How to become like Christ | Page 2

we deal in our spirit with the living Christ, so often do
we take on a little of His glory. The glory of Christ is His character; and as often as we
stand before Christ, and think of Him, and realise what He was, our heart goes out and
reflects some of His character. And that reflection, that glory, is not any longer merely on
the skin of the face; as Paul wishes us to recognise, it is a spiritual glory, it is wrought by
the spirit of Christ upon our spirit, and it is we ourselves that are changed from glory to
glory into the very image of the Lord.
Now obviously this mode of sanctification has extraordinary recommendations. In the
first place, it is absolutely simple. If you go to some priest or spiritual director, or
minister of the Gospel, or friend, and ask what you are to do if you wish to become a holy
man, why, even the best of them will almost certainly tell you to read certain books, to
spend so much time in prayer and reading your Bible, to go regularly to church, to engage
in this and that good work. If you had applied to a spiritual director of the middle ages of
this world's history and of the history of Christianity, he would have told you that you
must retire from the world altogether in order to become holy. Paul says, "Away with all
that nonsense!" We are living in a real world; Christ lived in a real world: Christ did not
retire from men. And He says all that you have to do in order to be like Christ is to carry
His image with you in your heart. That is all. To be with Him, to let Him stand before
you and command your love, that will infallibly change you into His image. I do not
know that we sufficiently recognise the simplicity of Christian methods. We do not
understand what Paul meant by proclaiming it as the religion of the spirit, as a religion
superior to everything mechanical and external. Think of the deliverance it was for him

who had grown up under a religion which commanded him to go a journey three times a
year, to take the best of his goods and offer them in the Temple, to comply with a
multitude of oppressive observances and ordinances. Think of the emancipation when he
found a spiritual religion. Why, in those times a man must have despaired of becoming a
holy man; But now Paul says you will infallibly become holy if you learn this easy lesson
of carrying the Lord Jesus with you in your heart.
Another recommendation of this method is that it is so obviously grounded on our own
nature. No sooner are we told by Paul that we must act as mirrors of Christ than we
recognise that nature has made us to be mirrors, that we cannot but reflect what is passing
before us. You are walking along the street, and, a little child runs before a carriage; you
shrink back as if you were in danger. You see a man fall from a scaffolding, crushed;
your face takes on an expression of pain, reflecting what is passing in him. You go and
spend an evening with a man much stronger, much purer, much saner, than yourself, and
you come away knowing yourself a stronger and a better man. Why? Because you are a
mirror, because in your inmost nature you have responded to and reflected the good that
was in him.
Look into any family, and what do you see? You see the boy, not imitating consciously,
but taking on, his father's looks and attitudes and ways; and as the boy grows up these
become his own looks and attitudes and ways. He has reflected his father from one
degree of proficiency unto another, from one intimacy, from one day's observation of his
father to another, until he is the image of the old man over again.
"Similarly," says Paul, "live with Christ; learn to carry His image with you, learn to adore
Him, learn to love Him, and infallibly, whether you will or not, by this simple method
you will become, Christ over again; you will become conformed, as God means you to
become conformed, to the image of His Son."
This has been tested by the experience of thousands; and it has been found to be a true
method. Every one who spends but two minutes in the morning in the observation of
Christ, every one who will be at the pains to let the image of Christ rise before him and to
remember the purity, the unworldliness, the heavenliness, the godliness of Jesus Christ,
that man is the better