1 Thessalonians Chapter 1: Imitation and Example

Note: This material is from the ‘summer style’ gatherings of our campus ministry. Unlike my other talks that are 25-35 minutes long, these have a 7ish minute intro, a 40 minute small group discussion (that I write a leader guide for) and a 12ish minute summary. I cut a lot…so I put most of it back in here as footnotes:

Introduction: The Unsatisfying Allure of Originality

So let me start with a question: Why is ‘Simon Says’ a thing? That game should not be very hard. Why is it? I mean, Why is Simon Says a thing? Lets table that question for a minute and read today’s passage.

Paul, Silvanus, and Timothy, To the church of the Thessalonians in God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace.


2 We give thanks to God always for all of you, constantly mentioning you in our prayers, 3remembering before our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and steadfastness of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ. 4For we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, 5because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction. You know what kind of men we proved to be among you for your sake. 6And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, for you received the word in much affliction, with the joy of the Holy Spirit, 7so that you became an example to all the believers in Macedonia and in Achaia.

8For not only has the word of the Lord sounded forth from you in Macedonia and Achaia, but your faith in God has gone forth everywhere, so that we need not say anything. 9For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, 10and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.

Well before we answer my original question, let me ask you a question about today’s passage. Was there any part of the passage that bugged you? Anything that maybe just made you a little uncomfortable? Well, if not, let me suggest something:

6"And you became imitators of us,”
Do you feel uncomfortable with that? Well if you do, let me make it worse. You see, it turns out that the Apostle Paul, who wrote this book, says that sort of stuff all the time:

Cor 4:16 I urge you, then, be imitators of me.


2 Thess 3 7 For you yourselves know how you ought to imitate us,


Phil 317 Brothers, join in imitating me

To call someone an ‘imitator’ in our culture is usually not a good thing. Because imitation smacks of unoriginality[1], and in our deconstructing, post-everything , hipster culture where you can things can only be enjoyed ironically, the only real sin is to be unoriginal. We all want to be original. We want to believe we are special little snowflakes…unlike anyone else. And an imitator by definition is unoriginal.

But in response to this, let me ask again…why is Simon Says a thing? Why is this very simple game challenging?

Well there is a biological explanation: because we are not fundamentally auditory or verbal creatures…we are fundamentally imitating creatures. Anthropologists will tell you that we learn primarily by watching how other members or our species solve problems.[2]

We’re all compilations of imitations. Someone who seems totally original is probably either imitating a person or subculture that you are not acquainted with[3] or he or she has cobbled together a life of piecemeil imitation from several sources. And, frankly, originality is a cruel, punishing idol…constantly betraying those who chase her with belated information about the derivative sources of their ‘originality.’

So, we can either cautiously and intentionally select who we are going to imitate, or we can let that happen unconsciously or by accident.[4]

And that is why Paul argues that imitation is a helpful tool in sanctification. And I edited him a little bit when I read those verses. Here are the whole verses:

Phil 3:17 Brothers, join in imitating me, and keep your eyes on those who walk according to the example you have in us.


1Thess 1:6 And you became imitators of us and of the Lord

We can look to historical Christians, like Paul, we can look to each other, and because Christianity is an incarational faith where God actually showed up, we can look to God himself for examples of how to do this human life thing.

The vocabulary of Faith and Life cannot fundamentally be totally transmitted abstractly.[5] I mean have you ever tried to define faith. How about hope? And don’t even get me started on love? The theological dictionary that Christianity uses to define these things for you isn’t just a text…it’s also a people. You want to know what love is[6]…the Scriptures will give you the boundaries of what the word can mean…but they (point to the people) will show you how to do it. The basic ideas of Christianity are always embodied. And that is why the Christian life is learned by imitation. If you don’t chose who to imitate, you won’t be original…you will just unconsciously and passively unoriginal.

And that is why the Biblical authors talk about ‘doing Christianity well’ with the term ‘discipleship’. The Christian life is an apprenticeship. We are all padawans, so to speak (at least the nerdier of us). And there are at least 4 ways in chapter 1 that Paul suggests that the Thessalonian church has apprenticed well.

