BIBLICAL SEPARATION – IN POWER (THE DONE ASPECT).
(2Cor 6:18b)
The power of God that enables separation is just in one phrase of the verse, “…saith the Lord Almighty.” This is the only place in the New Testament apart from the revelation that the Lord reveals Himself to us in this character. But how precious it is here!
The Corinthian saints had been saved from the worship of idols, and brought out from under the power and dominion of Satan, but they were seemingly fearful of the consequences that they might have to suffer if they severed all their connections with their old heathen and idolatrous worship.
It is the same today in the heathen lands. When one trusts the Lord Jesus Christ there is not lacking the lurking fear of the anger of their old deities.
– Their old friends will threaten them with the vengeance of their gods, and tell them that if they forsake these gods they will visit them with chastisement
– By spoiling their crops or flocks, or
– By bringing sickness into the family.
The fear of such things as these seems to have prevented some of the weak Corinthian saints from separating from their old heathen places of worship. They wanted to effect a compromise by worshipping the Lord in a heathen temple. This God could not allow, and hence to encourage these believers to separate from their old ways. He reveals Himself to them as the Lord God Almighty.
He would have them know that the one under whose wing they had come for refuge was God-all-sufficient. It was this that He revealed to
– Abraham on the previous day. “I am (El-Shaddai) God-Almighty or (God-all-sufficient); walk before me.” Abraham in the dim distant past,
– The Corinthian saints in their day, and
– We in ours may depend upon the sufficiency of our God for every emergency or exigency that we are liable to meet in this separated path.
There is not difficulty or any enemy that we may encounter as we seek to walk in that path, but that the power of God is there to enable us to meet it. When the Lord gave command to the man with the withered hand to reach forth his hand. He also gave the individual the power to obey. He who knows our frame will not test us above that we are able to bear. Then shall we not reckon upon His power, seek to walk in His precepts, thereby enjoy His promises and rejoice in the realization of His Presence.
