Charles Spurgeon once told the about “the man who preached so well and lived so badly that when he was in the pulpit everybody said he ought never to come out again, and when he was out of it they all declared he never ought to enter it again.” The pastor is rightly expected to practice what he preaches, but the admonition to holy living is not limited to the man in the pulpit; all Christians should understand they are called to live a life that is set apart.
That is why Paul wrote to the Corinthian believers to “come out from among them and be separate…and do not touch the unclean thing (2 Corinthians 6:17).” The Greek work translated as separate is haphorizo, from where we get our English word horizon. While we may typically think of the horizon as referring to something off in the distance (as in “something good is coming over the horizon”), that is not what the word means. According to the dictionary, horizon is “the line or circle that forms the apparent boundary between earth and sky.” The horizon, then, is what separates two things.
Followers of Jesus have been called to be the horizon—completely separate from the world. I believe the church never has more to offer the lost world than when the church looks least like the world. Pastors in particular and Christians in general seem to be embracing this tendency to look like the world instead being the horizon. But separation isn’t limited to just the negative; it is not only about what we are separated from, but also what we are separated to. In Romans 1:1 Paul introduced himself as an apostle “separated unto the gospel of God,” and it is the same word haphorizo again. We need to be the horizon, separated from this evil world, and set apart in a positive way to live our lives for the Father. Let’s be that something good people can see over the horizon.
No comments:
Post a Comment