14 I am not writing this to shame you, but to warn you, as my dear children. 15 Even though you have ten thousand guardians in Christ, you do not have many fathers, for in Christ Jesus I became your father through the gospel. 16 Therefore I urge you to imitate me. 17 For this reason I am sending to you Timothy, my son whom I love, who is faithful in the Lord. He will remind you of my way of life in Christ Jesus, which agrees with what I teach everywhere in every church.This text, too, is revealing of what Paul means by gospel.
And what it reveals is this: gospeling involves conversions and conversions involve spiritual relations to those converted. In fact, Paul saw himself as the spiritual parent of those who converted as a result of his gospeling. He saw himself as their spiritual father.
But he is their father with one big condition: he is their father "in Christ." This is not something he did but something that happened as the converts were united to Christ.
This fatherliness leads to the moral injunction that Paul thinks his "in Christ" converts ought to imitate him! He wants them to imitate his life of service and of rejection and being the "scum of the earth" (1 Cor 4:13).
Conversion, in other words, entails relationship to the "converter". Of course, this can involve abuse and control issues ... but Paul is urging the Corinthians to live according to the gospel of Christ crucified and that means living like Paul.
But he is their father with one big condition: he is their father "in Christ." This is not something he did but something that happened as the converts were united to Christ.
This fatherliness leads to the moral injunction that Paul thinks his "in Christ" converts ought to imitate him! He wants them to imitate his life of service and of rejection and being the "scum of the earth" (1 Cor 4:13).
Conversion, in other words, entails relationship to the "converter". Of course, this can involve abuse and control issues ... but Paul is urging the Corinthians to live according to the gospel of Christ crucified and that means living like Paul.
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Rick,
Paul teaches - and he expects people to remember. But he also models the whole gospel and teaches the whole gospel.
I think one of the key points here is that "making disciples" and teaching them to obey everything I (Jesus) have commanded you (Mt. 28:20) requires (1) being a disciple and (2) obeying the commands of Jesus.
RICK,
It is not either/or but you know and I know that the "teachings" part is played way out of hand in the USAmerican information-driven church rather than in vibrant transformational communities. Truth is to be incarnated...and not only in Jesus.
RJS and John-
I think we all are in agreement.
John- I have seen enough of your comments and posts to know that you do value verbal and written teaching, so I should have qualified my earlier comment with that.
My motive for bringing this up is that I have seen Christians abandon the verbal and written (including Scripture), and focus just on the modelling. They have made it an "either/or", and so I just wanted to mention the need for both (the whole).
These sorts of passages are why I love Paul; he sees what God is doing in him and encourages others to follow the path that he is on. Can you imagine if someone who talked like Paul walked into bible study at most churches today? LOL, I don't think he'd be real well received. One of my big pet peeves is church leaders who insist, "I'm struggling just like everyone else." I do understand the desire not to be seen as an exotic creature living on a pedestal. But if you haven't been down the road closer to God, and don't think you'll ever get much further than me, where exactly were you planning to lead me? We seem to have decided that as believers we can talk about ourselves as sinners(but not too bad, because we have to keep up appearances) saved by grace (not that we're special or better than anyone else or anything). But it's almost verboten to say, "I'm really a mess" or "I've been transformed by God and you should imitate me so God can transform you as well." We seem to want people to stay in the comfortable mushy middle.
I think Paul's encouragment to imitate him has to do with the struggles of the Corinthian Church. It is not the reception of the Gospel, that is their understanding of it, that is the problem, but how they are living it out (there are schisma's among them). So Paul here lifts up his own life of denial of authoritative rights (see chp 9) as an example of how the gospel should be lived out in community. That is, living out the gospel should be about the upbuilding of the community. In other letters the issue is one of theology so he instructs in a way as to correct the theological problem (e.g. Galatians). But in 1 Cor. it really is an ekklesia problem not a specifically doctrinal problem. How the gospel should be lived out calls for powerful example rather than fancy rhetoric.
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