1. He implies that he has the authority to tell the Corinthians to imitate him. In other places he directly states that he has such authority because he is an apostle, on par with Christ's other apostles.
2. He implies that he is imitatable. By that I mean that he implies that it is possible for other believers to imitate his life and character. He was not a "super-saint," out of the reach of the normal Christian.
3. He directly states that his life and character imitate Christ's life and character and that such life and character is in the realm of possibility for his readers.
4. He implies that we ought to have a goal in terms of the Christian life and that goal ought to be to imitate Christ, with Paul as an example of how that is done.
A lot of power and truth packed into a few words.
Now to actually doing it...
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