Unequally Yoked

Introduction

We continue in our current series answering another question that has been submitted by one of you. I was thumbing through the questions we have, trying to discern where I should go this week, and as I read through all of them, I began to see that there were a number of questions that differed from each other in the details, but all revolved in one way or another around a similar principle.

And so I decided I’d be a little different this week and, rather than answering one specific question, I’d instead develop a principle that can touch on a number of questions that you all have asked, as well as issues that I think we need to talk about but that haven’t been asked.

The question of the believer’s involvement and relationship with unbelievers is always an interesting and often a complex issue. On the one hand, there’s a lot that believers and unbelievers share in common. We all live on this earth together—we see the same things, breathe the same air, eat the same food. We go to work, have families, listen to music, enjoy a good meal, laugh, cry, play, work. We all live life. From a Christian worldview, we’d say that’s because we’re all created in God’s image.

And yet, on the other hand, the chasm between the believer and the unbeliever could not be more extreme. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 6:9-11, “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: neither the sexually immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor men who practice homosexuality, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you. But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God.” Whatever we were before Christ, something radical has occurred. We are no longer the person we used to be. Our old lives, with their desires, thoughts, and affections, have been nailed to the cross. We have new affections, new beliefs, new principles, new motives, no goals, new attitudes, and new hopes.

That means, then, that any common ground we have with unbelievers is temporal and external. We interact with non-Christians, most of us do, every day. And whether at work, or in personal relationships, or socially, politically, and religiously, Christians are going to have to think carefully about how they relate to and interact with unbelievers.

· Is it okay to have friendships with unbelievers? And if yes, at what level of intimacy is appropriate?

· What about marrying an unbeliever? What about if I’m already married to one?

· What about the unbelievers at my job, or the people whom I serve while doing my job?

· Can I work for an unbelieving boss?

· Can I partner in humanitarian service with unbeliever?

All these are real-world questions that flow out of the dichotomy that exists between believers and unbelievers. And I want to give us some direction on these by taking us to a passage that offers us a principle that we can use to navigate what are some very important questions. So turn with me to 2 Corinthians 6:14.

The Command (6:14a)

The principle, in a nutshell, as expressed by Paul, is this: “Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers.” That is the principle. And it’s my goal this morning to unpack what that means and how it can help us answer these questions.

The statement is a command—“Do not be heterozugeo—“differently yoked.” It pictures one who is attempting to place two different animals under the same yoke in order to, we assume, plough a field or pull a cart, or something. It’s a word used only one time in the NT, but it’s a principle that’s based on an OT law found in Deuteronomy 22:10.

This law, in short, forbids Israel from ploughing a field with two different kinds of animals. But the point of the law was greater than that. It actually served an everyday illustration to remind Israel that some things do not go together—different animals under a yoke, different seeds in a field, different materials in a garment, and two people who commit adultery. The law is actually an illustration of the impurity of adultery.

And that is the principle Paul is getting at: Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. The implication of that statement is that the yoking together into common partnership and fellowship introduces impurity into the church. But where is this coming from? Why is Paul writing this?

Context

Of all the letters penned by the apostle Paul, none reveals his pastoral heart more than 2 Corinthians. It really represents the culmination of a long history of ministry he had with a group of Christians who managed to bring him great joy and then turn around and tear out his heart.

Paul had founded the Corinthian church. And he wrote no less than four letters to this church, although only two of them have survived. But once you begin to read through these letters, it doesn’t take long to surmise that this was a church with serious problems. In fact, even before the letter we know as 1 Corinthians, Paul had already written a letter to the church, which they thoroughly misunderstood. When Paul learned of their misunderstanding as well as other problems that had developed—he wrote to them the letter we know as 1 Corinthians.

He had hoped that this correspondence would settle these matters, but when he learned that things were still not right, he visited the church personally—a visit he refers to in 2 Corinthians 2 as the “painful visit.” There, a man from the Corinthian assembly opposed Paul publicly, and no one in the church rose up to support Paul. He left Corinth heartbroken, and wrote a third letter—“the severe letter” as it’s called—a letter he toiled over because it was essentially a disciplinary letter to the church.

