Separation from Sinners

1 Separate from sinners.’ — Hebrews vii. 26.

‘^EPARATE from sinners.’ But I thought this same High Priest went to be guest with a man ’ who was a sinner? Yes: 1 separate, and yet a ’ guest.’ Isolation is not sanctification. Separation can only be effected by elevation of life. There are no gulfs so deep and infinite as those which yawn between souls. Spiritual differences make distances immeasurable. Bring out your measuringrod, and tell me the distance between the speakers of the following words: — ‘When this thy son is come, who hath devoured thy living with harlots’... ‘This thy brother was dead, and is alive again, What is the width of the abysmal gulf? The distance is infinite; it is a separation in spirit.

We say ’ blood is thicker than water’: but what about the spirit? There are some children whose names the angels never mens

50 QUebtfottcne fov Quiet QUomeiifetion alongside the names of their parents. There is no relationship between them, such as is recognized in the unseen. Our connexions are often only skin connexions, while beneath the skin there are gulfs as immeasurable as the appalling chasm which yawns between heaven and hell.

This is the kind of separation referred to in the text. Jesus Christ was ’ separate from sinners.’ There was a difference in spirit which made the distance between them infinite. What our Lord was, all men are called to be. We are to be ’ separate from sinners’; so unlike them in spirit as to be removed from them by an immeasurable gulf. But what is the spirit of sinners from which we are called to be separate? What is spirit? Who can define it? The spiritual is ever the indefinable. Who can define a wish? What its origin and composition? Who can define an impulse? What is it? How came it? Where dwells it? The spiritual defies definition. This much, however, we can say. The most spiritual essence we know is thought. Spirit is thought. It is more, unutterably more, but it is pre-eminently thought. Let us begin there. We are to be ’ separate from sinners ’ in spirit, and tl nfore separate from sinners

|&eparafton from |?mne*e 51

in thought. We are to be dissimilar in thought, unlike them in the general furnishings and outlooks of the mind.

Now, what is a sinner’s thought like? Suppose it were possible for us to have the insight of God, and we could look into a sinner’s mind just as we look into a glass hive, and see all the purposings, the plannings, the rememberings, the swayings, what would be the general characteristic? The Bible supplies the answer. ‘God is not in all his thoughts.’ In all that restless multitude of thoughts there is no God. Where, then, is God? Outside the mind, a sorrowful onlooker where He yearns to be co-labourer and guide. God’s light is spurned — His warmth is exiled. Thought becomes narrow and cold, small and chilling. The mind becomes a nest of petty purposes, when it was intended to be the glorious tabernacle of the eternal God. Be ye ‘separate from sinners,’ separate in thought, for in their self-centred mind there is no God.

A mind without God is a mind in which there is no hope. ‘Having no hope, I do not use the word hope with any dwarfed and trifling application, as being merely synonymous with buoyancy and good spirits. A man of hope is one who sees stretching out

before him a large, bounteous, holy possibility; and he is a man of large ideals, who lives in the assurance that the idealities will become realities, that the castle in the air will prove itself a very substantial dwelling, a ’ house of God not made with hands, eternal in the heavens.’

Now the man without God has no such glorious hope. He looks ahead: he sees himself repeated, not transformed; and life whose outlook is only a series of repetitions is hastening unto death. No vast vision, and therefore no true perspective? From this I am to separate. I am to be separate by having a different type of mind. I am to have a mind that welcomes the divine, that lets in the sun’s rays, that rejoices at the incoming of the Eternal. I am to have a mind with large outlooks, gazing upon big possibilities, and by the largeness of its gaze setting things in their true perspective, and so delivering life from the small bondage of the passing day.

How are we to become separate? (i) By an act of deliberation. Sit down and calmly think. The problem is this: you have opposing you ‘the world, the flesh, and the devil,’ and you wish to become separate. Can you do it? Think. Can it be done?

Not in your own strength. How then? You must seek reinforcements. (2) By an act of consecration. Enter into a solemn league and covenant with the Lord Christ, who is the source of all the mighty powers and ministries of grace. In His strength you can be separated from the world. We become separated from sinners by becoming separated into Christ. Instead of having a mind without God, you will have the Lord God as a continual guest; and instead of a mind without outlook, you will have the allurement of an immortal hope.