In Exodus 8, God says, speaking to Pharaoh, He will put a division “between My people and thy people.” There is nothing so precious to God as His people, because they were brought to Him through Christ. God’s searching eye finds satisfaction in His own people seen in Christ. Have you ever thought of God finding satisfaction in you? It is in His own people that the Lord has His portion. Pharaoh is typical of the prince of this world, and God says to him, “I will put a division (or a redemption) between My people and thy people.” The cross of Christ is the basis of this division.
The world lies guilty of crucifying Christ. If God has marked me out as separate to Himself, it is the cross that has done it. What a joy it is to be on the redemption side of the cross? “Peace be to as many as walk according to this rule!” Are we walking according to this rule?
“I bear in my body the marks (brands) of the Lord Jesus.” Paul, as it were, says, “I have paid too great a price to bother with anything less than the Lord Jesus.” How Paul had suffered for loyalty to Christ! We know how he was beaten, scourged, scarred. What a sight his back must have been! He was left at the roadside as they thought dead, at one time, when he had been stoned. Think of the shipwrecks he was in! If we could get before our souls that scene of Calvary as the measure of the cost of our redemption! He was willing to go into darkness for us, that we might ever be in the light. “None of these things move me.” Not because I am a strong Christian, but because I have had a picture of the cross of Christ, and there was the end of these things. God has put a division. Do we bear the marks of the Lord Jesus, not physically so much, these days, but morally? It is a rejected Savior I must follow. The cross is the secret of deliverance from the world. You are, spoiled for the world, and the world is spoiled for you. The cross of Christ will make the waters of this world bitter for you. How blessed to say, like Paul, “I am through with the world.” Lay hold on what is really life, and learn the joy, not the hardship, of living for Christ.