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"Separate"
Daniel Valles

READ John 17:15

Right before Christ went to the Garden of Gethsemane, He prayed for Himself but also for His disciples. He knew that He was about to die and that His disciples would experience hardships for Him in the future. Many of them would experience persecution. Jesus Christ did not pray that they would escape persecution, or that they would live a happy, carefree life. No, when He prayed, He even mentioned that He was not praying that they would be taken "out of the world". His greatest concern for His disciples was not comfort, but conformity. Praying to the Father, He asked Him to "keep them from the evil".

Christ, Himself, called us to be Salt and Light in this world. To many Christians have the notion that to reach the world, we should become like the world. Christ desired the polar opposite. His desire was that we would stay in this world so that we could tell others about eternal life (vs.2). However, while we are down here, the second greatest desire of Christ is that we stay separate from evil.

The two go together. Christ desires that we share the Gospel, but that we also stay separate from sin and the evil in this world. We cannot break one to fulfill the other. We cannot remain separate from sin, but remain in our church fellowship, never spreading the Gospel. Also, we cannot swim in evil and still spread the Gospel. Christ's desire for us takes precedent over our simpleton logic of using sin to tell others about being saved from sin. Spread the Word and keep from evil.