Anxiously, he waited to hear news as to how the church had responded. Finally, he found Titus, who bore the good news that the church was doing well and had responded well to the letter. But there was another problem—a group had come into the church, and they called themselves apostles, and they were turning the church against him. They accused Paul of peddling a corrupted gospel, of being a liar, of being in the ministry for money, of being weak and ineffective as a communicator. And the church had begun to withdraw their affections from him in support of these false apostles.

And so he wrote them a fourth letter—2 Corinthians—a letter that is, in essence, a defense of Paul’s entire apostolic ministry. It is a window through into the heart of a pastor who deeply loved a church who had brought him so much pain. Just a glance at the verses that flank our passage gives us a taste of Paul’s love and heartache over them: We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians; our heart is wide open. You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted in your own affections. In return (I speak as to children) widen your hearts also (6:11-12). And again in 7:2—Make room in your hearts for us. We have wronged no one, we have corrupted no one, we have taken advantage of no one. I do not say this to condemn you, for I said before that you are in our hearts, to die together and to live together.

Paul loved this church. And it was out of that love that he called the church to reexamine their affections—not just for him, but for the God he served—the God who had saved them and washed them, and justified them in Christ. They had lost that affection, because they had joined themselves into fellowship and ministry with unbelievers. They had become unequally yoked.

PROPOSITION

And that is really the overarching message of the passage before us. It is a call to reorient our affections, to reestablish our loyalties, and to redirect our life and ministries back to Christ and back to the church.

Paul gives us two reasons for it, and we’ll unpack these, and then see how they help us answer the questions before us.

1. Because true fellowship is impossible (6:14b-16a)

The first reason for this command is because true fellowship with unbelievers is impossible. In fact, the rhetoric Paul uses here is so stark, it’s almost better to say it’s irrational—that is, it doesn’t make sense! And he drives this point home with five staccato statements of contrast.

For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols?

Righteousness and Lawlessness

The way Paul has put this together makes the contrast perfectly clear. Can righteousness and lawlessness form a partnership? Partnership refers to building a union or joining forces together. And the obvious answer is, “NO!” Righteousness and lawlessness defy each other. “Everyone who makes a practice of sinning also practices lawlessness; sin is lawlessness” (1 John 3:4). But for the believer, John says, “No one born of God makes a practice of sinning…he cannot keep on sinning” (3:9). Lawlessness was part of the Christian’s past, but he’s been set free from it—“redeemed us from all lawlessness” (Tit 2:14).

Light and Darkness

The contrast gets more extreme when we contemplate the concepts of light and darkness—terms that have come to symbolize key spiritual truths—knowledge, and holiness, and blessedness on the one hand, and error, and sin and misery on the other. And the question posed is this: can the two have fellowship? That’s the word koinonia—shared life. What shared life? Christians were once citizens of the domain of darkness—once lost in the darkness. But we’ve been rescued out of darkness. We’ve been transferred to the kingdom of light!

Unbelievers are still in the darkness. They love the darkness (John 3:19). They’re hearts are darkened, and they can’t see or comprehend spiritual truth. There’s no fellowship there.

Christ and Belial

A third contrast—what accord has Christ with Belial? The term Belial originally meant “worthless,” but became used as an epithet for Satan himself—the utterly worthless one. And the question is—can there be accordbetween them? The word is sumphonasis—where we get the word “symphony.” It’s the idea of harmony—of two voices complementing in harmonious expression, as two musical lines together. Is that possible—Christ and Satan in harmony?

Believers and Unbelievers

By the time we get to this fourth contrast, the point has been well made. What portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? In other words, what do the two have in common? One focuses on Christ, the other on self. One values the world to come, the other the world that’s here. One treasures heaven, the other treasures earthly things. One seeks the glory of Christ, the other seeks the glory of men. The two share nothing spiritual in common.

