Pastor John, one important question we get occasionally through email is about Christian role models. 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, and if this is the case, do we need any other role models at all?

Most of these thoughts, Tony, come from reflecting yesterday on Philippians 3.17, which says, "Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example that you have in us." And what struck me and started all these reflections was, "Keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example that you have in us." In other words, it's not just me you're supposed to look at, not just Christ you're supposed to look at, but look at the people that are looking at me while I look to Christ.

And that just struck me as so removed from Christ, and why Paul would say that. I know that when he says, "Be imitators of me," he means to the degree that I'm an imitator of Christ, because he says that in 1 Corinthians 11, "Be imitators of me as I am of Christ." And yet it just struck me, my goodness, there's all these degrees of separation.

In fact, if you count it all the way back into the Trinity, at this point, there's five of them. There's the Father, who imitates nobody. He's the origin of everything. 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." And then there's Paul, who imitates Jesus, who imitates the Father.

And then here in verse 17 of Philippians 3, there's those who walk according to the example that you have in us. And then there's the fifth generation, the readers, me, as I'm reading it, he's saying, "Now you look to those who are looking to me as I look to Christ, who looks to the Father." And I thought, "This is amazing.

This really relates to, like, your book on Newton. Why is Tony Ranke, for goodness sakes, writing a whole book on the Christian life as lived and taught by John Newton? Why don't you write a book on Jesus, for goodness sakes, who really knows what it's all about?" And Paul's answer would be, "I told you to." Exactly.

"I told you, 'Look at those who are looking at me as I look to Christ.'" And Newton was just a great looker at the Gospel and at Paul. And it's my love for biography, why I do these biographies year after year at the Pastors Conference. Why would you do that?

Why don't you read your Bible, for goodness sakes, instead of reading about the saints who are looking at Paul, who's looking at Jesus? And the answer is because Philippians 3.17 told me to. "Keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example that you have in us." Which raised kind of a deeper question for me.

Why don't we all just look to Jesus? I mean, isn't that the right thing to say? If you want to know how to live the Christian life, if you want to know what the Gospel is, if you want to be transformed into the image of Christ, look at Christ, look at Christ.

So what's all this talk from Paul about not only looking at him, but looking at those who look at him? And surely the answer is something like, "God didn't just create Christ and you." If God just created Christ and you, then for goodness sakes, look at Jesus only. But if God created Christ and you, and you, and you, and you, and you, and put you in a church, and called you members of one another, and told you to love one another, and exhort one another, and encourage one another, then this body, this organic thing called the church, is not a competition with the revelation of the glory of Christ.

It's a means of the revelation of the glory of Christ. What I got from that verse, Tony, in reflecting on it, was that God intends to reveal the glories of Christ and to bring people into conformity to the glory of Christ by, yes, looking directly at him in his word, and yes, also gets more glory by looking at him as he is reflected in the people that are reflecting his word.

And God just wants to do it that way. He ordains that Christ gets more glory by us seeing Christ reflected in others than simply seeing Christ directed only. And the practical effect it had on me at the end of these meditations was, number one, I really want to look to people who are ahead of me.

All of us, everybody in the Christian life has somebody behind them who's looking at them, and somebody ahead of them who they should look to, ahead of them in faith, ahead of them in holiness, and in the fruits of the Spirit, and in all the ways we want to grow up into Christ.

There's somebody out there ahead of me, both living and dead, and I should look to them. And then the most sobering thing at age 67, with walking with Jesus for 60 years, is that I know there are people looking at me. 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, find somebody who's ahead of you in some spiritual aspect of copying and imitating and trusting and reflecting Jesus, and look at them, look at them.

And when it's all said and done, we say, "It was not I, but the grace of God that was with me." Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast. Email your questions to us at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org. Visit us online at DesiringGod.org to find thousands of books, articles, sermons, and other resources from John Piper, all free of charge.

I'm your host, Tony Reinke. Thanks for listening.