One can imitate Jesus but it is a completely different matter to be like him in God as he was in God that is not an imitation but become like God to know this difference. Gen 3:22.
“Be imitators of God” (Ephesians 5:1). Paul never understood the difference from imitation and having the real thing.
Jesus was not imitating God, God was his same mind.
Paul was only an imitator of Christ but in REALITY he was a sinner that he was not imitating but actually of. See 1 John 3:8. Paul looked the part and preached a convincing doctrine but in reality he never came to that point in God that Jesus did in Matt 3:16 where the reality of God becomes who we are.
I can imitate just about anything, but in reality imitations are not the real thing.
Pulpits are full of imitators, pews are full of people who follow imitators, but few who find the real thing, and in that finding the real thing, we are duplicates not imitators. Obviously we have a lot of imitators in this very forum. You can spot these who say they are of Christ, look the part, sound the part but are far from being the real thing of God that Jesus was.
Jesus was a duplication of the real thing, holy, pure, and without sin, so are all who is exactly like the God of Love where man is His heaven, His temple, His dwelling place, the place God resides. Luke 17:20-21.
Jesus became this duplicate in Matt 3:16, not many has that same duplication that God demands of us to become like Him to know this difference if we are to be of Him at all. And because people try and imitate as Paul tried to imitate instead of the reality of God manifest in them, they are duplicates of sin instead.
John 13 - which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.
14 - And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
Note the editing between the ( ) where man edits in his own understanding and opinions.
Jesus was not the only begotten of God, begotten simply means an extension of, a duplicate of the original. Everyone who has received from God that what Jesus did, what Adam did, what Abraham did, what Jesus did, what 120 did, is a duplicate of the original, not an imitation of at all.
One can still be an imitator of Christ but truthfully in reality be a sinner and begotten of sin instead, a duplicate of sin instead of God.
Most follow Paul as an imitator instead of being the real thing that God demands of us if we are to be like Him as Jesus was like Him and have His same mind and walk in it as He walks in it. And what a blessing it is to be of Christ instead of just trying to imitate the Christ as Paul tried to imitate but where sin actually kept him from being as Jesus was in the Father.
Im not a Paul hater as many here deem me as being, I understand Paul I once was like him and followed him in his ways until the same God who came to Jesus and opened up who He is and all of Hs heaven to that man did the same in me. Only then could I become like Him to know this difference just as Adam did Gen 3:22, just as Abraham did, just as Moses did, just as Jesus did in Matt 3:16, just as 120 did in an upper room.
All of these were imitators of Christ until in a garden, on a mountain, in a river, in that upper room where made duplicates of and not just imitators.