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Group Study

At this point the students went to small groups where they used this guide.

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Summary: The Temporal Orientation of the Christian Life

Christianity deals with reality…in its temporal entirety. Faith, hope and love point respectively to the past, future and present, meaning that at its core, the Christian life seeks a temporal balance of meaning and purpose.

If you focus on the past you are a sentimentalist, if you focus on the present you are an existentialist, and if you focus on the future you are an escapist… Putting too much emphasis on either the past, present or future truncates reality.

But at the center of the Christian life are three disciplines that guide healthy and helpful interactions with the past, present and future.

We are people who take the past seriously. We are people who look back to a moment when we took our stand with Jesus and reinterpret the rest of our lives through that event…and the events that it points to. We are people of faith. We are people who care about the commitments and stories of the generations before us…realizing that moderns may not have a monopoly on interpreting reality.

We aren’t stuck in the brokenness of our past mistakes or mired in nostalgia for past joys. And likewise by living out of faith, hope and love, we are not obsessed with the future. We don’t fear it either. Our future is secure…it is hopeful. We have a hope that we can look to when the brokenness of the present gets oppressive (as some of you have experienced in the last couple weeks). But the future does not consume us. Rather, looking back in faith and forward in hope…gives us energy to fill the present with love.

Those for whom the present is everything often find the present to be too valuable to fill with love. But people of faith and hope who understand the past and future rightly and, therefore, do not overvalue the present, have energy to work and labor, steadfastly…in caring for others.

But let me end with the a final thought. One question I pose was ‘What is the difference between hope and optimism?’ What did you say?

Optimism is the delusion that everything will turn out ok…soon. It doesn’t. The world is a beautiful but terrible place. Sometimes things turn out horribly. Sometimes a miracle doesn’t fix things. Hope requires a cosmic temporal scale. Optimism covers our eyes and wishes for the best. Hope deals with reality as it is and perseveres good or bad because of a confidence in the resurrection (one of the themes of the rest of this book). The role of miracles is not to make everything all right. You are going to die. And it is probably going to be horrible. And terrible things will happen to people you love. If you expect miracles to be the answer to that reality, you will be disappointed. If when you say ‘God is good’ you mean ‘he won’t let terrible things happen to me or those who I love, your faith will be deeply tested. But if you recognize the Biblical role of miracles as ‘signs’…indicators that through the pain and brokenness, there is a deeper, realer, real. There is a resurrection that is going to restore and rewrite. Their purpose and the Christian hope comes into focus.

Which leads me to the final verse of the chapter, the transition to the rest of the book:

For they themselves report concerning us the kind of reception we had among you, and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God, 10and to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead, Jesus who delivers us from the wrath to come.

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[1] Actually, there is a second reason these verses make me uncomfortable. They seem like Paul is being an arrogant (fill in pejorative noun of your choice). But this is anachronistic. Imitation was the core of Roman pedagogy. The fact that Paul called them not only to imitate him, but ‘us’ (Timothy and Silas), and ‘each other’ (in the Philippians verse, see below) and the Lord demonstrates that he is not entirely comfortable with the cult of personality that could emerge from that model and is trying to diffuse it…while at the same time recognizing that imitation is helpful pedagogy.

[2] I took a human evolution seminar last quarter which had a fair number of primate specialists in it. I learned a couple of very interesting things about what distinguishes us from the other primates. One professor made the case that chips are actually more rawly intelligent than humans. But humans out perform chimps because they don’t resolve on a final solution to life’s problems. Humans are social animals that watch each other carefully for solutions to life’s problems that could upgrade their current state. Humans did not emerge because we were the most innovative…but because we transmitted innovation through imitation.

[3] Now, those who have heard me speak will recognize some dissonance with the idea that I often teach that ‘creativity’ is the rare human the image of God. Most innovation is an act of integration rather than raw inspiration. I do love innovation and strive for it. But I do not define myself by it and make most of my intellectual, social, professional and moral progress by apprenticeship (careful, critical, teachable, imitation). Innovation happens a the surprising intersection of observations. Actual inspiration is so rare that it seems that if it becomes one of our highest societal goals, the vast majority of us are sentenced to be disappointing or self deceiving. Also, if inspiration is not built out of former materials, where does it come from.? It is either an accident of brain wiring or a gift of God…and neither are meritorious.