Charles Hodge sums up these contrasts well:

It is taken for granted that faith changes the whole character; that it makes a man move in an entirely different sphere, having different feelings, objects, and principles from those of unbelievers; so that intimate union, communion or sympathy between believers and unbelievers is as impossible as fellowship between light and darkness, Christ and Belial. And it must be so. They may indeed have many things in common; a common country, common kindred, common worldly avocations, common natural affections, but the interior life is entirely different; not only incongruous, but essentially opposed the one to the other. To the one, Christ is God, the object of supreme reverence and love; to the other, he is a mere man. To the one, the great object of life is to promote the glory of Christ and to secure his favour; to the other, these are objects of indifference. Elements so discordant can never be united into a harmonious whole (545).

2. Because we belong to God (6:16-18)

There’s another reason Paul gives: because we belong to God. And to make his point, he offers one final contrast that’s more of a transition than anything: What agreement has the temple of God with idols? The temple was the place where God was worshipped. It was a structure devoid of images, icons, statues. It was the last place where one would think to find an idol. In fact, the grossest form of treachery in the OT was to introduce idolatry into the temple.

But in this case, Paul really wasn’t talking about the OT temple. That was just a backdrop for his real point. His real point was that we are the temple of the living God! Believers—both individually and corporately. We are God’s temple. How are we a temple? “Built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone, in whom the whole structure, being joined together, grows into a holy temple in the Lord. In him you are also being built together into a dwelling place for God by the Spirit” (Eph 2:20-22).

We are a temple because God lives in us. And because of that, as Peter puts it in 1 Peter 2:4, we each become priests offering worship to God: “As you come to him, a living stone rejected by men but in the sight of God chosen and precious, you yourselves like living stones are being built up as a spiritual house, to be a holy priesthood, to offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

It wasn’t always like this. In the OT, under the old covenant, the temple not only was the place where God dwelt and was worshipped by Israel, it was also a structure that reminded them that they did not have direct access to him. But it anticipated something—it anticipated something that God was going to do under a new and better covenant. He was going to make a temple where believers would have direct access to God at all times.

And Paul makes that point by citing a number of OT passages that talk about exactly what he is telling the Corinthians. 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.” That’s a loose quotation from Leviticus 26:11-12. The point is that, whether under the old covenant or the new covenant, God purposed to dwell among his people, and they would belong to him and he to them. They would have a unique relationship as his people.

And because of that, there was a need for purity. And so he cites two more OT passages, Isaiah 52:11, and Ezekiel 20:41, where the prophets are speaking to the exiles, calling them to return home from captivity in Babylon. And he says, “Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you.” This is the logical implication of being the people of God—if God dwells among you, then you must keep the temple pure. And since you ARE the temple, it means you must keep yourself from becoming contaminated by the world.

Think about it. Wherever you go—everywhere you go—you bring the temple of God with you, because God lives in you. Isn’t that an astounding thought? Isn’t that a terrifying thought? That means that when you sin, it’s like being an Israelite and walking into the temple and sinning right in front of the Holy of Holies. Nadab and Abihu tried that and they got burnt to a crisp! It was a dangerous business, being a priest in the temple. I don’t know how Aaron slept at night!

Paul quotes one more passage—an adaptation of 2 Samuel 7:14, as another expression of God’s intimate relationship to us not only as God but as father—“and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, saying the Lord Almighty.”

All of these passages unite together to make one basic point—you are not your own! You are God’s temple in whom God dwells and moves. You belong to God and he belongs to you. You are called out of the world into holiness as his royal priests.

All that circles back to the command God made at the beginning of the passage: do not be differently yoked with unbelievers. Why? Because it’s irrational—impossible. And because you’re his temple, and doing that would be like introducing idols into the temple. It would be like the priests contaminating themselves and then going in to offer sacrifices.

Application

The question before us, then, is this: what does this mean for us as far as our relationship with unbelievers? I think we know what Paul intended the Corinthians to do—he wanted them to withdraw from the false apostles and reaffirm their affections for him. But the implications of this text go way beyond that. It’s not just the blatant false teachers that we’re talking about.

Because if we really are God’s temple corporately and individually, then, we’re talking about any kind of relationship that introduces spiritual impurity into God’s temple.

