Knowing who to imitate …

There’s an old saying that imitation is the highest form of flattery, but if you don’t know who to imitate, it can be a fast way of looking foolish …

President Calvin Coolidge invited some people from his hometown to dinner at the White House. Since they did not know how to behave at such an occasion, they thought the best policy would be just to do what the President did. The time came for serving coffee. The President poured his coffee into a saucer. As soon as the home folk saw it, they did the same. The next step for the President was to pour some milk and add a little sugar to the coffee in the saucer. The home folks did the same. They thought for sure that the next step would be for the President to take the saucer with the coffee and begin sipping it. But the President didn’t do so. He leaned over, placed the saucer on the floor and called the cat.

Many of us likely would have done the same as those folks visiting the President. We can learn by following the lead of others, but if you don’t pick the right people to follow, you can learn — and do — the wrong things. When we become children of God, we’re told clearly who to imitate …

“Imitate God, therefore, in everything you do, because you are his dear children. Live a life filled with love, following the example of Christ. He loved us and offered himself as a sacrifice for us, a pleasing aroma to God,” Ephesians 5:1-2.

What does a life of imitating God look like? The same passage of scripture tells us:

• • “Live a life filled with love.”
  • “Following the example of Christ.”
  • That example of Christ was … “He loved us and offered Himself as a sacrifice for us …”

To add clarity about what it means to imitate God and to follow the example of Christ, the apostle Paul uses the next four verses (Eph. 5:3-6) to list specific behaviors to avoid, with a summation of …

“Don’t participate in the things these people do. For once you were full of darkness, but now you have light from the Lord. So live as people of light! For this light within you produces only what is good and right and true,” Ephesians 5:7-9.

G.K. Beale picked up on this theme of imitation in his book, “We Become What We Worship”:

• When my two daughters, Hannah and Nancy, were about two- or three- years-old, I noticed how they imitated and reflected my wife and me. They cooked, fed, and disciplined their play animals and dolls just the way my wife cooked, fed, and disciplined them. They gave play medicine to their dolls just the way we fed them medicine. Our daughters also prayed with their stuffed animals and dolls the way we prayed with them. They talked on their toy telephone with the same kind of Texas accent that my wife uses when she talks on the phone …

Most people, I am sure, have seen this with children. But children only begin what we continue to do as adults. We imitate … Most people can think back to junior high, high school, or even college when they were in a group, and to one degree or another, whether consciously or unconsciously, they reflected and resembled that peer group … All of us, even adults, reflect what we are around. We reflect things in our culture and society …

The principle is this: What we revere, we resemble, either for ruin or restoration. To commit ourselves to some part of the creation more than the Creator is idolatry. And when we worship something in creation, we become like it, as spiritually lifeless and insensitive to God as a piece of wood, rock, or stone.

Thus, Paul admonishes us to imitate God because we are His dear children.

Is that what you’re doing? Are you imitating God in the way you live? is your life following the example of Christ? Or does your life look more like an imitation from the world?

Scotty