Discipleship

Do not wonder that a person is able to be an imitator of God. He is able, if God wills it. For in not oppressing one’s neighbors, and to not desire to have even more than the weaker ones, and not being rich and compelling those more inferior, is being happy, and in these things no one is able to imitate God but these things are outside the majesty of that one. But whoever takes up the burden of his neighbor, who wishes to do good to another who is worse off in that he is better off, who having received the things from God, he holds on to these things, providing to those in need. He becomes a god to those who receive them; this one is an imitator of God.

Why should you fear to be stripped of that which you have resigned already to Christ? It is the first lesson you learn, if a Christian: to deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow your Master, so that the enemy comes too late. You have no life to lose because you have given it already to Christ, nor can man take away that without God’s leave. All you have is insured, and though God has not promised you immunity from suffering in this kind, yet he has undertaken to bear the loss, indeed, to pay you a hundredfold, and you will not stay for it till another world.

Much has been done of late to promote the production of dwarfish Christians. The endeavor has been to increase breadth at the expense of depth. What would you think of those who should break the dams of our reservoirs to let the water spread over the country?… If, in order to spread our sea, we make it very shallow, and it breathes miasma and death over the plain, it will be a sorry exchange for life eternal. Oh, to have a church built up with the deep godliness of men who know the Lord in their very hearts, and will seek to follow the Lamb wherever he goes!