To live this one life of ours as it should be lived, we must have a
perfect model after which to pattern. Thank God, this perfect model of
life can be found. Of all the vast number of lives that have been lived
since Adam down to this present day, there has been only one that we can
take as a model. This one is the life of Jesus. He says, "I am the life."
To live this life of ours well, to live it to the highest degree of
perfection, we must fashion it according to the glorious life of Christ.
The life of Jesus is the model life for every other human life. He invites
us, yea, commands us, to follow him, to step in his steps, to walk as he
walked.
There have been many good men in the world, but none of them afford us a
true pattern of life. There was a man who said, "Be ye followers of me,"
but he immediately added, "even as I also am of Christ." Man may so live
as to reveal to us the life of Christ. We can then follow, not them, but
the Christ-life they manifested through them.
Let me here say a word on a subject on which we may have more to say
hereafter. The grandest, noblest work man has ever done is by his life to
reveal the life of Christ to another, thereby helping that person to be
fashioned more after the image of Jesus. A little flower grew in a place
so shaded that no ray from the sun could fall directly upon it. A window
was so situated that at a certain time in the afternoon it refracted the
sun's rays and threw them upon the flower, thus giving it color and
beauty, and aiding it to bloom. Some people are living in the dense shade.
No light from Christ has ever shined upon them. If you so live as to
refract the life of Christ and turn it upon them and thus stamp upon them
a holier life, you have not lived in vain. To set the life of Christ in
its purity and beauty before some one and influence him, though only a
little, to live better and love Jesus more, is a work the worth of which
can never be computed. He who helps another to a better way of living does
more than he who gains great worldly honor and riches. Blessed indeed is
that life which causes some other life to be more like Christ. Oh, may
this thought seize upon our hearts and fill us with a greater passion to
live the life of God.
We are told by the voice of Scripture to be "followers of God as dear
children." When children are dear to the heart of the parent, he loves to
have them obey him. God's children are dear to him, and he would have them
follow him. To follow God is to imitate him, or be like him. This is the
true way of life.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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