"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. Mark 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 is this state of things occasioned? "The Lord
divided the light from the darkness." 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: a conflict which will never
cease till the believer is altogether light in the Lord.

If there be a division within the individual Christian, there is
certain to be a division without. 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 ceremonial, for
nothing short of the gospel of Christ will now satisfy him, and he
withdraws himself from worldly society 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.

What God has divided, let us never try to unite, but as Christ went
without the camp, bearing his reproach, 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
the world, dissenting from all sin, and distinguished from the rest of
mankind by our likeness to our Master.

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