The command here is to flee from the wicked world. Live in the world but be not of the world. Avoid the world’s contaminating influences (for example, many of Hollywood’s movies, books and magazines and Internet sites that specialize in pornographic materials that degrade and destroy moral and spiritual character)—“touch not that which is unclean.” “Go ye out of the midst of her; be ye clean that bear the vessels of the Lord.”
Handling any of the instruments in a hospital, a nurse must first wash and sterilize her hands. The tools she handles are for the vital operations of healing. If a nurse gets washed just to “bear the vessels” or instruments of a doctor, how much more sterilizing does one need for handling the things of the Lord? Our society expects certain standards of physical cleanliness and spends great sums of energy and money to achieve them, but the expectation of moral cleanliness and insistence on it seem to be lacking. Those who bear the vessels of the Lord can and must be a light to the world. That is the whole point of being a covenant people, chosen to show others how to be clean in a filthy world.