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Philippians and Philemon: Prison Epistles, Part 2

  1. Lesson One
    Overview of Philippians (Philippians 1–4)
    22 Activities
    |
    1 Assessment
  2. Lesson Two
    Philippians: Suffering and Community (Philippians Review)
    22 Activities
  3. Lesson Three
    Overview of Philemon
    22 Activities
  4. Lesson Four
    Paul and Slavery (Philemon, Romans 6 Review)
    17 Activities
    |
    1 Assessment
  5. Lesson Five
    Social Impact
    9 Activities
    |
    4 Assessments
  6. Course Wrap-Up
    Course Completion
    1 Activity
    |
    1 Assessment

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While the imitation of Christ, and those who themselves imitate Christ, is an explicitly biblical ideal, the concept of teaching by example is of course universal, and it was especially valued in the ancient world. The first century Roman philosopher Seneca said in a letter: 

Let us choose … men who teach us by their lives, men who teach us what we ought to do and then prove it by their practice, who show us what we should avoid, and then are never caught doing that which they have ordered us to avoid. Choose as a guide one whom you will admire more when you see him act than when you hear him speak.
Epistle 52.8, cited by Malherbe, 1986, pp. 63-64.

An ancient handbook on letter writing offers similar advice:

Always be an emulator, Dear Friend, of virtuous men. For it is better to be well spoken of when imitating good men than to be reproached by all men while following evil men.
Pseudo-Libanius, Epistolary Styles, cited by Malherbe, 2000, p. 155.

While Paul’s method of teaching by example is a common approach in education, and would have resonated in his historical context, Paul is talking about more than following an external example.

This is where the Christian ideal of the imitation of Jesus parts ways with the universal instinct to learn by example. Christians are not only living a life like Jesus, they become bound up in Jesus’ own life. They participate in His body and are resurrected with Him. The life of the Spirit, which is Jesus’ own divine life and the Father’s as well, is open for Christians in a mystical way.

In this sense Paul’s teaching, by example, transcends imitation. Paul calls Christians to imitate Jesus and himself in their behavior. But something deeper is happening, “because God’s love has been poured out into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, who has been given to us” (Romans 5:5 NIV):

Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord’s glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit. 
2 Corinthians 3:17-18 NIV

Christians are not just people who imitate God, they’re people who are becoming transformed in a mystical way. The image of God in them is refined into an image of Christ as we know Him from the New Testament. The gap between imitator and exemplar closes in Paul’s thinking as the example takes up residence in the imitator, and the student partakes in the teacher by becoming grafted to his body. All of this language, and the conceptual frameworks behind it, take us well beyond the boundaries of any traditional or classical idea of imitation. 

And we should remember that this view of Paul’s is not something he came up with, but rather He borrowed it from Jesus, where he prays in the Gospel of John:

I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me. 
John 17:20-23 NIV

Seneca and handbook quoted from: Dean Flemming, Philippians, 2009, pp. 196-197.