ROLE MODELS
1 Thess. 1:6; 1 Cor. 11:1
Morning Meditation 3/11/2013
1 Thess. 1:6: “And ye became followers of us, and of the Lord, having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy Ghost:” 1 Cor. 11:1: “Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.”
It is good to have a human role model. However, our ultimate model is Christ. This is what Paul is saying in these verses.
But you have to be careful when you follow a human role model. I read a story several years ago about a woman dropping a beautiful china plate and breaking it. It belonged to a set she loved. She very carefully glued it back together but it showed the crack. She searched until she found where the plate was made in China. She sent the plate to its original maker and asked him to make her ten plates exactly like the model she had sent him. Months later she received the ten plates that she had ordered, made exactly like the model she had sent including the crack! All human role models have cracks. And we have a tendency to copy the cracks in their lives more than the Christ likeness.
The words “And ye became followers of us” is what I am talking about when I say role models. Paul was a role model for the people in Thessalonica. He was the missionary that won them to Christ. He was a walking Bible and had thrilled them with the message of grace and the doctrines of the New Testament. But best of all, Paul was a model of Jesus. I read about a missionary who went in the jungles of Africa. He thought he was the first missionary that had ever penetrated this far into this area of Africa. He told the natives about Jesus. One of them spoke up as the missionary described Jesus to them and said, “He has already been here. We have seen the one you describe.” Upon questioning them about this, he discovered that David Livingstone had been there and the natives thought that the missionary was describing him. What a testimony to the life of David Livingstone.
The words “and of the Lord” set forth the second role model. They were not just following Paul who looked a lot like Christ. Paul had pointed them to the Lord. How could they follow the Lord when they did not have a New Testament in that day? It is said, and I believe it, that the Epistles were circulated among the churches with amazing rapidity. It is said this happened in the first forty years after the death of Christ. Paul said to this church in chapter two and verse thirteen: “For this cause also thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh also in you that believe.” They were taught from the beginning of their salvation that the words spoke to them were God’s words and this became an article of faith to them. They received what Paul said to them “not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God...”
Christ is our role model and can be seen without his visible presence. This is taught in 2 Cor. 3:18: “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.” This verse teaches that the very image of Christ is reflected in the mirror of God’s Word. It teaches that as I gaze upon Him that the Holy Spirit changes me into the very image (Christ) that I am beholding.
Then there is a way to keep from following one who is a bad role model. Paul says in our second text: “Be ye followers of me, even as I also am of Christ.” The words “even as” (kathos) mean according as, just as, even as, in proportion as, in the degree that.” The definition that Strong gives to the word justifies the following illustration. The Children of Israel had a role model in Moses to follow out of Egypt. But they also had a pillar of cloud. When the cloud moved they moved and when the cloud stayed they stayed (Exo. 40:37; Num. 9:17-18). So, should Moses have gone off on his own, Israel had a way of knowing. The Word of God is our “pillar of cloud” that protects us from following wrong role models.
Thomas _ Kempis wrote his spiritual classic “The Imitation of Christ” and was published in the first part of the fifteenth century. He begins his first chapter on Imitating Christ with the words, “He who follows me can never walk in darkness, says the Lord.”
Bara Dada, the brother of Dr Rabindranath Tagore once said to Stanley Jones, a Methodist missionary, “Jesus is ideal and wonderful, but you Christians—you are not like him.”
I am afraid that the reason so many who depart from the faith after having been raised in Christian homes can be blamed on bad role models.
Christian fathers are the primary role models in the home. This is to take nothing away from the mother. But it is to fathers that Paul says, “And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord” (Eph. 6:4). Paul gives the responsibility for teaching the children to the fathers. There was a father who went out of his house one cold snowy day. As he walked he heard something behind him. He turned to see his little boy jumping from one of the tracks he had left in the snow to the other. When his son saw his father watching him, he said, “Father, I am walking in your tracks.” This is also true in our Christian lives. There needs to be a close relationship between what we teach our children and what we practice. I cannot follow Jesus without practicing the teaching and example that he left.
John Stott said, “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” (Life in Christ, Baker, John Stott, p. 101).
I have believed for a long time that the meaning of Ephesians 6:4 where it says, “provoke not your children to wrath” has to do with two things: First, unreasonable punishment. A child must be able to make sense out of the punishment that is being given him. Secondly, inconsistency between what we demand of our children and what they see us practice.
We need good role models. But we need to be inspired by and follow good men’s examples with an open Bible (our pillar of cloud). We need to follow men as they follow Christ.
