COME OUT FROM AMONG THEM

“I will be their God, And they shall be My people. Therefore Come out from among them And be separate, says the Lord.” 2 Corinthians 6:16b-17

Immediately before writing these words, in verses 14-16a Paul writes:

Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For you are the temple of the living God.

Someone has said that there is so much of the world in our churches and so many believers living in the world, that it is difficult to make a distinction between the saved and the lost.

With Paul’s “be not conformed to the world” in Romans 12:2, he makes it clear that Christians are always subject to being attracted to the world. Second Corinthians 6:16b-17 says that Christians are to reject this attraction.

We, who are believers, must be willing to stand out in the crowd as being different. We will stand out, for example, when we do not laugh with the crowd when some off-color joke is told. We will stand out when we walk away from a conversation that degenerates into subjects of an ungodly nature.

We can tell others who live the life of grace and reject the ways of the world that Jesus says we will be hated by the world (John 15:18 and 17:14). Yet, while we hate the ways of the world, we will never cease loving those of the world.

When we “come out from among them,” we give a visible and an audible demonstration to those of the world of what it means to be a “saint.”