“It is not in man that walketh to direct his steps” (Jer. x. 23).
United to Jesus Christ as your Redeemer, you are accepted in the Beloved.
He does not merely take my place as a man and settle my debts. He does
that and more. He comes to give a perfect ideal of what a man should be.
He is the model man, not for us to copy, for that would only bring
discouragement and utter failure; but He will come and copy Himself in us.
If Christ lives in me, I am another Christ. I am not like Him, but I have
the same mind. The very Christ is in me. This is the foundation of
Christian holiness and Divine healing. Christ is developing a perfect life
within us. Some say man can never be perfect. “It is not in man that
walketh to direct his steps.” We are all a lot of failures. This is true,
but we should go further. We must take God’s provision for our failure and
rise above it through His grace. We must take Jesus as a substitute for
our miserable self. We must give up the good as well as the bad and take
Him instead. It is hard for us to learn that the very good must go, but we
must have Divine impulses instead of even our best attainments.