The Word Abused . . .

“COME OUT FROM AMONG THEM AND BE SEPARATE”

This is the first of a series on scriptural interpretation that will extend for the next two years, entitled The Word Abused. It will eventually be available in book form, under this title and comprising all the issues for 1975 and 1976. There will, of course, be other features, including some in extended series, such as our travel notes and What Kind of a Book is the Bible?, which will go well with our overall theme of responsible interpretation of scripture.

The Spirit enjoins the man of God to “handle aright the word of truth” (2 Tim. 2:15), which is an important way to “Try hard to show yourself worthy of God’s approval.” There is abundant evidence that many of our teachers do not try very hard to win God’s approval in the way they handle the scriptures, and that is what this series is all about. We want to take a look at some of the mishandling. The word is often abused, perhaps out of ignorance, perhaps in defense of some party or sect. Or perhaps simply as a bad habit, with no particular motive. We are less interested in judging the motives than we are in examining the texts and their interpretations. To abuse one’s body is wrong; to abuse a child is a grievous sin; to abuse authority is horrendous. But to abuse the scriptures, to twist and warp them for some selfish or sectarian purpose, is a crime against heaven.

The injunction “If any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God” (1 Pet. 4:11) should be taken most seriously. The flippancy with which some mishandle the Bible may be why we are enjoined “Be not many of you teachers, my brothers, for you know that we teachers will be judged with greater strictness than others” (Jas. 3:1). Mishandlers of the word, beware!

An appropriate illustration of what I mean is the use made of Rev. 18:4 and 2 Cor. 6:17 where believers are urged to Come out from among them and be separate. It would be difficult to find a passage in all the world’s literature that is so grossly abused and misapplied than this one. It is in fact used in such a way as to convey an idea diametrically opposed to what the word of God actually teaches, as we shall see.

One of our congregations in New York ventured into freedom to the extent that they invited some of the Christian Church folk to one of their gatherings. Then they went to one of theirs. Fellowship was becoming a reality between people that had so much in common, and in a part of the country where they badly needed each other. But all this came to a screeching halt when word came from a supporting church in Texas, citing 2 Cor. 6:1 7. The faithful ones were told to “Come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing.”

One of our Texas preachers thought he would join the ministerial alliance in his town for reasons that seemed good to him. His elders approved of this behavior and he soon found himself the beneficiary in many ways. But some of his fellow preachers read the riot act to him in the form of Rev. 18:4. “Come out. . .” That is what the Lord says, so you have no business in, they assured him.

This passage has been wrapped around the necks of our people all these years, and for what? Attending a Billy Graham revival or sitting in on a Keith Miller seminar. Visiting a Baptist Church or joining in a community Easter celebration. Somehow it is hardly ever applied to attending “sectarian” seminary or college or to singing hymns composed by “the denominations” or reading books published by them. We can read Barclay or Trueblood, but we can’t sit with them in their churches. We can sing A Mighty Fortress is Our God in our congregations, but any suggestion of “fellowshipping” the likes of Martin Luther calls down upon our heads the “Come out” passages.

The irony of it all is that we even use these passages on each other. We are to “Come out” from the liberals, the charismatics, and the cooperatives. And we are to suppose that Sunday Schools, instrumental music, individual cups, class literature, and grape juice are among the “unclean things” that we are not to touch. The them in “Come out from among them” is made to apply to our own dear brothers and sisters in Christ, perhaps because they are premillennial in their view of the Lord’s coming or because their congregation has Herald of Truth in its budget. This is to use the word of God itself, which is our means of being one people in Christ, to separate brother from brother.

One only needs to look at the context in Rev. 18 and 2 Cor. 6 to see that this is an instance of warping and twisting the scriptures. Rev. 18 begins with a description of Babylon the great. “She has become a dwelling for demons, a haunt of every unclean spirit, for every vile and loathsome bird” verse 2 tells us. Verse 3 informs us that nations of the earth “have drunk deep of the fierce wine of her fornication” and that the kings of the world “have committed fornication with her.” It also says that merchants have grown rich on her bloated wealth. That is the character of the evil that the author is talking about, however we may interpret Babylon.

John is talking about the arch enemies of God in these latter chapters of Revelation, whether the anti-Christ or pagan Rome. There is room for differences as to what is precisely referred to, but it is clear enough that in Rev. 18 he is calling for the downfall of an anti-Christian power. He uses such language as “the great whore” and “blasphemous” and “drunk with the blood of God’s people and with the blood of those who had borne testimony to Jesus” in. describing this anti-Christian influence.

The fall of Babylon means the fall of corrupt power and wanton wealth. Kings lament her diminished power while the merchants grieve over her vanished wealth (v. 10). All of this draws heavily from the doom songs against Babylon and Tyre in Isa. 13 and 21 and Ezek. 26 and 27. In reading these chapters one gets a picture of God’s enemies (not his children!), of people who are evil, proud, corrupt, and wanton (and not people who are innocently mistaken!), and so their fall is the fall of blasphemous arrogance. There are striking parallels between the insidious whore of Babylon in John’s Revelation and corrupt Tyre and Babylon in the Old Testament. Such as: “So great was your sin in your wicked trading that you desecrated your sanctuaries. So I kindled a fire within you and it devoured you” (Ez. 28:18).

It is this that Rev. 18:4 summons God’s people to come out of. “Come out of her . . .” The her is the adulterous, corrupting, paganizing influence of all that “Rome” came to stand for to the early Christians, including both her idolatrous altars and her sword stained with the blood of saints. “Come out of her, my people. . .” The prophet draws a broad line between the “her” and God’s people. She is wanton, cruel, crude, and “a harbor of every vile bird,” an arch enemy of God, one made ready for his special judgment. But my people are those whose garments had been made white by the blood of the lamb.

