Bi – Do Not be Unequally Yoked with Unbelievers 6:14 to 7:1

Do Not be Unequally Yoked with Unbelievers
6:14 to 7:1

Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers DIG: What arguments did Paul present to convince the Corinthians not to have close partnerships with unbelievers? How are believers to rightfully relate to the unbelieving world? What do dating and marriage have to do with this principle? How can we “strive to be completely holy, out of reverence for God?”

REFLECT: Of the different relationships Paul has in view here, which one(s) apply to you? What does it mean that you are the temple of the living God? What unclean things might affect your body? Your spirit? Is there something contaminating you right now from which you should separate? How can you communicate to others the seriousness of this principle?

Believers and unbelievers live in two opposing worlds.

The principle: Do not be unequally yoked (Greek: heterozugeo) together with unbelievers (6:14a NIV). Actually, the command is even more pointed: Stop yoking yourselfs to unbelievers. Paul was not merely warning the Corinthians about a potential danger, but instructing them to stop an action already in progress. The command appears to come out of the blue. Has Paul not been lobbying strenuously for the Corinthians’ affection? Had he not just asked them, as his children, to open wide their hearts to him (to see link click Bh – The Characteristics of Love)? Moreover, he resumes his lobbying efforts in 7:2: “Make room for us in your hearts,’ he repeats. Then what are we to make of 6:14 to 7:1?¹⁶⁰ It seems that Paul is talking about being yoked together in a permanent arrangement like marriage, a business partnership, and the like. Paul is content to state a general principle that needs specific application under the guidance of the Ruach.

Believers and unbelievers live in two opposing worlds. In Messiah’s Kingdom, believers are characterized by righteousness, light, and eternal life. In Satan’s kingdom, unbelievers are characterized by lawlessness, darkness, and spiritual death. The saved and the unsaved have different affections, beliefs, principles, motives, goals, attitudes, and hopes. In short, they view life from totally opposing perspectives.

Consequently, relationships between believers and unbelievers are at best temporary and external. We must keep a light touch on this world. We may enjoy family ties, work at the same job, share in business relationships, live in the same community, experience the same hobbies and pastimes, and even agree on certain political and social issues. But on a spiritual level, believers and unbelievers are in two completely different worlds. Dating and marriage between a believer and unbeliever would certainly be a legitimate application of this principle.

It should be obvious that believers cannot live in both worlds. The apostle John clearly indicated that when he wrote: Do not love the world or anything in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For everything in the world – the cravings of the natural man, the lust of his eyes and the boasting of what he has and does – comes not from the Father but from the world (1 Jn 2:15-16). James expressed that same reality in the forceful words: You adulterous people, don’t you know that friendship with the world is hatred toward God? Anyone who chooses to be a friend of the world becomes an enemy of God (James 4:4). And Paul urged believers not be conformed to the standards of this world (Rom 12:2).

Dear Heavenly Father, Your awesome love is wonderful! Your love is not a privilege to bask in, but a joyful opportunity to show You how much You are loved. How important it is to realize that Your gift of righteousness (Romans 5:17) cannot be taken for granted. Your offer of love requires a loving response back to You, as You demonstrate by Your words: I never knew you, depart from Me (Matthew 7:23). You speak those words to those who look good outwardly, but their heart does not follow the greatest commandment – love ADONAI your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength (Matthew 22:37-38).

Receiving the righteousness of God (5:21) is so very wonderful! It is a relationship gift; receiving the Ruach as a life partner who lovingly guides and teaches us. Receiving this gift requires a break from old relationships and habits that are displeasing to the new Lord of one’s life. Though it is a great joy to have the Lord constantly by one’s side (Hebrews 13:5), effort is needed to rearrange one’s life to accommodate the new loving Partner.

The Corinthians had struggled greatly to make a clean break from the idolatrous and immoral lifestyle of their past. Despite having professed faith in Messiah and becoming part of the church, some in the congregation were still clinging to elements of their pagan religion. And though, like the Thessalonians, they had turned to God from idols to serve a living and true God (First Thessalonians 1:9), they still failed to make a clean break from their previous lifestyle. The lure of their former paganism, which permeated every aspect of their lives in Corinth, had proven too hard to shake, as First Corinthians makes clear.

Making matters even worse, the false apostles who claimed apostolic authority (see Af – The Problem of the False Apostles), brought with them a quasi-believing syncretism of gospel truth (see the commentary on Romans As – Paul’s Gospel), Jewish legalism and pagan mysticism. They were eager to stay connected to the Corinthians’ former behavior, to make themselves more popular, thereby, more prosperous.

So, Paul gave this mandate to separate.

