II Corinthians 6:14-16 (NLT)
You
are not the same as those who do not believe. So do not join yourselves to
them. Good and bad do not belong together. Light and darkness cannot share
together. How can Christ and
Belial, the devil, have any agreement? What can a believer have together with a
nonbeliever? The temple of God cannot have any agreement with idols, and we are
the temple of the living God. As God said: "I will live with them and walk
with them. And I will be their God, and they will be my people."
Some years ago I was asked to officiate at
a wedding of a couple when I subsequently learned that one of them was an
unbeliever. Since they were willing to
go through Christian premarital counseling I was hoping that the unbeliever “would
see the light” during these counseling sessions. This did not happen. I had to be faithful to my interpretation of
these verses and so it was mutually agreed that I had to step away. I really liked this couple and felt terrible
about this decision, but, for me, from a Scriptural viewpoint, I had no choice.
This passage speaks clearly that a believer
should not join him/herself to an unbeliever.
This applies not only to marriage, but also in all relationships. Paul contrasts life’s opposites—believers and
unbelievers, good and bad, light and darkness, Christ and the devil, and God and
idols. All these contrasts or opposites
are incompatible. This means that if you
are a Christian you cannot live your life back and forth between these
opposites. What a challenge it is to
live the Christian life and still be part of the world. You cannot/should not escape the world, e.g.
live in a monastery, but you are to keep your life separate from the influence
of the world. For example, the exemplary
Christian does not live a materialistic, greedy lifestyle.
Do these verses mean that you are not to
associate or interact with unbelievers, not have them as co-workers, neighbors,
people you do business with, even friends?
No, to do this would mean living a monastic lifestyle. To fulfill the Great Commission of Christ,
you must be involved in the world and interact with unbelievers. So how do you live your life as a Christian
and follow what Paul is writing here? I
think that James 1:27 gives the best guidance: “Pure and genuine religion in
the sight of God the Father means caring for orphans and widows in their
distress and refusing to let the world corrupt you.” James 1:27 is referred to as the “involvement
and separation principle”. You
stay connected with the world, interact with unbelievers, but you do not let
them corrupt you. You do not follow
their ways.
What about a marriage where one spouse is a
believer and the other is not. Is the
believer to divorce the unbeliever? No,
Paul gives instructions about this situation in I Corinthians 7:12-17 that it
is not right for a believer to divorce an unbeliever.
False teaching was always a problem in the
early church and continues to be a problem today. False teaching is a main tool of the devil to
destroy a Christian, a church. The early
church, especially one located in a city known for its immorality[1],
was especially vulnerable to false teachers.
Paul had to write strong words to fight against false teaching; thus, he
wrote to have nothing to do with sources of evil that included being joined
together with unbelievers. The words
“joined together” come from the Greek word “heterozygeō” that means “unequally
yoked”. This term was used in Leviticus
19:19 to forbid the union of beasts of different kinds, e.g. intercourse
between a donkey and an ox. Thus, a very
strong term Paul used here to strongly urge Christians to avoid union with
unbelievers who were false teachers or influenced by false teachers.
There are two opposing worlds
we face: one world is good, light,
Christ, the presence of God and believers; the other world is bad, darkness,
the devil, idols, and unbelievers. One
world filled with truth, the other filled with lies. You cannot intertwine the two in your
life. You must make a choice and be
faithful with that choice. So, where do
you stand?
[1] to Corinthianize meant to live with drunken
and immoral debauchery—William Barclay, The Letters to the Corinthians,
Westminster Press, 1975, pp. 2-3.
No comments:
Post a Comment