Be Ye Followers of Me

1 Corinthians 4:14-16 KJV

I write not these things to shame you, but as my beloved sons I warn you.

For though ye have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.

Wherefore I beseech you, be ye followers of me.

This passage rang true to me as it reminded me of those who have come to serve the Lord under me. I do not consider myself to be anything, but God has chosen to use me in some respect to see others called and surrendered into the Gospel ministry. But now, in a manner similar to Paul's, some of those have followed other instructors into paths that I have warned them against.

• They have so far refused my warnings and rebukes and
• They have treated me as despised and not meeting up to the level of their new teachers

Following after these other teachers they have also turned from those things they once professed as their faith.

Paul besought and begged the Corinthians to be followers of him. Note the verses previous to fourteen:

• It would mean to have less notoriety in the world
• It would mean to probably suffer more in this world
• It would mean that they would have to repent of some things that they had done

But he nevertheless begged them to follow him.

And so I beseech those who can claim no other spiritual father in the ministry. Be followers of me. The Bible teaches it. We are not to be the famous and the well known and the powerful in this world. Paul did not accomplish any of what he accomplished through politics and working some spiritual movement. He accomplished what he did

• By steadily preaching the Gospel
• By teaching the saints through writing and
• By planting new churches

To follow prominent men (and in doing so to depart from the one God put in your path to first stir you to God's service) is self serving. It is wood hay and stubble. It has not the heart of the Lord, but the heart of this world that seeks to build up men rather than Christ.

I am nothing. I know that. But I am the one God first used to bring you to Gospel ministry. I beseech you then; "be ye followers of me."