However, as he did earlier in his discussion about eating a meal at an idol temple, Paul assumed that believers would socialize with their pagan friends and families. Clearly this is not a ban against all association with unbelievers. He encouraged the believing spouse to stay with the unbelieving spouse as long as possible (First Corinthians 7:12-13). He assumed believers would shop in the market (First Corinthians 10:25), and encouraged them to eat at a pagan’s home if they were invited and wanted to go (10:27). But he did want the Corinthians to be able to distinguish themselves from the pagan society around them and live accordingly.

Paul drew his analogy from Deuteronomy 22:10, where the Torah commanded the Israelites, “You are not to plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together” (22:10). One is stronger than the other, and one will work harder and tire very fast. The ox was clean, and the donkey unclean. It would be impossible for such a mismatched pair to plow together effectively. Paul uses this passage in a figurative way: the believer has been cleansed, while the unbeliever refused to be cleansed. What business did they have under the same yoke? You guessed it. None! It will always be the unbeliever’s yoke, namely the yoke of unbelief. Contrary to that, Yeshua said: My yoke of faith is easy and my burden is light (Matthew 11:30). The unbeliever would laugh at the suggestion of his taking on faith’s yoke; yet, strange to say, instead of equally refusing the unbeliever’s yoke, many a believer accepts it upon his neck and even imagines that he can still retain his yoke of faith.

Foolishness.

Paul uses few words to paint this picture; but they speak volumes. They strike at the heart of the whole danger that threatens believers. They drive home a timeless principle. What a picture: a believer with his neck under the unbeliever’s yoke! Why pull the plow of the unbeliever’s lack of faith? That yoke breaks the necks of those who bear it. Yeshua Messiah delivered us from it. How could we possibly think of going back to that dreadful yoke?¹⁶²

The principle of, “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers” (6:14a NIV) is then backed up by five rhetorical questions which underline its importance, each of which assumes a negative answer: “None whatsoever!” They serve to stress the radical incompatibility of intimate relationships between believers and unbelievers (First Corinthians 10:21).

Question one: For what do righteousness and lawlessness have in common (6:14b NIV)? In this first question the inner quality of believers and unbelievers is placed side by side. It is righteousness that determines its opposite, lawlessness, and not the reverse. Paul’s progression is orderly: first faith and unbelief, and now righteousness and its opposite. The righteousness of the believer is that which he has by faith, the imputed righteousness of Messiah (see Bf – Fifteen Words of Hope). Due to Ha’Shem’s verdict of acquittal, this inner quality belongs to the believer. But the unbeliever has no such acquittal, his inner quality is entirely lawless. God hates all who do evil (Psalm 5:5). All the unbeliever’s righteousness are like filthy rags (Isaiah 64:6). Therefore, it is impossible that they have anything in common.

Question two: What fellowship can light have with darkness (6:14c NIV)? From the attributes of righteousness and lawlessness we are taken back to the powers which produce them. Just as lawlessness is the absence of righteousness, darkness is the absence of light. Like their attributes, they exclude each other by their very nature; where one is, it drives out the other. God is light, and there is no darkness in Him at all (First John 1:5). This light has entered the believer and makes him a child of light (Matthew 5:14; John 12:36; Ephesians 5:8), and so the believer walks in the light (John 12:35-36; First John 1:7). Its opposite is darkness which is the fruit of the Adversary, his demons and the world. In the beginning YHVH separated light from darkness (Genesis 1:4), and this separation can also be seen in the spiritual sense. For you used to be darkness; but now, united with the Lord, you are light (Ephesians 5:8). Out of this spiritual darkness, God has called believers into His wonderful light (First Peter 2:9). Light brings life, darkness is death.

Question three: What harmony can there be between the Messiah and Belial (6:15a)? This question advances to the contrasting personal rulers that are behind the qualities and powers. The question is: do these ever agree? No! Messiah has transferred all of His righteousness to our spiritual bank account at the moment of faith (see the commentary on The Life of Christ Bw – What God Does For Us at the Moment of Faith). He has become wisdom for us from God, and righteousness and holiness and redemption as well (First Corinthians 1:30b). As the Messiah, He is our Prophet, High Priest, and King (see the commentary on Hebrews Ai – The Superiority of Messiah to the Prophets). The term Belial is actually a Hebrew word that has been transliterated into Greek and means worthless. In the TaNaKh this term is like son or daughter. In later Jewish writings, the term was used as a proper name for Satan (see the book of Jubilees i.20). Paul used this term in this way.¹⁶³ Messiah came to destroy the works of the Devil; that is His agreement with him.