[4] We used to learn trades by apprenticeship….a personal relationship of careful imitation. Now we try to teach the professions through class room learning. Now I don’t talk much about my job. I have a ‘one minute rule’. If someone asks about my job, I try not to talk more than one minute before I change the subject, to keep from boring them. Because I understand, I may love sediment transport modeling…but most people find it dull. But here’s the thing I have realized recently…sediment transport modeling may be dull…but its also REALLY hard. There are not a lot of people in the world who can do it really well. So if a young engineer calls me up and says they are going to try it and asks me to teach them about it…I tell them to move into my office for a month. Because anything complicated has to be learned by imitation. Apprenticeship is more effective than instruction.

[5] Fun Quotes: “Immature poets imitate; mature poets steal.” - T.S. Eliot (I like this quote because it demonstrates that self-awareness of the derivative nature of the created process – and hence, our fundamental indebtedness – is the maturation process of the artist).


“Imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery - it's the sincerest form of learning.” ― George Bernard Shaw


“We even talked like Hemingway characters, though in travesty, as if to deny our discipleship: That is your bed, and it is a good bed, and you must make it and you must make it well. Or: Today is the day of the meatloaf. The meatloaf is swell. It is swell but when it is gone the not-having meatloaf will be tragic and the meatloaf man will not come anymore.” ― Tobias Wolff, Old School

[6] Love is a word…it is a verbal signifier of an extremely complex reality. So is hope. In fact, so are a lot of our central big ideas in Christianity. They are very abstract…but we also belong to a faith that believes truth is always embodied. And it is transmitted by discipleship, or apprenticeship which is a form of careful imitation.

Faith, Forgiveness, Identity and Ministry:

Jesus and the Dramatic Ceiling Entrance

(UCD Campus - October 7, 2008)

Luke 6:17-26

At the time of this story Jesus has been doing his thing for about a year and has become wildly popular. On this particular day he is teaching and healing in a house and it has become so densely packed that no more people can get in. There are these guys who have literally carried their friend to see Jesus and they will not be denied. So the passage begins with a dramatic ceiling entry. Entering a room through the ceiling is actually a narrative devise that is commonly employed by the story tellers of our culture. In particular, ceiling entries are a staple of Spy and Heist movies. Our culture’s iconic image of the ceiling entry has got to be Tom Cruise dangling in mid-air hacking the master spy list, a bead of sweat dangerously forming on his brow. But a more fun ceiling entry would be from Wallace and Grommet and the Wrong Pants where the nefarious penguin (disguised as a rooster by placing a rubber glove on his head) takes control of Wallace’s mechanical pants and uses the sleeping Wallace to stage a diamond heist.

But these activities have commonality with the people passing through the roof in Luke 6. They are in tenacious pursuit of something of absolute value that is otherwise inaccessible. And that is why Luke tells us the story of the ceiling entry. But it is the conversation that follows that is of primary interest. A disproportionate amount of spiritual insight emerges from the few sentences exchanged after the dramatic entry. This is some of the most theologically dense dialog anywhere in the book of Luke.

In the next twenty minutes or so I would like to try to understand this passage by zeroing in on four phrases.

1. ” Jesus saw their faith…” –What faith is
2. “Your sins are forgiven.” -What Jesus offers
3. “Who can forgive sins but God alone?” –Who Jesus is
4. ‘So that you may know…’ -Jesus’ method of ministry


1. ” Jesus saw their faith…”

