“I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3: 14). What is this calling? It is evidently to perfection of some kind. Not to perfection of heart for in the very next verse he urges "as many as be perfect to be thus minded."

I think we will find the secret of this calling in the tenth verse of the same chapter, "That I may know Him and the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His suffering, being made conformable unto His death."

The call, then, is unto Christlikeness for which cause He tells us in the 4th chapter of Ephesians, "we are given apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers for the perfecting of the saints, 'til we all come in the unity of the faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ."

What an inheritance! What a vastness of experience we have to attain to.

Shall we be satisfied simply with heart purity and a righteous life, or shall we press on to the perfection of the fullness of the stature of Christ?

You say you passed through your Gethsemane and died to this world when you were sanctified. Yes, but have you entered Gethsemane for the souls of others? Have you, like Christ, "being in an agony prayed more earnestly"?

Is it your ambition to be conformable to His life, not in letter only, but in spirit? O friends, if we live in the Spirit let us walk in the Spirit, not that we are selfish; but, let us develop in unselfishness; not that we are of this world, but let us develop in Christlikeness, going on from glory to glory until, when He shall appear, we shall be like Him.

E. D. Hinchman

Written for The Nazarene Messenger, February 13th, 1902. 

Used with permission from Nazarene Archives.

Please note: This article was originally published in 1902. All facts, figures, and titles were accurate to the best of our knowledge at that time but may have since changed.