“COME OUT, MY PEOPLE”

Come out of her, my people, lest you share in her sins. and lest you receive of her plagues.—Rev. 18:4

Come out! This is a cry often heard in Scripture, and it is always addressed to God’s people. But it is never used to call God’s people away from other of God’s people. Christians, for example, are never summoned to separate themselves from other Christians. Believers, however faithful they may be, are never beckoned to “Come out” from a church, however unfaithful it may be.

One of the most unfaithful of churches, Sardis, which is described as “dead” in Rev. 3:1, had a few that “walk with Me in white.” The Lord did not tell them to leave and start a faithful church. There were many things wrong with the church at Corinth, so much so that Paul called them “carnal,” but there was no call for the faithful to leave and start a “loyal” congregation across town.

There is hardly any Scripture that is twisted and warped as much as this one, and all for the purpose of defending “factions, parties, divisions” which in Gal. 5:20 are included among the works of the flesh. Our people sometimes use the passage to exclude and excoriate some sister or brother whom they have labeled as “liberal” and want to get rid of. “Come out!” from him or her, they demand, and quote Rev. 18:4. I recall such an instance in Miami, Florida among our black Churches of Christ. There was a black brother who was branded by “those who are somewhat” as a false teacher for believing that Martin Luther King was a Christian, even if a Baptist, and for believing there are Christians besides those in the Church of Christ. He even held that instrumental music is not necessarily a sin even though his own congregation chose to sing acappella.

The leading black preachers put him on trial and eventually withdrew fellowship from him. Among their proof texts for brutalizing their own brother in Christ was Rev. 18:4 and a similar passage in 2 Cor 6:17 that reads: “Come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Do not touch what is unclean, and I will receive you.”

It was my privilege to defend the besieged brother during his trial. This was easy to do, not only because the case against him was based on an irresponsible handling of Scripture, but also because his life was exemplary, more than the lives of his accusers. His elders and many from his congregation were on hand to support him. It was evident that he hardly fit the description of “a habitation of demons” or “what is unclean” referred to in the proof texts.

I told the preachers, who had no business putting a brother on trial in the first place, that they were abusing the Bible as well as their brother. They were taking passages that referred to the idolatry and debauchery of pagan Rome and applying them to their own brother in Christ. Paul and John were quoting from Isaiah in telling Christians to “Come out.” Isaiah was bidding the Jews, God’s captive people in Babylon, to come out of their captivity and return to their home land. In 2 Cor. 6 the apostle is referring to believers that are unequally yoked with disbelievers and who are banqueting in temples of idols. The plea to “Come out and be separate” was a call to Christians to renounce idolatry, paganism, lawlessness, and all that Paul meant by darkness. The apostle would be shocked that this passage would ever be used to separate Christians from each other.

In Rev. 18:4 John applies Isaiah’s words to pagan Rome whom he describes as “a habitation of demons, a prison of every foul spirit, and a cage of every unclean and hated bird.” He goes on to say that “all the nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication, and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her.” So, it is clear that when he goes on to say, quoting a voice out of heaven, “Come out of her, my people,” that he beckons God’s people to free themselves from the evil influence of “Babylon,” which stands for pagan Rome.

How could we have ever used these passages to separate Christian from Christian? Too often in our own Restoration history “Come out of Babylon’ was a call for other believers to leave their denominations and join us. It is just as well that most of that is now behind us, and we can now give serious consideration to what the “Come out” passages mean to us in our kind of world. There is reason to believe that they are enormously relevant.

The word most often used in the New Testament to describe the Christian is related to this “Come out” principle. It is the word that points to our separation from the world. Hagios is a Greek word that conveys the idea of being separate, different, apart from the world. It means to be holy, saintly. In such verses as Philip. 4:21 (“Greet every saint in Christ Jesus”) it is applied to every believer and not only to those who are especially holy. In Rev. 18:20 the apostles are called “holy apostles,” but in Rom. 1:7 we are all “called to be saints” or holy. In the NT believers are called saints more than anything else, and that word could be translated “separated ones” or “called out ones.” Sanctification comes from the same word. We are set apart by God’s grace to serve him in holiness. This is what Heb. 12:14 means: “Pursue peace with all men and holiness (sanctification) without which no one will see the Lord.”

That is an amazing passage. If it read “Without baptism no one will see the Lord,” our folk would know it by heart, but when it says we will not see the Lord without being holy we pay it little mind. Heb. 10:10 is another neglected passage: “By that will we have been sanctified through the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all.” We are made holy by God’s act of grace on the Cross, not by any merit or goodness on our part. One may be flawed and marred by sin and still be holy in that God has made him so. We are of course to grow and become more conformed to Christ’s likeness in bearing the fruit of the Spirit, but it is always by grace that we are “washed, sanctified, justified” (1 Cor. 6:11). That was written to a church that was far from perfect, but still they were “sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be saints” (1 Cor. 1:2).

In one of our assemblies recently the presiding brother meant well when he humbly insisted that “We are not holy, only trying to be.” He was wrong on both counts. We are holy if we are God’s people, but we are never holy by trying to be. Sometimes a brother will even say publicly, apparently trying to show humility, “I am a miserable sinner.” Wrong again. We are not miserable sinners if our lives have been touched by God’s grace and set apart (made holy) for his purposes. Redeemed! What wonderful grace, grace that is greater than all my sins! If it is true, we are no longer miserable sinners.

Get thee out! is God’s call to his people that goes all the way back to Abraham: “Now the Lord God said to Abraham, Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father’s house, unto a land that I shall show thee” (Gen. 12:1). It is the call that God’s people have found difficult to obey, including Abraham who could not bear leaving his father behind. The prophets urged God’s people to “Escape out of Babylon” (Jer. 50:8), but there was but a remnant who responded to the call. Once we settle in and become conformed to our world we find the call to “Come out” too much. We may pay lip service to the idea, but to really do it in heart and mind is something else.

The call to be a people set apart from the world takes different forms, as in I Tim. 5:22: “Be not partakers of other men’s sins; keep thyself pure.” There is always the pressure to conform and to be like the world, but the “Come out” call also says: “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God” (Rom. 12:2). This means that we do not prove the Christian faith by argument or even by having a “successful” church, but by changed lives.

Renewed minds! It shows that the mind matters. We may be in the very heart of the world’s traffic, but we do not allow its allurements or its false values to deceive us. While we are in the world and in an important sense love the world (as God did in giving his own son) we are always aloof from it. We hear a different drum beat. The call to “Come out” still comes to each of us who dares to be what the Bible most often calls us, saints.—the Editor