The first requisite is a personal relationship to Him. I cannot wear the loveliness of Jesus--until I drink deep of the forgiveness of Jesus. From the Cross where He has saved me. I set out on the pilgrim-road of imitation.
It is necessary, also, that love for Him leaps and flames in my soul. No amount of intellectual comprehension is enough. The heart must enthrone Him, must adore Him, must turn to Him with the inevitableness and the trust of the sunflower turning to the sun. I can only resemble Him, if my affection for Him is profound, controlling, and pervasive.
And there must be intimacy with my Lord. I am to share His thoughts, His temper, His motives, His decisions. I must dwell much with Himself in prayer.
I must often meditate on the story of His life and death.
These are some of the modes in which I shall touch and grasp and imitate the grace and the wisdom and the loveliness and the gentleness and the splendor of Jesus Christ.
[Alexander Smellie]
Job 23:11 ... My foot hath held his steps, his way have I kept, and not declined.
1 Peter 2:21 ... For even hereunto were ye called: because Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example, that ye should follow his steps:
1 John 2:6 ... He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked.❤
