<p>11:1&nbsp;<em>Be imitators of me, even as I am of Christ- </em>This verse is best linked to the preceding chapter 10, where Paul urges the Corinthians to put the spiritual profit of others before their own personal conscience on some issues. Paul's relationship with and perception of the Lord Jesus is held up by the Spirit as our example. He himself asks us to copy (Gk. <em>mimic</em>) the way in which he followed the Lord Jesus (this is what 1 Cor. 11:1 implies in the Greek). His mind was increasingly <em>saturated</em> with the Gospels, and with the surpassing excellency and supremacy of the <em>Lordship</em> of the risen Jesus.</p><p>The 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 <em>mimicos</em>, normally translated &quot;follow&quot; in the AV. This Greek word is used almost exclusively by Paul:<br />&quot;Ye became <em>followers</em> of us and of the Lord.... ye know how ye ought to <em>follow</em> us...an ensample unto you to <em>follow</em> us&quot; (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).<br />&quot;Be ye <em>followers</em> of me&quot; (1 Cor. 4:16; 11:1)<br />&quot;Whose faith <em>follow</em> (i.e. that of your ecclesial elders)&quot; (Heb. 13:7)<br />Be &quot;<em>followers</em> of them who through faith and patience inherit the promises&quot;, e.g. Abraham (Heb. 6:12)<br />&quot;Ye, brethren, became <em>followers</em> of the churches... in Judea&quot; (1 Thess. 2:14).&nbsp;</p><p>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), <em>so that</em> 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?</p>