Friendship

So what about friendships with unbelievers? Do we gather from this passage that we are to withdraw all contact with unbelievers in order to maintain spiritual purity? I think you know the answer to that question. Not only would that be disobedience to our mandate to evangelize the lost, but it would be an absurdity to think we could ever accomplish it. Even Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 5:9-10, “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters, since then you would need to go out of this world.”

You cannot avoid unbelievers. You cannot put yourself in a Christian bubble and become a spiritual monk. That’s a temptation for some of us, especially those who have kids, and while I certainly understand the desire to protect my kids from immoral influences, I think it’s important at the same time that my kids see that not everyone is a Christian, and that mommy and daddy love unbelievers and have relationships with unbelievers, and we want them to come to know Jesus.

I believe that true friendships between believers and unbelievers are possible and acceptable. In fact, I think friendship evangelism is the most organic form of gospel work a person can do. But there’s a caveat. You have to maintain a biblical worldview. You have to remember you and your unbelieving friend live in two completely different worlds. You have different affections, beliefs, principles, goals, attitudes, hopes. You live in different worlds, and you have to understand that you, as a Christian, CANNOT live in both worlds. If you try to, you have just stepped over the line and put the yoke around your neck.

“Bad company corrupts good morals,” Paul writes (1 Cor 15:33), and you have to recognize that friendship with unbelievers carries the risk of ungodly influence.

But there’s another aspect to this question that I want to address briefly as well. I’ve heard some Christians say and have written that they actually prefer to spend time with unbelievers. Often, the onus for this is placed on the church itself. Unbelievers are nicer and care about me more than my own church family.

And there may be some truth to this—churches struggle with the same kinds of issues as any gathering of fallen human beings—selfishness, pride, anger, pettiness, cliquishness. They are found in all churches, including ours. But there is something profoundly incongruous with a Christian who finds more fulfillment, more satisfaction, more love, more intimacy, more unity, more harmony, with the people of the world than with the people of God. And I worry about the Christian who spends more time in intimacy with non-Christians than with Christians.

I would even say that I’m not sure they really understand what true Christian fellowship is. You go back and look at those five contrast statements in our passage, and not only do they tell you how different believers are from unbelievers, but they also tell you something about the relationship that Christians have with each other. What do we have together? Partnership; fellowship; accord; commonality; agreement.

I was struck by the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer this week as he discussed Christian fellowship, because he really digs down to the core of what fellowship is. He writes,

Christian community means community through and in Jesus Christ. On this presupposition rests everything that the Scriptures provide in the way of directions and precepts for the communal life of Christians (24).

Not what a man is in himself as a Christian, his spirituality and piety, constitutes the basis of our community. What determines our brotherhood is what that man is by reason of Christ. Our community with one another consists solely in what Christ has done to both of us (25).

I have community with others and I shall continue to have it only through Jesus Christ. The more genuine and the deeper our community becomes, the more will everything else between us recede, the more clearly and purely will Jesus Christ and his work become the one and only thing that is vital between us. We have one another only through Christ, but through Christ we do have one another, wholly, and for all eternally.

That dismisses once and for all every clamorous desire for something more. One who wants more than what Christ has established does not want Christian brotherhood. He is looking for some extraordinary special experience which he has not found elsewhere; he is bringing muddled and impure desires into Christian brotherhood. Just at this point Christian brotherhood is threatened most often at the very start by the greatest danger of all, the danger of being poisoned at its root, the danger of confusing Christian brotherhood with some wishful idea of religious fellowship, of confounding the natural desire of the devout heart for community with the spiritual reality of Christian brotherhood. In Christian brotherhood everything depends upon its being clear right from the beginning, first, that Christian brotherhood is not an ideal, but a divine reality. Second, that Christian brotherhood is a spiritual and not a psychic reality (25-26).

All that is to say, Christian community is not something we can create. It’s already been created—we have it. We just don’t always participate in it. At Anchorage Grace we have a very specific and intentional expression of facilitating Christian fellowship—community groups. And I say this to all of you—you need to get involved in a community group.

