All men are familiar with separation in one way or other. In certain nations there are separate castes, separate social and religious orders, and many other societies that keep themselves apart from others. Under the law, in the Jewish nation, there were separate classes or priests and Levites occupying distinctive positions, and having particular services to perform. In Christianity, viewed in relation to the new creation, there are no such distinctions and separate companies, for all are priests to God, and all function as servants of God, and in the new man that God has created “there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond or free: but Christ is all, and in all” (Col. 3:11). Nevertheless the truth of separation is found in Scripture for the enlightenment and guidance of the Christian, but it is a separation as taught by God, and it is this that is to regulate the life of the one who would be here for God.
The Veil of Separation
When the tabernacle was erected, the beautiful veil was hung to separate the most holy place from the holy place, it was a “covering veil” that secluded the holiest, so that when the tabernacle was set up even the priestly family were kept out of the immediate presence of Jehovah. Even the high priest could only enter through the veil of separation once a year, on the great day of atonement, to sprinkle the blood of the sin offering on the mercy seat and before the mercy seat. God was hidden behind the veil of separation, and there was no access into His presence under the old covenant. Moses, as an individual servant of the Lord, enjoyed the peculiar privilege of access to God, for the Lord said to him, “there I will meet with thee” (Ex. 25:22; 30:6, 36); but all others were excluded from the immediate presence of the God of Israel.
When Israel journeyed the tabernacle was taken down, and the veil of separation was taken down by Aaron and his sons, and they wrapped it round the ark of the testimony (Num. 4:5), but the veil was not seen by the people for it was covered by badgers’ skins, and these were covered by a cloth of blue. All that Israel could see was the cloth of blue. So it was when the Lord Jesus was here as a Man among men, all that they saw, all that the eye of man could perceive was a Man, but He was a Man different from every other man, He was “the second Man, out of heaven” (1 Cor. 15:47). Beneath the protection of the badgers’ skins was the veil of separation, and the ark of the testimony of God.
Scripture leaves us in no doubt regarding the veil of separation, for it is written in Hebrews 10 that we have boldness to enter the holiest “by the blood of Jesus…through the veil, that is to say, His flesh” (Heb. 10:19-20). Even as the veil of the tabernacle hid the God of Israel from the eyes of the people, so there was hidden from the eyes of men in the Manhood of Christ the true and living God. The eye of faith can penetrate the cloth of blue, and the covering of badgers’ skins, and see the beautiful veil of Christ’s Manhood, with what the colours in it set forth, and see the ark with its covering of gold that tells of the divine glory of the Son.
It is because the Son of God has become Man that we can enter the holiest, the immediate presence of God. His death was necessary for this, but to die He had to become Man. While on earth there were those who could see the divine glory of the Son shining through the veil of His Manhood, even as the Apostle John wrote, “and we beheld His glory, the glory as of an only begotten with a Father” (John 1:14). This is what the eye of faith discerned in the Word become flesh, though others only saw in Him the son of Joseph. The Manhood which for men generally hid God from their eyes, for God was there in the Person of the Son, was that through which there was the revelation of God for those whose eyes God had opened.
John and his fellow disciples could see, by faith, beneath the badgers’ skins the gold of the ark, and the colours of the veil, but others could only see Jesus as a Man, even if they saw Him to be a different kind of Man from other men, a Man out of heaven, though they could not have spoken of Him thus. It is because God’s Son has become Man, and has died, that we now can enter the holiest of all, a privilege that was denied to Israel, but has been given to those that Christ has redeemed by His precious blood. Even now we see in Christ glorified, within the veil, all that God is in His glory, for we see “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6).
Separation to the Lord
A man or a woman who took the vow of a Nazarite undertook to be separate unto the Lord (Num. 6:2), and while the Christian is not under law, and therefore does not take vows, he is nevertheless under the authority of Christ, and the desires of Christ for the true believer will be a command to him. We are reminded in 2 Corinthians 5 that Christ “died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto Him which died for them, and rose again” (verse 15). The Nazarite’s separation was for a limited time, “all the days of his separation,” but the Christian is to be separate unto the Lord all the days of his life in this world.
While separate unto the Lord there were things the Nazarite was not to eat and drink, and man’s life is largely made up of his eating and drinking. He was to “separate himself” from all pertaining to the vine, no razor was to come upon his head, and he was not to make himself unclean through contact with the dead. The pleasures of this life were to be given up, the man with long hair was to live in shame (1 Cor. 11:14), and he was to be undefiled even when it grieved him at his heart. Is not this the path the Christian is called to tread? How can we go in for the pleasures of the world when we know that the world crucified and slew our blessed Lord, and still rejects Him. Surely we cannot shrink from the path of shame and reproach that belongs to those who know that Christ was dishonoured in this world, and to join with him who wrote, “I am crucified with Christ” (Gal. 2:20). Christ in this world was “holy, harmless, undefiled” (Heb. 7:26), and we are to be like Him.