In the text we see a classic formula, which is at the center of Christian theology and that comes up again and again in Luke’s account of Jesus’ life: Jesus grants the forgiveness of sins in response to faith. The first half of Luke is a string of accounts of messed up people coming to Jesus with nothing but trust and hope and finding forgiveness. But one of the really interesting things that pops out from a careful reading of this passage is an unexpected insight on what faith is. How did Jesus know that these men had faith? He saw their faith. In this passage, faith is something Jesus can observe. Have you ever thought of faith in that way; as something that can be seen? I think that should affect our ideas about what faith is…and what it is not. It is not a private belief, an abstract idea, a warm feeling or a correct doctrinal statement. It is the confident and tenacious pursuit of Jesus. It is a lively trust that what Jesus offers is worth reorganizing you life for. It is going out of your way and pressing through obstacles to get to him

I think this undermines another misconception about faith. Some people think of faith as the opposite of doubt. That true faith exists only in the absence of doubt. But belief is not something you can muster by sheer willpower. God does not ask us to blindly ignore our doubts if we are to be forgiven. This is a common attack against the credibility of Christianity, that we force blind compliance because we threaten doubt with judgment. But, as defined in this passage, substantial, saving faith and doubt can coexist. Faith is not the absence of doubt, but a passionate pursuit of Jesus despite obstacles (including doubt itself).

I am a scientist. My wife works at a level one emergency room. Between my training in empiricism and my wife’s constant stream of stories of the worst kinds of suffering humans can endure, our home is not without doubt. But we are people of faith, not because we ignore our doubts but that we continue to pursue Jesus through them.

Some of you are struggling with doubt. Maybe, you have a particularly bombastic and antagonistic professor. Or more difficult yet, perhaps you have a particularly insightful professor that has challenged your world view. Maybe you have hurts that you blame God for or that were inflicted by Christians. Or maybe this is just your first time outside of your parent’s house, and you are trying to figure out if the God thing is really worth missing out on all of the sex and parties that college has to offer. Faith is not closing your eyes to these things and pretending they don’t exist. It is tenaciously pursuing Jesus through them.

2. “Your sins are forgiven.”

There are two possible reactions to this statement: ‘Your sins are forgiven.’ The first is to be underwhelmed. Jesus’ response could be considered ‘adventures in missing the point’. A paralyzed man goes through the trouble of being carried what was likely a significant distance, hoisted onto a roof and lowered through a mud hole, a maneuver that involved pretty significant risk for a man without the use of his limbs. And Jesus appears to look right past his real issue, waxing spiritual, but not providing the actual service they went through all that trouble for. His statement, ‘your sins are forgiven’ could be seen as a trivial response…an unverifiable response to what everyone can see is a very serious problem. I can almost see Andy Dufrane from the Shawshank Redemption looking at the warden in disbelief asking ‘how can you be so obtuse?’

But this is kind of the whole point of the story. By offering this man forgiveness, instead of healing, in response to his tenacious faith, Jesus suggests that we have misdiagnosed our greatest need. We, like those who were checking Jesus out in the gospel stories, come to Jesus for a variety of reasons, in response to a variety of felt needs. Sickness, helplessness, fear, guilt, and meaninglessness can all be reasons (among many others) that we develop a curiosity about Jesus. For most of us, these felt needs are far more trivial than the desire to walk. And Jesus cares about the things that trouble us. But in this passage, Jesus provocatively asserts that these are not our greatest needs.

Consider that you are watching my house while I am away. And while I am gone a bill comes for me and you pay it and tell me that you are not interested in being repaid. How thankful should I be…I actually have no idea how thankful to be. I have no idea how thankful to be until I know the value of the gift. Did a letter come with the wrong stamp and you paid the $0.03 postage due…was it my entire student loan…was it my mortgage? My gratitude will be commensurate with my need and the provision made for my need.[1]

And this is the tension of Jesus’ words in this passage. Those who were underwhelmed by his response ‘your sins are forgiven’ have not understood the value of the gift. They have misdiagnosed our greatest need. Jesus responds to the faith of the paralytic and his friends with the greatest gift possible. In doing so he subtly asserting that being reconciled to God is more valuable than walking. By looking past the paralysis and offering the man reconciliation with God in response to his faith, Jesus makes the case that our broken human condition, which separates us from God, is our actual greatest need.

