Go to him outside the gates

AS CHRIST SUFFERED OUTSIDE THE CAMP,

LET US NOT BE ASHAMED TO SUFFER THERE, TOO.

I do not think much of the religion of that man who is not put outside the, camp. If you can dwell with the wicked. If

you can live as they live and be, “hail-fellow well met,” with the ungodly. If their practices are your practices. If their

pleasures are your pleasures, then their god is your god and you are one of them! There is no being a Christian except

being shut out of the world’s camp! I can scarcely conceive it possible for any man to be a true saint, a holy man, one who

is set apart unto God and sanctified in Christ Jesus, unless he is reproached while on earth for being too strict, too Puritan,

or perhaps, sometimes, too melancholy. There must be a grave distinction between a Christian and a man of the

world—and where there is no such distinction, or only a slight one—there is most solemn cause for suspicion that all is

not right! When I see a man dress like worldlings. When I hear him talk like worldlings. When I know that all his outward

carriage is just like a worldly man’s. When I can detect no difference. When I see no mark of the Lord Jesus upon

him. When I can hear no “shibboleth” in his speech, whereby he is to be detected from a sibboleth-speaking world. When

I discover no distinction between him and others, then this I know, “God is not mocked.” That man is in the flesh and he

shall, “of the flesh reap corruption.”

No, I will go further still! In this age I can scarcely imagine it possible for a man to serve his Master faithfully unless

he is sometimes shut out of the camp, even of the Church itself! I do not mean excommunicated—I mean something far

different from that. I mean that the man who serves his God aright will often feel himself left in the minority, even in the

Church. It is never his business to so act and to so think that others are obliged to differ from him. It is folly to be singular

except where to be singular is to be right! But so lax has the professing Church become, so low in its doctrine, so light

in its experience and, sometimes, so unholy in its life, that to be Christians, now, we must be elect out of the elect—elect

out of the Church as well as elect out of the world! What pride, on the one hand. What sloth, on the other. What anger,

what distrust, what covetousness, what worldly-mindedness we constantly see! The most of us are too much mingled with

the world, too much joined unto Egypt! And the man who is firm in the faith and loves his Master well is a rarity! The

man of a loving spirit, the man of a large heart and yet of a determined zeal, and of a steadfast mind—such a man will

have to go outside the camp—and he will have to suffer, now, even as all have had to suffer who have dared to go into

the front of the sacramental host of God’s elect, in advance of the more tardy followers of the Lamb! If any minister of

Christ dares to be too bold, too plain, too honest for the common run of professors, he must expect to be maligned! Let

him reckon on that and let him willingly go forth outside the camp, for that is where his Master went before him!

If I turn to the pages of history to find out the best men who ever lived, do you know where I find them? I never find

them among those who were called, “respectable,” in their time. There, in the pages of history, I see great names—

Erasmus and others, mighty and learned men—but, on a dirty-thumbed page, I see the name of Luther associated with

such epithets as, “dog, adulterer, beast,” and everything else that Rome’s malice could suggest! And I say, “Ah, this is

the man whom God chose, for he went outside the camp!” That list of great divines, of schoolmen and of theologians you

may wipe out without much regret—but this man outside the camp—he is somebody, depend upon it! He is the man

whom God has blessed!

So you may go on as long as you like and you shall always find that those “intruders into the ministry,” as some call

them, those that the parliament of parsons dislikes, those that the great mass reject and laugh and scoff at—those are the

very men whom God blesses! So, if you go outside the camp, you will be in very good company. The great and holy men

of years gone by have all been put outside the camp. If an ungodly throng have thrust out our fathers and have said, “Get

you gone, we want you not,” it is true—their children build their sepulchers and then they thrust us out. What if it is so?

We are content to share the lot of so goodly a parentage! We think it a high honor to be thrust out of these gates whose

only glory is that good men once passed through them, and whose great disgrace is that good men pass through them the

wrong way—not into them, but out of them! So, Beloved, be you content to be cast outside the camp.

But mark, going outside the camp in itself is nothing—it is suffering outside the camp that is the great thing. Making

myself different from everybody else is nothing—it is suffering for the Truth of God’s sake that is the truly noble

thing! It is being crucified with Christ that is honorable! It is not my being a Sectarian or a Separatist. It is not your going

outside the camp that is any good—it is your suffering outside the camp that proves you to be a Believer. O Christians,

if you have to do the same, rejoice!