Copy-Christ, Not Copycats

We all imitate someone. That is not a flaw in the Christian life; it is a built-in feature of being human, and Paul refuses to pretend otherwise. His answer to the danger of bad models is not "stop copying," it is "choose better models" (Murray, "Copycat or Copy-Christ?" on 3:17-21). So he points first at himself, then at the walkers worth following, then, with tears, at the walkers who are heading for destruction. Three categories, one urgent question for the reader: who are you patterning your life after?

1. Imitate those who imitate Christ

"Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us" (3:17). This is not arrogance. Paul already set the rule elsewhere: "be imitators of me, as I am of Christ" (1 Cor 11:1). He is a copy of Christ, so when he says "copy me" he means "copy copy-Christs." And he widens the circle: keep your eyes on those who walk the same way. Not one hero only, but a company of demonstrably changed lives. Murray: "It's impossible not to have a model. The only question is, who is your model?"

This connects straight back to chapter 2. There, Paul held up Timothy and Epaphroditus as living examples of the mind of Christ (L15). Here he generalizes it: the church is meant to be full of visible, imitable Christians, people whose walk (note the verb, repeated four times in 3:17-19) shows what the mind of Christ looks like in ordinary life. Doctrine becomes biography, again. And biography becomes a pattern others can trace.

2. The enemies Paul weeps over

Then the contrast, and it is tearful. "For many, of whom I have often told you and now tell you even with tears, walk as enemies of the cross of Christ" (3:18). Notice the tears. Paul does not gloat over the lost; he weeps. These may be outright opponents, or, more cutting, people inside the church's orbit who claim Christ but live another story, the very kind of false teachers he has been warning about since 3:2. Either way his grief is the model for ours: "Don't look at their bloated, cosseted, overindulged bodies with envy but with sorrow" (Murray). Anger is not the Christian reflex toward the lost; tears are.

How does Paul know they are enemies? He reads their walk. Murray's diagnosis is unforgettable: "They're not living a cross-shaped life but an I-shaped life." A cross-shaped life is self-giving; an I-shaped life is self-promoting. The cross is the measure of whether a life is actually Christian.

3. Four marks of an earthly mind

Verse 19 gives four devastating diagnostics, and each is worth sitting with this week:

• Their end is destruction. The path has a destination. A respectable-looking walk can end in ruin. Paul says so plainly.
• Their god is the belly. Appetite is their worship. Comfort, food, pleasure, sensuality, the body's cravings set the agenda. Whatever you must have to be happy is your god.
• They glory in their shame. They boast in what they ought to hide. Rogers, in "The Politics of Pilgrims," said of his own day: "Sin that used to slink down back alleys now struts down main streets, and they are proud of their perversion." A culture that cannot blush is a verse-19 culture.
• Minds set on earthly things. Their phroneō, their governed disposition, points down, not up. Practical atheism, even with Christian language.

Read those four as a mirror, not only a verdict on others. Where is my mind set? What is the "god" my week actually orbits? The point of naming the copycat life is to recognize its pull in our own hearts, then turn, with Paul, toward better models and a better citizenship.

Against the enemies of the cross, Paul sets a final, soaring contrast: a citizenship, a Savior, and a body made new. Chapter 3 closes where it began, in the Lord.