I think the biggest reason we underestimate our need for forgiveness is because we tend to misunderstand what ‘sin’ is. It has become a word without meaning in our culture. In most of its cultural uses it actually has positive connotations…to describe things we enjoy. A couple that is enjoying sex before they are married playfully quip that they are ‘living in sin.’ An eight layer chocolate dessert is described as ‘sinfully delicious.’ Chuck Klosteman get at this idea in his review of the Left Behind series in which a dispensational, pre-tribulational rapture[2] leaves the world without Christians.

“The post-rapture earth initially seems like a better place to live. Everyone boring would be gone. One could assume that all the infidels that weren’t teleported into God’s kingdom must be pretty cool. All the guys would be drinkers and all the women would be easy and you could make jokes about homeless people and teen suicide and crack babies without offending anyone. Quite frankly, my response to the opening pages of Left Behind was ‘sounds good to me.’”[3]

This is a common sentiment. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard someone joke that if Heaven and Hell exist they are angling for hell because that is where all of the fun people will be.

Even when sin has a negative connotation it is generally though of as a set of mistakes. For some of you, when you hear Jesus say ‘your sins are forgiven’ you hear ‘I will overlook the mistakes you have made because I get it. It’s hard to be you. Everyone makes mistakes. No, really, it’s cool.’ But this is not how Jesus views or defines view of sin.

The ‘mistakes’, the individual ‘sins’ are just symptoms of a condition of rebellion and brokenness…of a fundamental self reliance. Sin is a condition not a series of event. It is a fundamental inclination of self interest that causes the individual ‘sins’ like lying, misuse of sexuality or indifference towards the poor.

I actually think that a lot of the art generated by our culture gets this point pretty right. Even completely secular people look at the human condition and conclude that there is something fundamentally wrong with us. Malcom Muggeridge was talking about this phenomena when he said ‘The doctrine of human depravity is simultaneously the most unpopular and the most empirically verifiable of all the Christian beliefs.’ This observation that there is something fundamentally wrong with us that needs some sort of fix is the most noticeable theme in Linkin Park’s three major albums. Consider:

I'm my own worst enemy
I've given up, I'm sick of feeling
Is there nothing you can say?
Take this all away, I'm suffocating
Tell me what the f@#$ is wrong with me
___
Crawling in my skin
These wounds, they will not heal
Fear is how I fall
Confusing what is real

There's something inside me that pulls beneath the surface
Consuming, confusing
This lack of self control I fear is never ending
Controlling

I can't seem
To find myself again
My walls are closing in
I've felt this way before
So insecure
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In this farewell,
There's no blood,
There's no alibi,
'Cause I've drawn regret,
From the truth of a thousand lies.
So let mercy come, and wash away...

What I've done,

or if the hybrid scene is not your thing The Arcade Fire (opposite genre, same desperate longing) echoes the same theme.

“And there’s something wrong in the heart of man,
you take it from your heart and put it in your hand!”

I think these lyrics actually articulates a central theme in the message of Jesus and those who came after him. We are fundamentally broken. We have an inclination towards self interest and self centeredness that is more than jus the sum of all our mistakes. It is a condition. It is rebellion and it separates us from God. Being forgiven and healed of this condition is our deepest and most desperate need and the great gifts Jesus offers. He knows that the greatest need that any of us has is a heart corroded and misshapen by misuse and turned away from God. And he offer forgiveness in response to faith.

3. “Who can forgive sins but God alone?”

So I said there were two possible responses to Jesus’ offer of forgiveness. The first is to be underwhelmed…to feel like he is missing the point. But the opposite reaction was the one actually recorded. The Pharisees, who were the popular religious leaders of the time, were actually upset at the audacity of the claim. They quietly wondered ‘Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ One could make the case that this question is actually the thesis statement of the passage.

First a word about the Pharisees. This is the first time they appear in Luke’s story. Up until this point Jesus had attracted large crowds of common people who were attracted to his spiritual authority and accessible teaching in metaphors of their daily lives. At this point, however, he had gotten popular enough that the religious leaders felt the need to check this guy out. It says they came from all the surrounding towns in an organized effort to evaluate and eventually to discredit Jesus. The next two chapters record a series of encounters in which Jesus is teaching the common people and the religious leaders engage him in debate, trying to undermine his popularity.

