Then said Jesus unto His disciples, If any man will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me. – Matthew 16:24
When sin is pardoned and the eternal safety of the soul is ensured, the next thing is to seek the purity of the soul and to secure a character that shall be worth having throughout eternity. There is no character which is worth having which is not fashioned according to the Character of Christ. He is absolute perfection! In Him is nothing redundant and from Him nothing is omitted which ought to be there. To be perfect, we must be like Jesus. “Looking unto Jesus, the Author and Finisher of our faith,” we are to conquer this sin and to overcome that passion and, in the power of God’s Spirit, to cultivate this tender Grace and that other bolder virtue! The one thing we are to aim at is to tread in Christ’s footsteps, to do what He did and, as far as He is imitable by us, to do it as He did it and to be as He was in the midst of the sons and daughters of men. If I am a Christian, I am not to be following Calvin, or Arminius, or any other earthly leader—I am to mold my doctrinal opinions, my thoughts, words, character and acts after the model of Christ’s!
The same Law applies to the whole of our life-service. If we would do what we were created to do—if, being trees of God’s planting, we are to bear the fruit He meant us to bear, we must follow Jesus Christ! We are sent into the world, under Him, upon the great errand of seeking the lost—
“‘Tis all our business here below
To cry, ‘Behold the Lamb!’”
—some from the pulpit, but every Christian from some place or other. To each individual Believer, Christ has given a position which nobody else can so well occupy and from that position he can influence some other person or persons whom God will bless through him.
He Hath Said 