These were the ones that God’s people were to separate themselves from. One searches in vain for the scripture that tells God’s children to separate themselves from other of His children. They were to come out of pagan Rome “lest you take part in her sins and share in her plagues.” These were sins of arrogance against God, a calloused disregard toward all that is good, true and holy.

One wonders how sincere brethren ever came to apply such scripture as this to mean that we can have nothing to do with another brother in Christ because he has a piano in his church (or because he doesn’t!), or because he has a missionary society (or because he doesn’t), or because he is premillennial or whatever. Brethren, consider what you are doing’ To take a verse that calls God’s children out of pagan, idolatrous, blasphemous Rome and apply it to a brother who loves Jesus like you do and honors him as the Lord is unthinkable. To do such as that comes nearer to the spirit of pagan Rome than does a sincerely mistaken view of baptism or an irregular celebration of the Lord’s supper.

2 Cor. 6: I 7 is of the same general context, for it shows the absolute incompatibility of the kingdom of Christ with that of Satan. “Be not unequally yoked with unbelievers” has reference to those who are unrighteous instead of righteous, who serve Satan instead of Jesus, who worship at pagan temples instead of God’s altar, and who love darkness rather than light, as the following lines indicate. We can’t make a Methodist or a Baptist the “unbeliever” with whom we are not to be yoked.

This passage is often used on the young sister who would dare to marry “outside the church,” the young man being a Baptist that we uncharitably, label an unbeliever. This is foolish. Someone “not of us” may well be a deeply committed believer, and one of our girls would do well to marry him. Surely that is better than marrying a brute who happens to be in the right church. It is poor logic as well as unloving to call one an unbeliever who professes with his lips that Jesus is Lord and believes in his heart that God has raised him from the dead.

The apostle is pointing to the radical difference between those who are in Christ and those who are not. Believers are to be yoked together, as Philip. 4:3 indicates (“my true yokefellows”), whether in marriage, business, or otherwise. But those are to be avoided, insofar as yokeship is concerned, who frequent pagan temples and offer sacrifices to Belial, lest the believer either become trapped by the system or be led to violate his conscience by such association.

1 Cor. 10:27 makes clear who the unbeliever is: “If an unbeliever invites you to a meal and you care to go, eat whatever is put before you, without raising questions of conscience.” Since he is an unbeliever, the meat he serves might well have been offered to an idol. That is all right, Paul is saying, so long as no point is made of it, so don’t be asking questions that would put your conscience on trial. So, the unbeliever here is the pagan who goes to heathen temples and offers meat to idols, which he might in turn place on his table when the believer in Christ comes to dine.

Paul erects an impossible gulf between the believer and the unbeliever. There can be no koinonia (partnership) between righteousness and iniquity (v. 14), iniquity here meaning lawlessness. Nor can there be any fellowship between light and darkness, for Jesus is the light of the world while darkness is that which some men choose rather than light. And this ultimate antithesis reaches its climax in contrasting Christ with Belial, another name for Satan. Belial is the lawless one, the liar and murderer who rules the powers of darkness out of which the believer is summoned. There is thus no place for the believer as Belial’s temple.

Then comes the great exhortation, drawn freely from several Old Covenant scriptures: “Wherefore, Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be to you a Father, and ye shall be to me sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.”

That is a call to all God’s children. It is a summons out of the carnal world, away from a secularistic philosophy, and all the corrupting influences of Satanic power. But it is not a call to believers to separate themselves from other believers. It is not a call for conservatives to walk out on the liberals or for the inorganic brethren to leave the organic. Or for the “faithful” to come out from the “unfaithful” in the church. There are no such instructions in the Bible. To use this passage in such a way is not only to abuse it, but it is to make it teach the very opposite of what the scriptures consistently insist upon, which is that unity is to be preserved with all diligence in spite of differences.

Divisions in the Body are sinful (period). Gal. 5:20 clearly names factions and parties works of the flesh. In holy wrath the apostle cries out, “Is Christ divided?” (1 Co. 1:13), and he enjoins that we be united and not fractured into sects. Realizing that believers must be one in love to impress the lost world, the Savior himself prayed for the unity of his followers.

There is therefore no excuse for fracturing the Body. Not even error or wrongdoing. The church at Sardis was far from being faithful in all respects. Indeed, the Spirit called upon them to repent. But even though they were so far gone as to be “dead,” the faithful among them were not told to “Come out and be ye separate.” He rather said to them, “Yet you have a few persons in Sardis who have not polluted their clothing. They shall walk with me in white.” You can still be “white” in a church that has gone black! The “Come out” command is always to believers to leave the corruption of the world, and it is never to part of the Body to leave the rest of the Body.

This is not to say that there is never justifiable reasons for some in a congregation to leave and start a new work. But it certainly means that they are not to do so with any reference to these passages. God certainly is not telling them to “Come out” from their own brethren.

It is a crime against heaven, not unlike the arrogance of Tyre, to take that portion of God’s word that draws a dark line between the church and the world and use it to drive a wedge between brothers in Christ. We rather follow the Spirit when we urge forbearance, which calls for no compromise of truth. And forbearance implies that there are differences and difficulties in Body ministry, otherwise there would be nothing to forbear.

It is an important lesson for us to learn. “Come out from among them and be separate” is a call to the Body to be pure of worldly defilements, while “Give diligence to preserve the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace” is a call to the Body to safeguard its essential oneness.—the Editor