14-7-9 Following Elders
It should be evident from the above that Paul consciously modelled his life upon Moses and John: among others. David was another of Paul's heroes; to the point that David's words are quoted by him with the preface: " I say..." (Rom. 10:18). But above all, he modelled himself upon the Lord Jesus. There are others who exhibited this characteristic of modelling their lives around faithful Biblical characters. Saul and Jonathan modelled themselves on Gideon (1), Jeremiah upon Job (Jer. 20:14-18), Jeremiah upon Micah (Mic. 7:8 = Lam. 3:2 etc.), Jeremiah upon David (Jer. 20:10 = Ps. 31:13; 38:17; 41:9; 56:6; Jer. 20:12 = Ps. 54:7) . Jeremiah also has far more allusions than average to Isaiah and Deuteronomy; as if these books were his favourites. And David's final psalm of thanksgiving (2 Sam. 22) is shot through with allusion to so many faithful men who were obviously his heroes (just follow up the marginal references). At the end of his life, he felt so close to those who had gone before. This idea of consciously modelling, of having some characters as your heroes, your inspiration towards a closer following of God, was very much in Paul's thinking. Not only does he do it himself, but he encourages others to do it. He doesn't use the word 'modelling'; he uses the word 'mimicking', Greek 'mimicos', normally translated " follow" in the AV. This Greek word is used almost exclusively by Paul:
" Ye became followers of us and of the Lord....ye know how ye ought to follow us...an ensample unto you to follow us" (1 Thess. 1:6; 2 Thess. 3:7,9; the implication is that in the gap between 1 and 2 Thessalonians, they stopped following Paul as they initially did straight after his conversion of them).
" Be ye followers of me" (1 Cor. 4:16; 11:1)
" Whose faith follow (i.e. that of your ecclesial elders)" (Heb. 13:7)
Be " followers of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises" , e.g. Abraham (Heb. 6:12)
" Ye, brethren, became followers of the churches...in Judea" (1 Thess. 2:14).
So Paul encourages them to mimic him, to mimic Abraham, to mimic the persecuted ecclesias in Judea, to mimic the faithful elders in the Jerusalem ecclesia (e.g. Peter), so that they would be better mimickers of the Father and Son. But the idea of mimicking involves a child-likeness, an intellectual humility, a truly open mind. Why Paul used that word rather than a word which simply meant 'to copy' or 'to follow' was perhaps because he wanted to stress that this kind of conscious modelling of your life on someone else involved a real need for openness of mind to the word, resulting in an unfeigned, uncontrived, child-like mimicking. Paul is really encouraging his readers to get involved in this 'mimicking' of faithful examples, of absorbing their spirit into our own by careful, sustained meditation. Will we rise up to it? Or are we still on the level of whizzing through our Bible reading in 10 minutes / day, giving little thought to what we've read throughout the next 24 hours?
