Put On Christ: Life As Discipleship

Today, we are reluctant to imitate others because we want to be original, but we forgot that imitation among people is constitutive of human nature. Human imitation or mimesis is the result of congeniality or of conformity between people who grow daily in mutual attendance. To put on Christ is an expression used by Paul in his letters. Those who have been baptized have clothed themselves with Christ (see Gal 3:27) and, for this reason, they are exhorted to clothe themselves of the Lord Jesus Christ every day (see Rom 13:14). The metaphor is original and audacious because it does not allude to the theatrical context in which we can wear the clothes of a character to be represented, but it refers to the intimacy between the Risen One and believers. Put on Christ encourages us to be one in Christ and removes the boundaries between Jew and Greek, slave and free, and even sexual barriers between male and female (see Gal 3:27). Since we are already clothed with Christ, through baptism, we are encouraged to continue to clothe ourselves with Christ, until he is clothing us with mercy (see Col 3:12) and with the breastplate of righteousness (see Eph 6:14). From this perspective, the metaphor expresses one of the most original traits of imitation between Christ and believers. It starts from the inner man, who is renewed day by day, and reaches the external one, which is being corrupted (2 Cor 4:16-17).