—every one that is perfect shall be as his master – Luke 6:40

When we are perfected we shall be as our Master. – “We shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is.” It seems altogether too much to expect! To think that we shall be changed into His image; that we shall bear His impress; that we shall be as like Him— Yet it shall be so. The Lord Jesus became like unto us in our low estate, that we should become like Him in His glory. There must ever be the limitation of the creature as compared with Him by whom all things were made. But in our measure there shall be the same perfect beauty – His beauty upon us – for a mountain lake may as perfectly reflect the wide blue heaven as an ocean.–F.B. Meyer

Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.–Romans 12:21

Doing good is not just a good thing to do, it is essential to living a victorious life. Doing good not only pleases God, it also serves as a means to overcome the bad that wars against us. Without the doing of good we are sure to fail. John Henry Jowett said it well:

“For how else can we cast out evil? Satan cannot cast out Satan. No one can clean a room with a filthy duster. The surgeon cannot cut out the disease if his instruments are defiled. While he removed one ill-growth he would sow the seed of another. It must be health which fights disease. It will demand a good temper to overcome the bad temper in my brother.

And therefore I must cultivate a virtue if I would eradicate a vice. That applies to the state of my own soul. If there be some immoral habit in my life, the best way to destroy it is by cultivating a good one. Take the mind away from the evil one. Deprive it of thought-food. Give the thought to the nobler mood, and the ignoble mood will die. And this also applies to the faults and vices of my brother. I must fight them with their opposites. If he is harsh and cruel, I must be considerate and gentle. If he is grasping, I must be generous. If he is loud and presumptuous, I must be soft-mannered and self-restrained. If he is devilish, I must be a Christian. This is the warfare which tells upon the empire of sin. I can overcome evil with good.“

A child asked the mother, “Is Jesus like anybody I know?” It is possible to find dim reflections of Christ’s beauty in His true followers; yet we don’t need to turn to human lives, even the most perfect, to learn what Jesus was like, for we can see him in the Gospel story for ourselves. We have no excuse for not knowing what the ideal is, for a true human life.

The next thing, when we have the vision of Christ before us, is to get it implanted into our own life. Someone says, “God never yet permitted us to envision theory too beautiful for His power to make practical.” This is true, and yet never without toil and struggle can we make an honorable character for ourselves. We cannot merely dream ourselves into worthy manhood or womanhood, we must forge for ourselves, with sweat and anguish, the nobleness that shall shine before God and man.

In the presence of a great painting, a young artist said to Mr. Ruskin, “Ah! if I could put such a dream on canvas.” “Dream on canvas!” growled Ruskin. “It will take ten thousand touches of the brush on the canvas—to make your dream come true!”

It is easier to put on canvas the artist’s dreams—than to put upon our human lives the beautiful visions of Christlikeness which we find on the Gospel pages. Yet that is the real problem of Christian living. And though hard, it is not impossible. If we but struggled and tried and worked, in our efforts to get our visions of character translated into reality, as artists do to paint their visions on canvas, or carve them in stone—we would all be very noble. Never yet has an ideal been too high to be realized at last, through the help of Christ.—-Yet the cost is always high to carve the beauty God shows us—as an ideal for our lives. It costs self-discipline, oftentimes anguish, as we must deny ourselves, and cut off the things we love. SELF must be crucified if the noble manhood in us is ever to be set free to shine in its beauty—if the angel within the marble block is to be unimprisoned. Michelangelo used to say, as the chips fell thick and fast from the piece of marble in his studio, “While the marble wastes—the image grows.” There must be a wasting of self, a chipping away continually of the things that are dear to our sinful human nature, if the things that are true and pure and just and lovely are to be allowed to come out in us. The marble must waste—while the image grows! It is not easy to become a godly man, a Christlike man. Yet we must never forget that it is possible. God never yet put into a soul a dream of noble character, which He is not able and ready to help make real.–J. R. Miller

“A good name is rather to be chosen than great riches, and loving favour rather than silver and gold.” Proverbs 22:1

We ought to seek to gather in this world—treasure that we can carry with us through death’s gates, and into the eternal world. We should strive to build into our lives—qualities that shall endure. Men slave and work to get a little money, or to obtain honor, or power, or to win an earthly crown—but when they pass into the great vast forever, they take nothing of all this with them!

A great conqueror who had won empires and hoards of spoil, requested that he be buried with his hands uncovered, that everyone might see that his hands were empty, that he carried away with him nothing of all his vast conquests.

Yet there are things—virtues, fruits of character, graces, victories of moral conquests, which men do carry with them out of this world. Someone says: “The only thing that walks back from the tomb with the mourners and refuses to be buried—is character.” This is true. What a man IS, survives him. It never can be buried. It stays about his home when his footsteps are no longer heard there. It lives in the community where he was known. And that same thing—what a man IS—he carries with him into the eternal world. Money and rank and pleasures and earthly gains—he leaves behind him; but his character, he takes with him into eternity.

This suggests at once, the importance of character and character-building. A man may not be as good as his reputation. A good reputation may hide an evil heart and life. Character is not what a man professes to be—but what he really is as God sees him. Definition is important. Reputation is not character. Reputation is what a man’s neighbors and friends think of him; character is what the man is.–J. R. Miller