(As part of a series entitled “Out of the Skillet and Into the Fire”)

John 17:16
“They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.”

Last time, we discussed the statement from 2 Corinthians 6:17 about being a separate people and how this separate means different. Christians are in the world but not of the world, so we are set apart in that we do not follow our own path but rather the path of our Savior. A Savior who purchased our sins and gave His Righteousness to us. (See Jerimiah 23:6) He had to do this because of our inability to keep God’s Law. Our sin nature made it impossible for us to make atonement for our failures. (See Romans 3:23, Isaiah 64:6) So, God, by Himself, in order to satisfy His own sense of Righteousness, prepared a body of His own, so God Himself could do what no one else could. (see Hebrews 10 again AND Revelation 5) Jesus gave Himself as the perfect sacrifice for sin, then gave His own Righteousness to whosoever wanted healed of sin. Isaiah the prophet saw it all just like he was there and revealed God’s plan over 700 years before Christ came.

Isaiah 53:1-6
1 Who hath believed our report? and to whom is the arm of the LORD revealed?
2 For he shall grow up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of a dry ground: he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we shall see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.
3 He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not.
4 Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted.
5 But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed.
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.

Many theologians call The Book of Isaiah the 5th Gospel, because he so clearly prophesied much of what Jesus would do for sinners. So, we are to follow His path, because we love Jesus, because He loved us first, while we were yet in our sins. (Romans 5:8, 1 John 1:4).

All this leads us back to the original question proposed 4-weeks ago, after we concluded “Jesus Friend of Sinners”, which was:
If Jesus was a “friend of publicans and sinners”, shouldn’t we also do the same?
We outlined two choices Yes and No. We then listed two reasons (excuses really) for saying No. We have spent the last four weeks exploring reason/excuse # 2 for answering No and why it is not a valid reason. Now, I want to look at reason #1 for answering NO.

Here is reason # 1 again:
1.) “Yeah, but that was Jesus, befriending those sinners, I mean after all, He is God and I am not. I had better be careful, I might be tempted and fall back into sin.”

It is very True, we might be tempted to fall back into sin. Like I said about reason #2, it is time to hear the recording being played backwards, cause we ain’t finished yet. It is time we FINALLY looked at the context of our theme verse from John 17:16
They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world.

And we will get right to the context of John 17:16, first thing NEXT WEEK.