But here is the thing about their question in this passage: ‘Who can forgive sins but God alone?’ It is precisely the right question. They were incensed at his offer of forgiveness because they knew that this was something only God could do…and they were precisely correct. Physicians had significant social status in Jesus’ day. The author of this account, Luke, was himself a doctor. The realm of human healing was one that was not well understood but was at least open to human efforts and attempts. But forgiveness of sins; that was God’s alone to grant.

In making this audacious claim Jesus rejects the common misconception that he came as an enlightened teacher or prophet. His coming was not just educational, improving us with good advice. His coming was a cosmic event…nothing less than the visitation of God himself. The point of his coming was not access to his teaching, but access to Jesus himself as the redemptive agent of God. In this passage Jesus claims to at the very least, have God’s authority. As he unfolds his actual identity over the course of his ministry we learn that he has God’s authority because he is God. If this is a new idea to you it could be potentially shocking. It was for those who were there that day. They had come to see a magic show, and they heard a man claim to be God. But this is the only reason the could claim to offer the forgiveness that we all so desperately need.

I think that CS Lewis framed this idea pretty well in what is likely his most famous quote:

'I am trying here to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about (Jesus): 'I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God.' That is one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of thing Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic - on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg - or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut Him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill him as a demon or you can fall at his feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.[4]'

4. ‘So that you may know…’

Jesus makes an act of mercy and restoration the conduit of his message of cosmic forgiveness. The forgiveness of sins is not empirically verifiable. You can not test or prove it. There is no sin CAT scan that you can put the man into and evaluate if there is still sin or if it has all been expunged. But Jesus accompanies this message of forgiveness with a tangible act of compassion and service that can be verified empirically. In essence he makes the forgiveness of sins verifiable by accompanying it with a shocking act of compassion.

And this is actually the idea that is at the heart of College Life vision for this year…that we would bring the message of the forgiveness of sins to our campus and community, but that it would not be a purely theoretical offer…that it would be, accompanied by tangible acts of service and grace. This is the whole idea behind the growth group projects. That we would verify the reality of the offer of forgiveness by demonstrating

Some of you may be struggling with this idea a little bit. Historically evangelicals have been wary of mixing the proclamation of the gospel with acts of compassion. The argument goes, if the forgiveness of sins is the most important thing, as this passage seems to assert, we should not waste our time serving people’s physical and emotional needs. But here’s the thing, Jesus does not seem swayed by this. He lives a life of proclamation and service and this phrase ‘so that you may know’ seems to indicate that he sees the latter as authenticating the former. And lest you think this is an isolated event, Jesus’ compassion, healing and interest in the poor, oppressed and marginalized is generally considered by most commentators to be one of the major themes of Luke’s gospel. Our acts of service demonstrate the transformational nature of the gospel as much or more than our personal ethics. In our culture, breaking out of an insular, self centered existence to serve others is often more likely to bring attention to the gospel than the fact that we don’t drink or have extramarital sex.

Sometimes I feel like Bible believing Christians are too busy trying not to be Liberal to take Jesus’ words about compassion, mercy, the poor and works of general service seriously. Some of us need to be more concerned about trying to be like Jesus than trying to be conservative.

Let’s face it, acts of compassion were easier for Jesus. It would be tempting for us to look at his ministry and say, “if God would do miracles through me I’d be willing to act on behalf of the suffering, but without miraculous power it is really hard. Jesus can’t expect us to undergird the message of forgiveness with compassionate action if it is so hard.” But I don’t think the fact that it was easier for Jesus gets us off the hook.

So, there it is. The story of the dramatic ceiling entry provides us with insight about faith, forgiveness, the identity of Jesus and his ministry methods. Just a few sentences of dialog offer a high density of spiritual insight. But the fundamental thrust is to press into a confident and tenacious pursuit of Jesus. He is worth the trouble.

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[1] Illustration borrowed from Dr Martian Loyd Jones
[2] A strange (if popular) theology which I consider unbiblical.
[3] Chuck Klosterman “Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs”
[4] CS Lewis Mere Christianity