2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1 English Standard Version The Temple of the Living God 14 Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? 15 What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. 17 Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, 18 and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.” 7 Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God. Some wonderful verses here as Paul is going to come back to the imagery of the Church collectively and the believer individually being the dwelling place for the Holy Spirit. In fact, we have already used "tent" and "Tabernacle" language recently in 2 Corinthians, as we've discussed how this dwelling place is "temporary," but God is preparing a permanent dwelling place for us--the Heavenly Temple. of The New Heaven and The New Earth that we see in the book of Ezekiel, the book of Revelation.
Let's not miss the very first verse of this passage though. After Paul covers the part that seems reminiscent of Joshua's "Choose you this day whom you will serve" charge, Paul says that choice is going to require us no longer be unequally yoked to unbelievers. Since most of us aren't from an agrarian background, and those that are probably use farm machinery now, plows used to be pulled by teams of animals (often oxen) and it was important that the two oxen be of equal strength and stride and be able to keep in step with one another, because if one oxen was a little stronger or faster or had a longer stride than the other and they were yoked together, then they would naturally turn towards the one who was weaker, slower, or had a shorter stride. This is the way it is with us. We will always be forced to turn back towards the world when we get unequally yoked with them--we are never going to turn them towards us. The furrow was no good to the farmer if it was not straight as he needed to be able to plant rows of crops, and it was more effort to keep making corrections to straighten the team out than it would have been to just do the job with one or the other, but not both. This is a command that has to do with any kind of covenantal relationship. It's not just about marriage (what we normally associate this passage with, though that's not the context here...remember the context was about being ambassadors of the new kingdom they belong to). This is about the idea of trying to have "joint citizenship" and have one foot in each kingdom--that's not going to work and is never appropriate for an ambassador to have a divided heart and divided loyalties. Paul has already dealt with the issue of marriage between saved and unsaved people in 1 Corinthians. For those that missed it, if the person is saved before marriage they should never look to marry someone who isn't saved and if they were unsaved before engagement and become saved sometime between engagement and the wedding, they should call off the wedding. If however one of them gets saved after the marriage, it is the choice of the unsaved spouse if they want to continue in the marriage knowing that their saved spouse is a new person and is no longer the person they married. The saved spouse is never supposed to be the one to initiate divorce--never. The saved spouse should stay in the relationship with the hopes that the unsaved spouse and any children they may have may come to salvation by the witness of their actions and not only their words. So then, what other relationships could Paul be talking about here if he's not telling the Christians to divorce their unsaved spouses? Well, I think he's probably talking mostly about the marketplace of both business and philosophy, both of which were strong in Corinth. It certainly does cover issues of sexual purity as well as we talked about in 1 Corinthians for the man or woman who is not married, but also about choosing business partners, who you contract to work for in business, and who you choose to follow after as a disciple of their teaching--maybe even in an innocent manner for entertainment purposes. The things we fill our minds with very much affect our ability to live out our lives as ambassadors for the King and the Kingdom. In fact, that's a great hinge-point to take us to the main part of this passage which is to again remind us that we are the temple of the Holy Spirit. This time though it doesn't appear that Paul's command is to honor God with your bodies and to not give your "members" of your body over to the flesh like was his command in 1 Corinthians, but instead this seems to be a passage about loving the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. 100% of us must be given to God, and we can not have any part of us continuing to be loyal to the idolatrous system of the world and its vain philosophies and deceits. Paul quotes from several Old Testament passages here as if they were but one passage (remember the Holy Spirit wrote all of it and inspired the New Testament authors in a way that allowed them to connect all the dots and bring a lot of the "pieces" together into focus as a single message). As Paul seems to quote from Leviticus and Exodus, two books we covered recently, and some others that we haven't studied yet like the prophets Isaiah, Ezekiel and Zephaniah, we see God's command to us as the Church is the same call He's been giving to His people, the people of Israel, all along. Be holy because God wants to live in our midst and be our God and wants us to be His people. This requires us to live lives that are holy and separate from the people in the world around us. We are called to be a different kind of people--a royal priesthood. A remnant that the LORD has redeemed with the price of the blood of the Lamb and has taken out of slavery as we crossed from the kingdom of darkness, Egypt, to be citizens of a new kingdom through an act that was as miraculous as what happened at the Red Sea and as we still "pass through the waters" of baptism to this day to symbolize that experience. We are currently sojourners without a permanent home much like the people wandering in the wilderness for 40 years, but like them we have every provision met for us by our God and are led by Him ever step of the way. The miraculous and extraordinary may actually stat to seem commonplace and ordinary to us (let's pray that we never cease to see God's provision for the miracle that it is), but all the nations around us see these miracles and are in awe and tremble at the power of the LORD our God. Through the gospel that was at work even in those times past in Genesis and Exodus, we know that God was about taking His people and calling them to be sons and daughters. We are not merely servants, but friends and children of King. We can boldly approach the throne of grace as we call out "Daddy" to One who is God of the Universe, and we can call Christ our Brother. We have gained "favored" status as becoming His children by adoption because He chose us, even when we were in our state of being least desirable. I left the story of the Israelites and the Church at the point of wandering in the wilderness on purpose for it was in this place that we saw who had genuine faith and who did not. It was at this place where the people decided if they were going to be yoked to gods of Egypt and Canaan, or if they were going to belong fully to God and were going to accept the new identity that He gave them. Most of the people that escaped physical slavery in Egypt continued to live in spiritual bondage to their sin and their flesh and they were not allowed to enter the Promised Land that represents heaven, but God was gracious and made a provision for the blessings that were meant for that first generation to be passed along to their children if their children would become the covenant people that He had called them to be. Even the second generation failed to keep their end of the covenant (none of us would be able to keep the Law perfectly), but God was good and kept His part of the covenant anyways for the sake of the promise that He made to Abraham--namely that there would a descendant that would come through Abraham so that through Abraham, all the nations of the world would be blessed. We know that today to be fulfilled in Jesus' atonement that He made for all peoples of all nations on the cross. He died not only for the Jew but also for the Gentile. There is now no longer such distinctions when it comes to God's family. All of us are called to live the same kind of holy life, to be the royal priesthood He has called us out of the nations to be, and to be ambassadors for the King of Kings and Lord of Lords. We are no longer to walk and stumble in the darkness because we are now children of the Light. We are walk in the Light as He is in the Light. If we say we are in the Light and continue to walk in darkness, we are liars and the Truth of God is not in us. (1 John, especially chapter 1) So then, I think we have a better idea what Paul means now when he says to not be "unequally yoked" with unbelievers. We as the Church are being called to live holy and separate lives exactly like the people of Israel were, though not in a monastic way where we physically separate ourselves from the nations, but to live as citizens of a different kingdom and as ambassadors of that kingdom as we live in the world, but are not of the world. By this, we hope that all nations of the world will see and hear the gospel as they see our lives and hear our words and our praises and that all men will be without excuse, not only because of seeing God's original design and creation, but seeing the power of His recreation as He makes all things new within us.
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Daniel WestfallI will mostly use this space for recording my "journal" from my daily devotions as I hope to encourage others to read the Bible along with me and to leave a legacy for others. Archives
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