Which of us would have said these words when we were twelve years old? His ways had been such that He would appeal to His parents as though they ought to have known from the tenor of His life what He was occupied with.

Philippians 3 shows how Paul, a man of like passions with ourselves, might tread the same path, seeing and estimating the beauty of Christ. The effect was, first, that he counted all else dung for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus his Lord; and secondly, having the Lord in His death as his substitute, and the Christ in His resurrection as his righteousness, he found that everything was against him. His position like that of Christ Himself, he could say, “Father.” As a child, his thought became, “I want to be like Christ in the fellowship of His sufferings.” The whole world to him was a place reeking of the murder of Christ, and it produced in him a sort of nauseous disgust of the things in it.

Being crucified with Him, and raised up together with Him, I would like to walk as He did in this world, to have the life He had when raised from the dead manifested in my ways. How few have this as their aim and object! How few seek to track out Christ! What will produce it? If you and I could say, “Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business?” We should soon find ourselves in the fellowship of His sufferings. If I am a son, the Father has His business still to be done down here. Does it enter into our souls, sitting round His table, when we commemorate the death of our Lord, that our Father has business to be done? By His Spirit we can find out what part of that business He puts on us; and let us do that, letting self and the world go.