Do not be bound together with unbelievers; for what partnership have righteousness and lawlessness, or what fellowship has light with darkness? Or what harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, “I will dwell in them and walk among them; And I will be their God, and they shall be My people. Therefore, come out from their midst and be separate, says the Lord, and do not touch what is unclean; And I will welcome you, And I will be a Father to you, And you shall be sons and daughters to Me; Says the Lord Almighty.”
Therefore, having these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God. II Corinthians 6:14–18; 7:1, NASB.
This is a beautiful passage, but these are not just words of inspiration to be read and put aside. They picture one of the most important things to come in the establishing of the Kingdom.
Part of the restoration under Nehemiah ended with the separation from the Samaritans, the unclean, and with God’s remnant finally reaching the place where they were really holy. There were not at that time a great many people living in Jerusalem. Only a tithe, one out of every ten persons, was brought to live inside the city. They had to be a holy people who were dedicated. There were no marriages with the heathen. The priests had to be able to establish their priesthood or they were put out of office. There was a strictness, not for a legalism to come, but for rebuilding the house of God.
For many years in this walk there has been an effort toward restoration; but there have been no gates on the city and the Samaritans have come in and out at will: people who think they are in the move of God, who have it in theory, but are not really separated to it.
The time has come that God has commissioned a people to go out and minister His Word and to do the works of the Lord. God will require that you be a holy people unto Him, that you be separated from Babylon and from the old order of things, that you really be given to being led by the Spirit of the Lord and open to what He has for you.
Just as all of the people who were being brought back from Babylon to Jerusalem had to be sanctified, so there is a defilement that must be removed from us. We have seen many things happen in this walk so far: God has loosed us from things of the past that would hinder us; but we notice something still in the human spirit that has to be purified.
Do not touch what is unclean, is not referring to an old order legalism, but to a defilement, because He said, .… Let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit.
If you’re to be a ministry, you must get rid of that thing in your spirit that hinders. It is not a matter of not overcoming; it not a matter of the flesh—it goes deeper than the flesh nature. It is something down in the human spirit that has to be purified. God has to bring this about. Otherwise, this will be just one more move like all of the other moves in history, a people going out to do a work and tripped up through the problems in their own spirits. There is some way that the grace of God will loose us, or else grace is not grace.
Will God be able to use only a little handful of people that come into this walk because they are the only ones with good spirits? Must we be limited because the rest of them have something in their spirits that keeps coming up and needs to be dealt with? There must a way the grace of God can find a perfected people, a people walking in absolute holiness.
Is there any one of us who doesn’t have some flaw in his spirit? Are there those who can look up and say, “We’re ready, both in word and deed, for everything we manifest to be the extension of Christ’s living Body to the earth; everyone who sees us and watches us will know the Lord”?
You say, “You’re asking something impossible. Even His disciples didn’t have it!” That’s true, they didn’t have it. Elijah was rather cantankerous, too. Elijah and Elisha weren’t always nice New Testament-type prophets. Elisha called out bears to eat forty-two children because they were disrespectful and taunted him about his bald head—it was something in his spirit.
We are coming to a new day, a day in which we present our bodies as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable to Him—transformed by the renewing of our minds, so that we can prove what is the good, acceptable and perfect will of God (Romans 12:1–2). Those will not be just verses to quote, but a walking, living experience. Do you aspire, as I do, not to be some little narrow-minded group in a rut, but those who can dare to believe for God to come to grips with the things in their spirits that will make them God’s living voice in the earth? We are to be that. It is time for us to move and believe to be perfected while we’re in motion. It is time to be doing the will of the Lord. Your defeats originate beyond the position of the flesh; it’s that one little thing in your spirit that comes up and defeats you.
There’s a new experience we are coming into. I don’t know if it will come as a blinding light experience; but we will walk in it because it is all inclusive in what we have in the body and the blood of Jesus Christ. It was accomplished by one sacrifice. For by one offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified. Hebrews 10:14. It is included in His sacrifice; it is something that we embraced when we embraced Christ. It is something that He included when He embraced us. By one offering he has perfected for all time those who are sanctified.
O Lord, we hunger and thirst after righteousness and desire to see a new people coming forth who will be strong and do exploits and stand—that not one of them shall fail, but that they will abound in the grace of God and do the will of the Lord with all of their hearts.
O Master, we’ve not come thus far to be self-limited in the measure that we’ve appropriated Christ: to embrace anything less than all in the effect of the glorious cross of Jesus Christ in our lives. O Lord, we’re going to claim it and walk in it to the fullest degree and nothing will fail of the good things that You have for us.
There will be no man who sits at the King’s table limping in this Kingdom; he will walk in the strength of the Lord. There will be no feeble person among our tribes; we will abound in doing Your will.
We stand with an all-embracing faith that believes in the glorious liberation that belongs to this walk: the freedom in spirit, breaking through from legalism. The measure of legalism that stays with us is the measure that our spirits have not been purified before Thee, for we know it is a necessary restraint so we cling to it unconsciously. But we’re going to be free from legalism. We shall walk in the Spirit, be led by the Spirit, and not be under the law. Amen.
While we work and we worship and we walk forth in the Lord, we shall find the answer that He has for us. This is associated with that coming out and being separate, not being yoked with unbelievers. Righteousness can’t have fellowship with unrighteousness. It is the time of the separation of the remnant, maybe not physically, but in their spirits, until they are not contaminated by the things that are defiling. In their spirits they will not touch the thing that makes them unclean. They will walk in the Lord.
This shall be the day of release for our spirits. For the Lord hath ordained that He should draw His people into Himself. Hath He not been well pleased that their hearts have sought after Him? He shall finish that which He hath begun. Oh, having begun the thing within us, shall He not stir our hearts until He meets them? Amen.
“Think in thy hearts as today being the first day of fulfillment of that which the Lord has spoken. For hath He not said unto thee that all these things shall be done unto thee according to His word? And even in these days, as the earth speaks of pollution and contamination of the whole earth, the creation, the contamination of the hearts and minds and souls of men as thou hast seen it in this day, the Lord speaketh unto thee a new thing—not of the pollution, but of a new level of thy heart and thy mind and thy spirit. And even the pure thing in thy spirit of yesterday shall be as an impure thing in this day, for the Lord hath brought a new thing in thy heart.”
“Yea, be thankful in thy heart that in days past thou wert able to suppress the thing in thy spirit that hath not been right before the Lord, and thou hast been able to come before the Lord, and thou hast been able to come before the people of the Lord and look as if thy spirit hath been made great before the Lord thy God. Yea, that hath been a good thing, but in these days that shall not be the way in which thou shalt walk. Thou shalt not suppress the things, but rather as they come out, thou shalt say, ‘Praise God, it shall be a thing which shall be completely and totally eliminated in my spirit. and my spirit shall be made ready to walk with the Lord, and my spirit shall be made such that it shall communicate with the Spirit of the Lord,’ and it shall be a thing that there shall be no unclean thing in the human spirit which shall keep that communication back, but rather there shall be that free channel, that free flow of the Spirit, the Spirit of God, and the Spirit of the Body of Christ in this day.”