Be my imitators, even as *I* also [am] of Christ.
Paul ends a long section on food, freedom, and giving up rights by pointing to himself — and then past himself to Christ. It raises two questions at once: how can a man safely tell others to copy him, and what should they copy?
A chapter break falls here, but the verse closes the argument of chapter 10. That argument was about eating, drinking, and doing everything for God's glory. One commentator ties the two together directly:
When another believer's conscience is troubled, it is good to deny yourself, and not expose your liberty to someone else's judgment. In love one must respect the scruple of the weakest believer, while holding fast to the intelligence and liberty of Christ. If one does everything for God's glory, one does not seek to gratify self but gives it up. This puts no stumbling block before anyone — Jews, Greeks, or the church of God. Love alone walks like that, seeking God's glory and man's good.
Another writer notes the same link, adding that the appeal is not a claim to control them:
Verse 1 preserves the continuity from chapter 10. As Paul followed Christ in his self-sacrificing devotion to the glory of God, so he urges the saints to follow him. This is not to put them under his control, but to give them an example.
One writer unpacks the word itself:
The Greek word is the one we get "mimics" from... Paul follows Christ: copies Him, "mimics" Him, if we can say it reverently. And we all are to be "joint-imitators" of Paul... It tells us we are not only to "keep step," but also to "keep rank."
What did copying Paul look like in practice? One writer starts from Paul's own aim to please everyone:
How did he seek to "please all"? Not, we may be sure, by associating with their evils, but by following Christ in all His lowly grace.
Another commentator sees that same grace paired with boldness:
No man was more gentle, humble and gracious than the Apostle. But no one was bolder, more forceful and more plain in speech when the truth was in question. If it were otherwise, he would have stopped being "the servant of Christ."
The words "as I am of Christ" are not decoration. They set the limit on how far anyone should follow a human example:
It is not a question of what one man says, or what another did, or what a third wrote. What matters is that the Word of God forms us through moral exercise... This is not a blind attachment to a leader. We do not do a thing because a leader does it or says it. We follow them only so far as they had the Word of God in all its purity as the basis of their life and ways.
Without that clause, even godly leaders become a danger:
Leaders there always will be, and rightly so when it is their faith that carries them ahead of others. But faith must be in the Word of God... Apart from this, we may go easily astray in the path of very good men. Peter led Barnabas astray after this fashion. Paul says: "Be imitators of me," but adds, "as I am of Christ."
The first Christians learned what Christ was like by watching the men who brought the message:
Those early Christians depended on what they heard, and on what they saw in the way the preachers lived. They might say to themselves: how can I know what Christianity really is, or what Christ is like? The only way we can know what Christ is like is to watch closely how the men who brought the good news lived... And if they came to follow the Lord through the Apostle, with a man in between, that would lead them to follow the Lord directly... All Paul wanted was that they should see Christ in his ways so clearly that they would follow the Lord Himself.
Telling people to follow a man could sound like a recipe for division. One writer answers that worry:
Look carefully at the situation, and you will conclude that following Paul is just the way to be free from party spirit and party aims... Never for one moment would Paul take our gaze off Christ. If people could see Christ magnified in his life, that was the object of his life.
- Follow — The call is to copy a life, not admire it. The word means to mimic, to keep step and keep rank with the one ahead.
- Follow what — Not Paul's personality. Copy his surrender of self for God's glory and others' good, and his lowly grace.
- Follow how far — "As I am of Christ" is the limit. Follow leaders only where they walk by the Word of God. Good men have led good men astray.
- Follow why — People who cannot yet read Christ for themselves read Him in Christians. The middle step exists to bring them to the Lord directly.
- Follow together — This does not create parties; it dissolves them. The example keeps pointing past itself to Christ.
Now I praise you, that in all things ye are mindful of me; and that as I have directed you, ye keep the directions.
Paul starts a new section of this letter. It covers how believers behave when they meet together, and he opens with praise, not rebuke. Two questions sit in the verse. What were the "traditions" he had delivered? And why does a letter so full of correction begin here?
Corinth had given Paul plenty to condemn, yet he opens this section by naming what was right.
Grace delights to recognise all that is of God in the saints. In line with that grace, the Apostle opens this new section of the letter with a word of praise. There was so much in the assembly to condemn. Yet the Apostle can at least praise them for this: in all their questions they remembered him, and they kept the ordinances, or "directions", he had delivered to them.
It was his habit, and one writer names the reason it works.
First of all he puts them in their own clear, positive place, and he acknowledges the good things that were in them. He always owns whatever good he can before he begins to reprove anything. We ought to do the same. It opens the heart to receive rebuke.
Scripture also uses this word for rules that men added to God's commands. Paul means something else.
Scripture uses the word "tradition" in two ways. It can mean the rules men added, as in Matthew 15. It also means what the apostles commanded the saints — first by word of mouth, then in inspired writings, and in both ways at once while the New Testament was still being written and not yet complete.
Modern English hides a link that the Greek makes plain: what Paul "delivered" and what they "maintain" come from one root. The older translation quoted below keeps that link visible.
Paul used the same word in 1 Corinthians 11:2, "that as I have directed you, ye keep the directions". In that verse, "directed" and "directions" come from the same root. In that verse the meaning is divine instruction, not human traditional teaching.
Some claim an unwritten tradition handed down through the centuries. What Paul praises here is different: truth the Corinthians already had and knew.
The traditions the apostle urges the church to hold fast were truth they knew and had (1 Cor. 11:2). They were not scripture topped up by a vague spiritual sense that shapes everything by its own hidden power... A tradition you do not have and do not know is an absurd contradiction of the only true sense of tradition in scripture. ... The word of God alone has an absolute title over the heart and conscience of His people.
So where does the church find its directions today?
The word in 1 Corinthians 11:2 should be translated "traditions" or "directions." The apostle does not say what they were. But thank God, we know this much. Whatever ordinances, traditions or directions the Church needs to the end of time are set down plainly in the Scriptures of the New Testament. That is quite enough for us. Men have no authority at all to set up rites and ceremonies in the Church of God.
Paul praises them, then turns to correct them. Their trouble was not that they had dropped his instructions.
In spite of their many failings and practical disorders, they had remembered Paul's words in everything he had definitely commanded. What he delivered to them they had kept and observed — though, as what follows shows, with real fault in the manner and spirit of it. Serious disorders had arisen. They did not come from neglect of the positive directions the Corinthians had received. They came from far too little of the prime element of all true order in the house of God: remembering His very presence with His saints.
Verse 2 opens a block of teaching that runs to the end of chapter 14. It starts further back than most readers expect. Here "the Assembly" means the church.
Chapters 11 to 14 no longer deal with testimony or conduct before the world. They deal with the conduct, order and unity that suit the Assembly, the body of Christ. Yet Paul does not open with the gathering of the Assembly, which starts at verse 17. He opens with the basic truths of God's order in creation. For if we ignore this first and lower order, how can we keep the higher one properly?
- Delivered. The "traditions" are the instruction the apostles handed on. It came first by word of mouth, then in writing, while the New Testament was still being written.
- Distinguished. Scripture uses the same word for rules that men add to God's commands. The test is simple: did this come from the apostles, or from men?
- Deposited. Everything the church needs to the end of time stands written in the New Testament. So no one may add rites or ceremonies of his own.
- Delighted in. Paul owns the good before he reproves the bad. Praise opens the heart to receive correction.
- Deficient still. Corinth kept the directions and still fell into disorder. True order rests on remembering that God Himself is present with His saints.