Evening, July 9
Go To Morning Reading
“And God divided the light from the darkness.”
Genesis 1:4
A believer has two principles at work within him. In his natural estate
he was subject to one principle only, which was darkness; now light
has entered, and the two principles disagree. Mark the apostle Paul’s words in the seventh chapter of Romans: “I find then a law, that, when I would do good, evil is present with
me. For I delight in the law of God after the inward man: but I see
another law in my members, warring against the law of my mind, and
bringing me into captivity to the law of sin, which is in my members.” How is this state of things occasioned? “The Lord divided the light from the darkness.” Darkness, by itself, is quiet and undisturbed, but when the Lord
sends in light, there is a conflict, for the one is in opposition
to the other: a conflict which will never cease till the believer
is altogether light in the Lord. If there be a division within the individual Christian, there is certain to be a division without . So soon as the Lord gives to any man light, he proceeds to separate
himself from the darkness around; he secedes from a merely worldly
religion of outward ceremonial, for nothing short of the gospel of
Christ will now satisfy him, and he withdraws himself from worldly
society and frivolous amusements, and seeks the company of the saints,
for “We know we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren.” The light gathers to itself, and the darkness to itself. What God
has divided, let us never try to unite, but as Christ went without
the camp, bearing his reproach, so let us come out from the ungodly,
and be a peculiar people. He was holy, harmless, undefiled, separate
from sinners; and, as he was, so we are to be nonconformists to the
world, dissenting from all sin, and distinguished from the rest of
mankind by our likeness to our Master.