Theological Commentary: Click Here
Discipleship Focus: Imitation
- Imitation: This is the second over-arching step of the discipleship process. First we gain information, then we imitate our spiritual mentor. Imitation leads to innovation of spirituality in our own life.
If you’ve
been reading this blog for a while – or if you follow the link above for the
theological commentary – you’ll know that three years ago I took a position on
this passage as finding truth in the first coming of Christ. Mind you, that doesn’t mean that the typical
second-coming look at these scriptures is wrong. It simply means that like much of scripture,
the depth of scripture is found in the layers of interpretation.
This
passage talks about pouring out God’s Spirit upon those who look upon the one
who was pierced. This sounds like a dead
ringer for what happened to Jesus. He
came, He died, and God poured out His Spirit upon those who look upon Him. There is a fountain of grace and mercy opened
up to us. We are cleansed of our
sinfulness and our unrighteousness through Jesus.
In
Christ, we also see the end to idolatry as we are brought into genuine
relationship with the Father. We see the
end to false prophecy because those who are genuinely following Christ have
access to the Spirit of God directly.
Because Christ’s followers listen directly to Him, they obey Him.
This is
what leads us from the example of Christ to the idea of imitation. He came and died so that we could have
relationship with the Father. He came
and died so that we could know righteousness.
He came to point us to the Father.
We should do the same. We can’t
die for the sake of other people; we can’t even die for our sake
meaningfully! But we can continue to
point people to the fountain of righteousness that Christ opened up. We can point people to true and genuine
prophesy and putting away their idols.
We can imitate Christ and participate in the work of the kingdom.
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