Do We Need Christian Role Models?
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00:00:04.000 | Pastor John, one important question we get occasionally through email is about Christian role models.
00:00:09.000 | If Christ is our example, and of course He's much more than a moral example, but He's no less than a moral example,
00:00:15.000 | and if this is the case, do we need any other role models at all?
00:00:19.000 | Most of these thoughts, Tony, come from reflecting yesterday on Philippians 3.17, which says,
00:00:28.000 | "Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example that you have in us."
00:00:40.000 | And what struck me and started all these reflections was,
00:00:46.000 | "Keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example that you have in us."
00:00:52.000 | In other words, it's not just me you're supposed to look at, not just Christ you're supposed to look at,
00:00:58.000 | but look at the people that are looking at me while I look to Christ.
00:01:01.000 | And that just struck me as so removed from Christ, and why Paul would say that.
00:01:09.000 | I know that when he says, "Be imitators of me," he means to the degree that I'm an imitator of Christ,
00:01:15.000 | because he says that in 1 Corinthians 11, "Be imitators of me as I am of Christ."
00:01:22.000 | And yet it just struck me, my goodness, there's all these degrees of separation.
00:01:27.000 | In fact, if you count it all the way back into the Trinity, at this point, there's five of them.
00:01:33.000 | There's the Father, who imitates nobody. He's the origin of everything.
00:01:38.000 | And then there's the Son, who imitates the Father, John 5, 19, where it says, "I only do what I see the Father doing."
00:01:47.000 | And then there's Paul, who imitates Jesus, who imitates the Father.
00:01:51.000 | And then here in verse 17 of Philippians 3, there's those who walk according to the example that you have in us.
00:01:59.000 | And then there's the fifth generation, the readers, me, as I'm reading it, he's saying,
00:02:05.000 | "Now you look to those who are looking to me as I look to Christ, who looks to the Father."
00:02:11.000 | And I thought, "This is amazing. This really relates to, like, your book on Newton.
00:02:18.000 | Why is Tony Ranke, for goodness sakes, writing a whole book on the Christian life as lived and taught by John Newton?
00:02:26.000 | Why don't you write a book on Jesus, for goodness sakes, who really knows what it's all about?"
00:02:31.000 | And Paul's answer would be, "I told you to."
00:02:34.000 | Exactly.
00:02:35.000 | "I told you, 'Look at those who are looking at me as I look to Christ.'"
00:02:40.000 | And Newton was just a great looker at the Gospel and at Paul.
00:02:45.000 | And it's my love for biography, why I do these biographies year after year at the Pastors Conference.
00:02:51.000 | Why would you do that? Why don't you read your Bible, for goodness sakes,
00:02:54.000 | instead of reading about the saints who are looking at Paul, who's looking at Jesus?
00:03:00.000 | And the answer is because Philippians 3.17 told me to.
00:03:04.000 | "Keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example that you have in us."
00:03:10.000 | Which raised kind of a deeper question for me.
00:03:14.000 | Why don't we all just look to Jesus?
00:03:19.000 | I mean, isn't that the right thing to say?
00:03:23.000 | If you want to know how to live the Christian life, if you want to know what the Gospel is,
00:03:26.000 | if you want to be transformed into the image of Christ, look at Christ, look at Christ.
00:03:32.000 | So what's all this talk from Paul about not only looking at him, but looking at those who look at him?
00:03:40.000 | And surely the answer is something like, "God didn't just create Christ and you."
00:03:48.000 | If God just created Christ and you, then for goodness sakes, look at Jesus only.
00:03:53.000 | But if God created Christ and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and put you in a church,
00:03:58.000 | and called you members of one another, and told you to love one another, and exhort one another,
00:04:04.000 | and encourage one another, then this body, this organic thing called the church,
00:04:12.000 | is not a competition with the revelation of the glory of Christ.
00:04:17.000 | It's a means of the revelation of the glory of Christ.
00:04:21.000 | What I got from that verse, Tony, in reflecting on it, was that God intends to reveal the glories of Christ
00:04:31.000 | and to bring people into conformity to the glory of Christ by, yes, looking directly at him in his word,
00:04:39.000 | and yes, also gets more glory by looking at him as he is reflected in the people that are reflecting his word.
00:04:50.000 | And God just wants to do it that way.
00:04:52.000 | He ordains that Christ gets more glory by us seeing Christ reflected in others than simply seeing Christ directed only.
00:05:04.000 | And the practical effect it had on me at the end of these meditations was,
00:05:10.000 | number one, I really want to look to people who are ahead of me.
00:05:15.000 | All of us, everybody in the Christian life has somebody behind them who's looking at them,
00:05:21.000 | and somebody ahead of them who they should look to, ahead of them in faith, ahead of them in holiness,
00:05:26.000 | and in the fruits of the Spirit, and in all the ways we want to grow up into Christ.
00:05:30.000 | There's somebody out there ahead of me, both living and dead, and I should look to them.
00:05:36.000 | And then the most sobering thing at age 67, with walking with Jesus for 60 years,
00:05:43.000 | is that I know there are people looking at me.
00:05:46.000 | And it's a frightening thing, it's a sobering thing, and yet it's an absolutely biblical thing that we look to one another,
00:05:56.000 | find somebody who's ahead of you in some spiritual aspect of copying and imitating and trusting and reflecting Jesus,
00:06:07.000 | and look at them, look at them.
00:06:10.000 | And when it's all said and done, we say, "It was not I, but the grace of God that was with me."
00:06:18.000 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast.
00:06:20.000 | Email your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.
00:06:24.000 | Visit us online at DesiringGod.org to find thousands of books, articles, sermons, and other resources from John Piper, all free of charge.
00:06:31.000 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.
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