For the Nazarite there came the time “when the days of his separation” were fulfilled, and after the sacrifices were offered, and his hair was shaved, he was permitted to drink wine. We see in the Lord Jesus the perfect Nazarite, refusing all the pleasures of life in this world, and wholly consecrated to the will of God, even unto death, and that the death of the cross. The time of His joy was to come when He would be “anointed with the oil of gladness above” His companions (Heb. 1:9), and when He would drink of the fruit of the vine with His own in His Father’s kingdom (Matt. 26:29).
Like the Nazarite our time of joy will come. Our joy is found in the presence of the Lord, not in the things of this world. For us this is a time of fasting, so far as the things of the present world are concerned, but in the presence of the Lord now, as for ever in His presence soon, we have joy and feasting in His company (Luke 5:33–35). The Lord has spread a table for us, it is His table, and at His table we partake of the joys that will soon be ours when with Him in His kingdom, and in the Father’s house.
The Water of Separation
In passing through a world of defilement the Christian is apt to become defiled, but God, in His grace, has not only provided for the removal of our sins in the blood of Jesus, but in that same death has made provision for any defilement of His own in their journey through the wilderness of this world. On the day of atonement, as seen in Leviticus 16, God’s glory was secured, and the blessing of His people also, through the blood of the sin offering, but cleansing for defilement on the way has been provided in the ashes of the red heifer, the water of separation.
The blood that flowed from the side of Christ in death answers to the blood that was sprinkled on the day of atonement, and the water that accompanied the blood tells us of the moral purification secured in that same death, a water of separation that cleanses from our defilement. In that death we see all that this world is, from what is least to what is greatest, and all its glory too, go from the eye of God in judgment, and this is indicated in the priest taking “cedar wood and hyssop, and scarlet, and casting them in to the midst of the burning of the heifer” (Num. 19:6).
There were different ways in which an Israelite could be defiled, and sometimes only the washing of the clothes was necessary, as in Leviticus 11:25, 40, but when it was contact with “the dead body of any man,” or “a bone of a man, or a grave”, the sprinkling of the water of separation was necessary. Defilement through association with those who are dead in trespasses and sins in a solemn matter, and to be cleansed we need to enter into what it cost the Lord to save us and to cleanse us, and to “deliver us from this present evil world.” (Gal. 1:4).
“Come out…and be ye separate”
Early in the ministry of the Apostle Paul He had to warn the saints at Corinth of the dangers of association with the world. He wrote to them, “Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers for what fellowship has righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion has light with darkness?…and what agreement has the temple of God with idols?” (2 Cor. 6:14–16). Having been saved out of heathen associations through the Gospel, the saints were not to be ensnared in them again. Christ has no place in the associations of this world, and His own ought to be content with His place of rejection.
The call of the Lord through the Apostle to His own is to “come out from among them” and be separate. As has often been remarked the path of separation is the path of divine power. To be in the associations of the world is to be unclean, and like the Israelites of old we are not to touch the unclean. Even a Nazarite when he touched a dead body was unclean, and needed as others the application of the water of separation. Outside of the world’s associations we may be subject to the world’s opposition, but the Lord says, “I will receive you,” and we shall have all the affection of the Father, and the support and protection of “the Lord Almighty” (verses 17-18).
Like the Gentile, the converted Jew was also called to the path of separation, and it must have been a severe test to answer to the call to “go forth therefore unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach” (Heb. 13:13). Judaism had been set up in its original character by Jehovah, but it had become corrupt, and had crucified the Son of God, so that those who believed in the Lord Jesus were called to share Christ’s place of rejection, “outside the camp.” With the great privilege of entering within the veil of separation, the saved of Israel had also the privilege of sharing Christ’s outside place.
Christendom, like heathendom and Judaism, has become corrupt and the path for the faithful in these last days is shown to us in Second Timothy. The mass of the Christian profession have “a form of godliness,” but deny the power thereof, and from such the faithful are to turn away (2 Tim. 3:1–5). Men such as Hymenaus and Philetus, teach what is subversive of Christianity, “and overthrow the faith of some,” and the profession is likened unto “a great house,” where “there are not only vessels of gold and silver, but also of wood and of earth; and some to honour, and some to dishonour” (2 Tim. 2:17–22).
Those who would be faithful to the Lord are to purge themselves from the vessels of dishonour, and this would involve separation from all who are associated with them, and in separating such would be vessels “unto honour, sanctified, and meet for the Master’s use” (verse 21). Faithful individuals may find themselves isolated, but they will not act in independence, for such are called upon to “follow righteousness, faith, love, peace, with them that call on the Lord out of a pure heart” (verse 22).
If not isolated, those who thus go on together will seek to answer to the Lord’s mind in all things, not only as individuals but as together in the enjoyment and pursuit of the things of God. As gathered together to the Name of the Lord they will seek to act in the light of what has been given for the assembly, for the privileges and the responsibilities of God’s assembly belong to two or three gathered to Christ’s Name, just as to a much greater number. What belonged to the assembly in days of outward power can be enjoyed by two or three in great weakness if Christ is in their midst. At the beginning, in such an assembly as Corinth, there may have been greater numbers, and much more gift, but what else had they that two or three gathered to Christ’s Name cannot have today? With the Lord’s Supper, and the presence of the Lord in the midst, what can we lack in our weakness?
R. 24.1.69