that we need not miss about his passion and death, namely that we too are to go through it. The God of love does not will that we suffer, but he does allow it because he knows that we are capable of defeating it when we do it with Christ. Jesus’ defeat of the cross was shown through the love and forgiveness that he offered up for all the sins of humanity despite his innocence. Jesus’ one sacrifice on the cross is something that we can have a share in, and it requires us to do as he commanded by taking up our own cross and following him. 

In our imitation of Christ through suffering, God is not necessarily asking us to be crucified on a cross like Jesus. What he is asking is that we love despite our suffering. That we will offer our pain and sorrow in union with His ultimate sacrifice, whereby we enter into the love with which he bore his sacrificial cross.

No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.

John 15:13

If this is so then it is precisely through our suffering that we are able to enter more deeply into the love of Christ, for it is in suffering that we are capable of loving the deepest. This understanding of self-sacrificial love is how the saints were able to rejoice in their suffering. They knew that through their suffering they were given an opportunity to imitate Christ’s deepest and most profound love. Through suffering we are able to share in the very Heart of God, which is a cause for tremendous rejoicing. 

There are so many more aspects of Jesus’ life that we can reflect upon when discovering how to imitate Christ, but my hope is that these four can be used as a jumping off point for prayer. We will never know the infinite depths of the mystery of God, but through our desire to imitate Christ, we will be led into an endless ocean of truth and wisdom that will forever keep us journeying toward the Lord. In this we can spend our whole life understanding how to place God as our center, how to choose Jesus in every aspect of our being, and how to breathe in the life of the Holy Spirit. For it is in our endless search for God’s truth and goodness that we end up discovering who we are and how the Lord looks upon us with a boundless love and mercy.