“Let Us Go Forth Unto Him"

(This was one of the last articles our esteemed brother wrote)
TWO contrasting circumstances are indicated in this exhortation.  The first is separation, the second is attraction.  It is the drawing character and power of Christ that inspires the act of turning our back upon all that is contrary to Him.  He suffered for us "without the gate".  To realise this and all it meant for Him, leads to a wholehearted separation from all that is inconsistent with His mind and will.
To go forth to Him is to go "outside the camp".  This has a far wider significance than abstention from mere Judaistic observances. Truly it means abstention from all that substitutes outward legal observances and ritual for that which is ministered by the Holy Spirit, but more than this is involved in going forth to Him.  In one aspect, the camp consists of every, form of religion systematized and arranged by the traditions of men, the result of denominational departure from the teachings of the Word of God.  As Judaism established its own religion as a substitute for what God has prescribed in His Word, Christendom has become a sphere in which human tradition, ecclesiastical and otherwise, has replaced the instructions and principles of the New Testament by teaching and practices adopted by religious leaders. Everything of that sort is represented by "the camp".
To come out from it all and go forth to Christ has meant and still means reproach; but it is "His reproach" and it is the privilege and joy of the true follower of Christ to bear it for His sake and in identification with Him.
In the wider sense of the exhortation, we are called upon to be separate from every thing that would corrupt our minds "from the simplicity and the purity that is toward Christ" (2 Cor. 11. 3, R.V).  Simplicity means singleness of mind; that singleness by which "we make it our aim . . . to be well-pleasing unto Him" (2 Cor. 5. 9).
The Cross of Christ was "outside the camp".  During the days of His flesh, He had borne a faithful witness against both religious and moral departure from God.  His testimony, by life and lip, brought Him reproach and bitter hatred, and at length, He turned His back upon it all, giving Himself up voluntarily to go forth "outside the gate”, to endure the Cross.  All was in undeviating devotion to the Father.  "For Thy sake," He says, " I have borne reproach."
When we remember that all this was on our behalf, not only to deliver us from eternal doom, but that He might ‘sanctify us with His own blood’, how can we refrain from going forth "unto Him"? His very sanctifying grace, making us His own, and separating us unto Himself, is enough to inspire us with the utmost devotion to Him.  It is easy to avoid reproach.  Demas avoided it, loving this present world.  It meant his eternal and unutterable loss hereafter.
We have a triple foe against our highest interests of loyalty to Christ—the world, the flesh, and the Devil.  To go forth to Him means victory over the world in all its aspects.  It enables the true believer to say, "The world hath been crucified unto me, and I unto the world", and to realise the fact that "they that are of Christ Jesus (those who not only belong to Him, but partake of His mind, His character, His will) have crucified the flesh with the passions and the lusts thereof" (Gal. 5. 24).
Let us then awaken to a fuller response to His attracting power, to a deeper apprehension of our indebtedness to Him, and to a more loyal identification with Him "outside the camp".  For "here we have no abiding city, but we seek after the city which is to come."
“The Believer’s Magazine” 1950