COMMENTS
If any man consider that he has attained a satisfactory spiritual state, from that moment he may date the beginning of his spiritual decline. No present attainments can be satisfactory to a sincere follower of Christ who studiously endeavors to copy the Perfect Pattern. It is only when we turn our eyes away from Christ that self complacency can be exercised; for in full view of the Pattern our shortcomings are ever manifest. And if in pride of heart we do lose sight of them ourselves, they only become the more manifest to others. Only in the realization of a continual growth into the likeness of Christ should the Christian find satisfaction.
The Lord laid hold on Paul that he might attain and maintain under the hardest of trials a Christlike character. At the time of writing these words, Paul had not yet crystallized such a character. Many a person with but a meager proportion of Paul's character, would have been self-satisfied; not so the Apostle, whose sober self-estimate enabled him humbly to recognize his lacks and to strive to attain and maintain his ideal.
Job 25:5; Psa. 131:1; Prov. 15:33; Isa. 57:15; Jer. 45:5; Mic. 6:8; Matt. 5:3; 23:12; Luke 10:21; 17:10; Rom. 12:3, 10, 16; 1 Cor. 13:4; 9:24-27; 15:58; Phil. 1:21; Rom. 7:1; 2 Cor. 7:1; Heb. 5:14.
