At the core of this theme is not merely the form of imitation but its substance: as Jesus called the disciples to follow him, which includes following him in his manner of dying, Paul called believers to follow Jesus by “entering into the mystery of his death and resurrection,”217 as Paul himself had done. In other words, an essential component of the material continuity between Jesus and Paul is cruciformity (my term, not Matera’s)—conformity to the pattern of the Christ-story told in both the gospels and the Pauline letters.218