Marriage

What about marriage? If I can have friends who are non-Christian, does that mean I can marry a spouse who isn’t a Christian? In this case, the answer is exactly opposite! I know you know this, so we don’t need to spend as much time here, but it’s important to remind ourselves about a couple of things. First, Scripture is replete with commandments concerning the necessity of spiritual purity in marriage. Israel was instructed to marry only within Israel—inter-faith marriage was prohibited (Deut 7:3-4; Josh 23:12; Ezra 9:11-12).

When we come to the NT, the same assertion is made. Paul told the Corinthians that a widow was free to remarry only if the individual was “in the Lord” (1 Cor 7:39).

And even from a purely pragmatic perspective, this makes sense, and its something that even the secular world recognizes. In a 1993 paper published in Social Science Research, Professor Evelyn Lehrer noted the “large destabilizing effects” associated with mixed-faith marriages. The reason for this, according to Lehrer, is that “religion influences many activities that husband and wife perform jointly.”

And thus the statistics are pretty surprising. Lehrer found that if members of two mainline Christian denominations marry, they have a 1 in 5 chance of being divorced in five years. A Catholic and a member of an evangelical denomination have a 1 in 3 chance. And a Jew and a Christian who marry have a greater than 40 percent chance of being divorced in five years. And if an evangelical marries someone with no religion, their chances are greater than 50 percent.

Concerning this, Al Mohler observes,

“Putting all this together, it is clear that theological differences really do matter. These belief systems develop into worldviews that do have real consequences. It is not primarily a matter of which holidays the family observes, but how the children are raised, how the major decisions of life are framed, how the priorities of the couple are aligned.”

But even more than that, you know and I know from the text we’ve just studied, that the differences go beyond worldview. There is a chasm that exists between believer and unbeliever, and no marriage can function properly, as it should when that chasm exists. A believer is one whose allegiance is first and foremost to Christ. How can they be united in the most intimate of relationships—a relationship, by the way, that illustrates the gospel—with someone whose allegiances are ultimately against Christ?

Now, does that mean that if you’re married to an unbeliever, you need to leave? That was one of the misunderstandings the Corinthians had with Paul’s first letter, and he corrected them in 1 Corinthians 7:12-13. Our passage doesn’t call you to leave or divorce your spouse—in fact, if they want to stay, your presence as a believer sanctifies the spouse.

Other Partnerships

I think one area where this passage has some implications is in our participation in secular organizations. I had someone from the congregation ask me recently if I thought it was okay for a Christian to be a member of the Freemasons. I admit that my knowledge of Freemasonry is less than stellar, but as I read a little about it, cutting through all the conspiracy theories and getting down to the core of what this fraternity is, the more unsettled I was that any believer would want to be a part of it.

In one article on CBS News, ??? narrates a conversation with Piers Vaughan, the Lodge Master for ???.

At the center of any lodge room is an altar. “All activities of the lodge take place about the altar,” said Piers Vaughan, the Lodge Master. “Now, would people talk about religion here in a meeting?” Rocca asked. “Absolutely not,” said Vaughan. “There are certain subjects which are prevented from discussing within the Lodge. And religion is one. Politics is another.”

And then there are the ceremonies. Each one teaches a moral lesson related to the legend of one Hiram Abiff, the architect of King Solomon’s temple. They can be a little unusual…

“When a candidate comes in through the door, he’s blindfolded because, symbolically, he is in a state of darkness,” said Vaughan, “because Masonry is all about moving from darkness into Masonic light.”

As for what happens after that…well, that’s a secret. But for members, Freemasonry is about something much simpler. “I have met a group of men that I enjoy being with,” said Morris. “These are people that I go out to dinner with, we socialize together. They’re guys I like to hang with. They’re my friends.

Now, I’m all for friendships, even with unbelievers, as we’d talked about earlier. But I can have that at the bowling alley. What I just read to you is not friendship based around common human life. It’s relationship centered around paganism.

Honestly, if there’s a clear application of our passage to a situation, this would be it.