It is our sweet privilege to set the Lord always before us. He is our model. As He was sent into the world, so are we. What did He come to do? To glorify God. How did He live? By the Father. This makes it all so simple. Christ is the standard and touchstone for everything. It is no longer a question of mere right and wrong according to human rules. It is simply a question of what is worthy of Christ. Would He do this or that? Would He go here or there? He left us an example that we should follow His steps (1 Pet. 2:21); and, most assuredly, we should not go where we cannot trace His blessed footsteps. If we go hither and thither to please ourselves, we are not treading in His steps, and we cannot expect to enjoy His blessed presence.

Here is the real secret of the whole matter. The grand question is just this: Is Christ my one object? What am I living for? Can I say, “The life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me” (Gal. 2:20)? Nothing less than this is worthy of a Christian. It is a poor miserable thing to be content with being saved and then to go on with the world, and live for self-pleasing and self-interest, to accept salvation as the fruit of Christ’s toil and passion and then live at a distance from Himself. What should we think of a child who only cared about the good things provided by his father’s hand and never sought his father’s company, yea, preferred the company of strangers? We should justly despise him. But how much more despicable is the Christian, who owes his present and his eternal all to the work of Christ, and yet is content to live at a cold distance from His blessed Person, caring not for the furtherance of His cause—the promotion of His glory!