Question four: What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever (6:15b)? This advances us to the personal subjects involved. The believer is the one who is justified by faith (Romans 3:28), at peace with God (Romans 5:1), and assured of eternal salvation (see the commentary on The Life of Christ Ms – The Eternal Security of the Believer). The light of the Sh’khinah glory of God in the face of Messiah has shined in his heart (4:6); he no longer lives as the pagans live, with their sterile ways of thinking (Ephesians 4:17), but keeps pursuing the goal in order to win the prize offered by God’s high calling in Yeshua Messiah (Philippians 3:14). The unbeliever has the very opposite of this. He has already been judged (John 3:18) and will not see life but remains subject to God’s wrath (John 3:26). He is not included among Messiah’s sheep (John 10:26b), he will not enter God’s rest (Hebrews 3:18-19); indeed, he will be condemned (Mark 16:16) and hurled into the lake of fire (Revelation 20:15). As subjects of their respective lords, what do they have in common? Nothing! These two differ at every point. What one has, the other has not.¹⁶⁴

Question five: We reach the climax in this final question. What agreement can there be between the temple of God and idols (6:16a)? All false religion is, in the final analysis, deceiving spirits and things taught by demons (First Timothy 4:1; Deuteronomy 32:17; Revelation 9:20), and hostile to ADONAI and His Word. There can be no agreement between the temple of God and idols. The TaNaKh graphically depicts the disastrous consequence of attempting to mingle idolatry with the worship of the One true God.

First Kings 12:25-33 illustrates the folly of Jeroboam, the first king of the northern kingdom of Isra’el. He thought to himself, “If these people go up to offer sacrifices at the Temple of ADONAI in Jerusalem, they will give their allegiance to their LORD. After the place of worship from Jerusalem to Dan and Bethel; changed the priests of worship from the Levites to all sorts of people; changed the date of worship of Sukkot from the seventh to the eighth month. This eventually resulted in the fall of the Northern Kingdom in 722 BC.

Second Kings 21:1-9 describes the reign of Manasseh, the most wicked of all the kings of the southern kingdom of Judah. He did evil in the sight of ADONAI by bringing idolatry back into Judah. Specifically, he rebuilt the high places which Hezekiah his father had destroyed; he erected altars for Ba’al and made an Asherah pole, as Ahab king of the northern kingdom of Isra’el had done. He worshiped all the hosts of heaven and served them by building altars in the house of ADONAI. And if that wasn’t bad enough, he put an idol in the Temple itself. That horrible insult to YHVH provoked His devastating judgment on the nation (Second Kings 21:10-15).

First Samuel 4 and 5 record another incident that illustrates the incompatibility of the true God and idols. Isra’el was at war with the Philistines had lost four thousand men in one skirmish. Dismayed at ADONAI’s failure to help them in battle (which was due to their sin and apostasy), the Israelites brought the ark from Shiloh. Thinking themselves invincible, they fought the Philistines again and lost 30,000 men and the ark. The triumphant Philistines brought the ark to the temple of their god Dagon. The next morning, much to their surprise, they discovered that the idol of Dagon had prostrated itself before the ark. They put the idol back in its place, only to have the same thing happen the next day – but this time Dagon’s head and hands were cut off. The message was clear, the true God has no rivals.

Ezekiel 8 further demonstrates that reality. ADONAI took Ezeki’el (who was exiled in Babylon) by means of a vision to Jerusalem to witness idolatry in the Temple. Shockingly, the apostate Israelites had carved idolatrous graffiti on the walls of the Temple. Not only that, but women were worshiping the god of fertility Tammuz, and about twenty-five men were worshiping the sun with their backs to the Most Holy Place. God’s reaction was to promise judgment: Therefore, I will deal with them in My anger; I will not look on them with pity or spare them. Although they cry in My ears, I will not listen to them (Eze 8:18). Rather than share His own Temple with pagan idols, ADONAI chose to abandon it (Eze 10:18). The result was the catastrophic fall of Jerusalem (see the commentary on Jeremiah Gb – The Destruction of Solomon’s Temple on Tisha B’Av in 586 BC). Paul’s fifth rhetorical question provided a transition to his citing several verses from the TaNaKh.

The reason: Paul repeatedly symbolizes both the individual believer (First Cor 6:19) and the Congregation of believers (First Cor 3:16-17; Ephesians 2:22) as the temple of God with the Ruach dwelling within (6:16b). Peter also uses the “living temple” analogy (First Peter 2:5). As we begin to understand the Tabernacle and Temple as the dwelling place of YHVH, we can see how apt this metaphor was to describe the believers. Just as the Ruach dwelt in the Tabernacle and Temple, so too His Spirit had come to dwell in believers.

