+I. The standard of Christian excellence--Christ's headship.+--1. The prominent notion suggested is His rank in the universe. He rules as God in creation. But evidently the apostle does not mean this in the text. We are to grow into Him as Head. Growth into Christ's Godhead is impossible. God-like we may, God we cannot even by truth and love, become. 2. He is the Head as being the Source of spiritual life. This is implied in metaphor. The highest life-powers--sensation, feeling, thought--come from the brain. To one who has read the history of those times, there is an emphatic truth in Christ's being the life of the world. The world was like a raft becalmed in the tropics--some of its freight dead and baking in the sun, some sucking as if for moisture from dried casks, and some sadly, faintly looking for a sail. Christ's coming to the world was as life to the dead, imparting new impulse to human heart and human nature. It was like rain and wind coming to that bark--once more it cuts the sea, guided by a living hand. So also with each man who drinks Christ's Spirit. He becomes a living character. Not sustained on dogmas or taken-up opinions, but alive with Christ. 3. He is Head as chief of the human race. Never had the world seen, never again will it see, such a character. Humanity found in Him a genial soil, and realised God's idea of what man was meant to be. He is chief. Nothing comes near Him. +II. Progress towards the standard of Christian excellence.+--"We grow up into Him in all things." 1. _Growth in likeness to Him._--The human soul was formed for growth, and that growth is infinite. The acorn grows into the oak, the child into the philosopher. And at death the soul is not declining; it is as vigorous as ever. Hence nothing but an infinite standard will measure the growth of the soul of man. 2. _Growth in comprehension of Him._--Christ is not comprehensible at first. Words cannot express the awe with which a man contemplates that character when it is understood. This is the true heroic, this the only God-like, this the real Divine. From all types of human excellence I have made my choice for life and death--Christ.