Morning & Evening Devotional Reading–

July 9– Evening

by C. H. Spurgeon, revised and edited by W. C. Neff

“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. Observe 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 did this state of things come to be? 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. It is a conflict which will never cease until the believer is altogether light in the Lord. And, if there is a division within the individual Christian, there is certain to be an external division that becomes apparent to all. 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 ceremony, and nothing short of the gospel of Christ will now satisfy him. He withdraws himself from worldly societies 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, and what God has divided let us never try to unite. Even as Christ went outside the camp, bearing his cross, 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 this world, dissenting from all sin and distinguished from the rest of mankind by our likeness to our Master. [M&E]