Imitating the Saints

“Brethren, be ye imitators together of me”

(Phil. iii. 1 7, 19).

But this word is conditioned by another word of the Apostle’s which he wrote in his letter to the Corinthians. “Be ye imitators of me, even as I also am of Christ.” With that implied condition Paul urges his readers to vie with one another in copying his life. He seems to say, “pick out the Christly lineaments in my character and repeat them in your own.” There is no perilous self-conceit in the counsel. It is just the Holy assurance of confident intimacy with the Lord. The Apostle knew perfectly well that no one can enjoy close companionship with the Lord without acquiring some of the beauty of the Lord. It might be that he “wist not that his face shone,” and he

might recognise no semblance to his Master, but others would assuredly see some signs of his kinship with the Lord.

We are never good at detecting our likeness to other people. We sometimes say that a son is “his father over again,” but the son himself cannot trace the lines of resemblance. And so it is with the highest relationships, the kinships of the Spirit. If we are the friends of the Lord we shall most assuredly be “transformed into the same image,” even though we are unconscious of the gracious change. And therefore does the Apostle Paul, who knows that for him “to live is Christ,” boldly challenge his readers to study his spiritual lineaments, and to emulate one another in reproducing the Christliness in their own lives.

“And mark them which so walk even as ye have us for an ensample.” There is nothing more spiritually invigorating than to keep our eyes steadily fixed on noble men and women. We appropriate what we contemplate. Our eyes are more than organs of discernment, they are channels of reception. Our visions become our possessions. That is a most sure law in the spiritual life. When we admire the good we unconsciously absorb it. It is so in art, it is so in literature, it is so in religion. The master passes into his pupil through the medium of a persistent contemplation. And therefore it is well to fix the eyes of one’s spirit upon Paul and Timotheus and Epaphroditus, to “mark them” if perchance their nobility may communicate itself to us and so clothe us with the glory of the Lord. And therefore, again, I think it is well that every Christian disciple should always have at hand some great and shining biography, the record of some strong and beautiful life lived in steady companionship with the King. Such mystical friendships keep us in tone, they keep us to concert pitch, and something of their own spiritual mastery steals into our own minds and hearts.

“For many walk, of whom I told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ.” The Apostle is writing these words in tears. They are the tears of an old man in prison for his Saviour’s sake. Tribulation has not made him hard and austere; still less has it made him a cynic. When he thinks of the inconsistencies of professing Christians his indignation expresses itself in sacrificial tears. And so Paul was a “partaker of the sufferings of Christ”; he was walking over the same bit of road his Master had travelled when He wept over Jerusalem. Alas, it so frequently happens that Christians can frame indictments of their fellow-Christians, and can do it with delight. We can gossip about their frailties, their disloyalties, their defiled garments, and our speech affords to speaker and hearer a spicy entertainment. We gloat over the scandal; we do not weep over it. And so it comes to pass that our speech is inflammatory and not remedial; it distributes the contagion rather than helps to destroy it. It would be far better to leave our brother’s sins alone and not even to name them, unless our warning is suffused by intercessory tears.

And what is this which makes the Apostle weep? There are men wearing the Christian name who are “the enemies of the cross of

Christ.” They are consecrating self-indulgence, exercising a fenceless liberty in the sacred name of redeeming love and grace. They are presuming upon the goodness of God; they are flippantly reckoning upon the unlimited scope of forgiveness; they even proclaim that they magnify the grace of God by the extent and blackness of the sin which they present to Him for remission. This unfettered liberty becomes their deepest degradation, for they “glory in their shame.” Now it may be that we cannot find our own likeness in this description of “the enemies of the cross of Christ,” and yet if we look closely we shall find that the resemblance is not altogether lacking. The style of the countenances may vary, but the spirit may remain the same. Do we not presume upon our knowledge of “the unsearchable riches of Christ”? Do we not swell our liberty into license? and should we not fear to do it had not the Lord revealed Himself in such superlative glories of grace? Is there not many a sin which we should never commit were it not that we confidently reckon upon the endless resources of our Saviour’s love? That is to say, we are using the very Cross to make us feel secure in our sin. What the Cross was ordained to destroy we make the Cross confirm. If He had not died for us we might have been more pure; but He died, and in His death He revealed an infinite love; therefore let its eat and drink and sin, for He will not see us destroyed. All such are “enemies of the cross of Christ”; their “end is perdition”; they “glory in their shame”; they “mind earthly things.” Yes, they are mundane and grovelling; they wear the Christian label, but they are devoid of the Christian spirit. Their life has nothing of an upward trend in its movements. It has no aspirations, no spiritual ideals, no heavenly places, no sky. It is life without wings, “of the earth earthy,” and because it does not enter into the secret of our Saviour’s death, it never experiences the power of His resurrection.