Understanding this, we can better appreciate the significance of the First Century Shavu’ot. On the anniversary of the day on which ADONAI had entered into a covenant with Isra’el at Sinai, the believers gathered together in the Temple, the Dwelling Place of God. There, in the Temple courts, the Spirit of God descended just as at Sinai and came upon individuals. The believers became dwelling places, little tabernacles inside of the Temple itself. This is a good picture of the People of God. We are temples within the Temple, members of His Body.¹⁶⁵

Having reminded the Corinthians that they were temples of the living God, Paul introduces an extended quotation from Scripture to substantiate what he has said. Although the quotation consists of several texts from the TaNaKh, Paul introduces it as if it were a single quotation, without identifying the specific verses in which it was found.¹⁶⁶ These passages bear every sign of having been chosen to address specific dangers of idolatry that lie at the heart of Paul’s distress with the Corinthians and the cause of much of their conflict.¹⁶⁷ As God said: I will house Myself in them, . . . and I will walk among you. I will be their God, and they will be My people (Second Corinthians 6:16c; Leviticus 26:12; Exodus 6:7; Jeremiah 31:33, 32:38; Ezeki’el 37:27). As the temple of God, the people of His B’rit Chadashah, His precious possession, and His dwelling place, believers cannot join forces with false religion. To be so unequally yoked for the purpose of serving God has always been unacceptable and blasphemous.¹⁶⁸

The result: On the foundation thus laid, Paul makes his appeal. But in a most striking manner he clothes it in words from the TaNaKh as though God Himself is addressing His readers.¹⁶⁹ Therefore, ADONAI says: Go out from their midst; separate yourselves. Just as it was inconceivable that idols would be brought into the Temple of God (see Question five above), so it is impossible for the temples of God, members of the holy congregation (First Corinthians 1:2) to go to, or share in the cultic worship of idols in Corinth (First Corinthians 10:14-22 and 8:10-13), idolatry (First Corinthians 5:10-11, 6:9, 12:2; Galatians 4:8, 5:20; Colossians 3:5; First Thessalonians 1:9), or the fornication – either casual or cultic – with which it was often associated (First Corinthians 10:7-8, 6:15 and 18), were utterly abhorrent to both God and Paul; believers were to have no direct association with them.¹⁷⁰

The thought of this verse points back to Isaiah 52:11, where God commanded His people, “Don’t even touch (Greek: hapto, referring to a harmful touch) what is unclean” (6:17a). Believers, like the time of Isra’el’s national salvation (see the commentary on Isaiah Ix – ADONAI Will Lay Bare His Holy Arm), must make a clean break with all false religion to avoid its contaminating influence (Second Timothy 2:16-17). The children of light must not have anything to do with the deeds produced by darkness. They must be concerned with pleasing the Lord, not sinful mankind (Ephesians 5:5-11). The Church’s goal is not to make unbelievers feel comfortable and non threatened. On the contrary, it is to make them feel uncomfortable with their sins and threatened by God’s judgment and the terrors of hell that they face.¹⁷¹ Yeshua Himself said: Do not fear those who kill the body but are powerless to kill the soul. Rather, fear the One who can destroy both body and soul in Gei-Hinnom (Matthew 10:28).

Then I Myself will receive you, which is based on God’s Word given to the people in exile through another prophet in exile, Ezeki’el (Ezeki’el 20:34 and 41). Through Ezeki’el, ADONAI promised to welcome home and receive His people from the Gentile nations in which they were dispersed. Through the words of the apostle Paul – who is citing Ezeki’el – ADONAI is calling His people out of the cultic uncleanness of the Gentiles. He promises to receive them as they come out.¹⁷² Not only that, God declares: I will be your Father, and you will be my sons and daughters, says ADONAI-Tzva’ot” (Second Corinthians 6:17b-18; Second Samuel 7:14, Isaiah 43:6). As believers, we are adopted into the family of God (Galatians 4:1-7 and 6:10; Ephesians 1:5; First Peter 1:23 and 4:17; First John 3:9).

Paul now concludes the appeal he began in 6:14. Therefore, my dear friends, since we have these promises, let us purify ourselves. The promises refer to God’s assurances of His presence (6:16) and fellowship (6:17b-18) to those who obey Him. This obedience requires purification, which here implies separation from everything that can defile either body or spirit, and from every person who pollutes the truth (2:17 and 4:2). Paul encouraged the Corinthians to strive to be completely holy, out of reverence for God.¹⁷³ In the whole letter we find what 7:1 again reveals. Paul joins the Corinthians to himself, “Let us purify ourselves.” He does not pose as a saint who rebukes them because they are unclean. But like all great leaders, he won them over by doing himself what he asks them to do. Leading, as it were, by example. The hearts of the Corinthians must have been stirred when they read those words.