We will be separate

For how then will it be known that Your people and I have found grace in Your sight, except You go with us? So we shall be separate, Your people and I, from all the people who are upon the face of the earth." So the LORD said to Moses, "I will also do this thing that you have spoken; for you have found grace in My sight, and I know you by name." – Exodus 33.16-17

I spent a lot of my time in churches where separation was a major part of the teaching. I think it was taken to an extreme at times. If we are not careful separation can become a type of Galatianism binding us to a set of rules and traditions. 

But taking separation too far is no excuse for the pendulum to swing the other way and ignore that it is a Biblical principle. Biblical separation must be Biblical, not based on human ideas or traditions or preferences or opinions.

True separation is not legalism or Galatianism. It is not a set of rules and man-made standards and dos and don’ts. It is also not antinomianism where anything goes.

Bible separation means that we do not allow ourselves to be dictated to by the world’s standards. We don’t walk after the flesh – we walk after the Spirit. We are not bound by ‘the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that now worketh in the children of disobedience:’ We no longer have our ‘conversation in times past in the lusts of our flesh, fulfilling the desires of the flesh and of the mind; and were by nature the children of wrath, even as others.’ It means we have been transformed from the darkness into the light. It means that we don’t respond to evil with evil. It means that we don’t live to satisfy self. It means that we are ‘in Christ’ instead of in the world and that our lives reflect Christ and no longer us.

Moses said ‘we will be separate’ and God said ‘my grace will be with you.’ ‘Come out from among them and be separate says the Lord.’ Will we live that separated life and live the grace life that God intends for us?