Why could Paul say: “Be ye followers of me”? He was a man of like passions with us. We can only understand it by remembering that the point here is not a state attained to, but the object before the soul: Christ was always Paul’s object. Hence he could say:
It is a cheer to our hearts that we have before us not only the Author and Finisher of faith, but one running after Him, and who tells us to do the same.
If we are occupied with the path, we never shall present the likeness of Christ that we see here; nothing but occupation with Christ will produce this. Paul was not occupied with the path, or with anything to which he had attained. The object was everything to him. When referring to his path, he lays it all aside and looks on to eternal and unseen things.
Christians may go on, nothing outwardly to be found fault with, all fair outside, and yet they may be among those who “mind earthly thing.” We must have an object of some kind; if Christ is not our object, earthly things are. They may not be wrong things, and how foolish it is for us, when we come to think of it, to mind earthly things!
It may be tomorrow, it may be today, that the Lord will call our spirits to Himself, or He may come and change our bodies like to His body of glory, and earthly things will be over forever. There will be a complete transfer of interest then; but we need not be exiles from our true home now; our spirits need not be prisoners here.
If attainment were the point, one could not dare to speak of this subject, but it is a cheer to our hearts to know that the point is not attainment, but what is our object? May we say: