What impedes our spiritual life from flourishing and growing? With whom should we associate or disengage from? To what degree should we relate to the society around us? What dangers do we need to guard our minds against regarding the values of a contaminated society? What may be even more subtle is watching out for deviations from the purity of the gospel that would require a disassociation with people with a radicalized, narrow, and wrong view of what the Scriptures are actually teaching.
James Warren Jones began attending church as a child and upon finishing university decided to enter the ministry.
In 1955 he established the Wings of Deliverance, a Pentecostal church that eventually became known as the Peoples Temple. During this time, he was noted for his work with the homeless, and in the early 1960s he served as director of Indianapolis’s Human Rights Commission.[i]
He championed the cause of racial integration in a time in which this was challenged, and difficult. A charismatic leader, Jones moved his followers to California and later to Guyana, after facing allegations of monies being redirected to his personal account. While in Guyana, Jones and his followers set up an agricultural commune called “Jonestown.”
On November 14, 1978, U.S. Representative, Leo Ryan of California arrived in Guyana with a group of reporters and relatives of cultists to conduct an unofficial investigation of alleged abuses. Four days later, as Ryan’s party and 14 defectors from the cult prepared to leave from an airstrip near Jonestown, Jones ordered the group assassinated. However, only Ryan and four others (including three reporters) were killed. Fearing that those who had escaped might bring in authorities, Jones activated his suicide plan. On November 18 he commanded his followers to drink cyanide-adulterated punch, an order that the vast majority of them passively and inexplicably obeyed. Jones himself died of a gunshot wound in the head, possibly self-inflicted. Guyanese troops reached Jonestown the next day, and the death toll of cultists was eventually placed at 913, including 304 who were under the age of 18. (Some death tolls include the five people killed at the airstrip, bringing the total number of deaths to 918).[ii]
While this is a tragic ending and an extreme case, the greater and more tragic aspect is when we fail to realize that all deviation from truth will ultimately lead to eternal separation from God. Often these deviations don’t cause this dramatic ending on earth, but what tragedy to discover the reality that it leads away from Jesus and, in light of eternity, will be a forfeiture of heaven. (Matthew 7:21-23)
There is no question that the people we associate with can affect us, but what we come to believe will affect the decisions we make and will determine not only our earthly future, but our eternal future.
In 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1, Paul is not suggesting that we stop relating to unbelievers. Rather the people he is warning us against are those who profess Christianity but are deviating from biblical truth, which leads people away from a biblical lifestyle. This is certainly explained in his first letter to the Corinthian church.
I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people—not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or slanderer, a drunkard or swindler. Do not even eat with such people.[iii]
Paul will continue to elaborate who these people actually are in the context here in Corinth. What we will discover from this text is that these “false” professors of faith are propagating teachings that are false and lead not only themselves, but others into idolatry and a false worship system.
Paul reinforces the idea of separation from those who are propagating false beliefs. The greatest threat to the church does not come from the outside but from those within who have abandoned the faith and who are now following deceiving spirits and things taught by demons (1 Timothy 4:1).
False teaching moves in two directions.
Legalism [a self-righteous endeavor to keep the law or set of rules] and moves away from an empowered life in the Spirit which enables us to walk in God’s grace.
We need to remember that when we add or require anything from the work of Christ in our salvation, we are negating what Jesus has done. We are saved by God’s grace alone. However, true faith always leads to a transformed life and so the opposite error is:
Antinomianism [which literally means ‘no law’] which promotes a licentious [often sexual in nature] disregard for moral, legal, or social constraints. It is a lifestyle where there is an abandonment of living a holy lifestyle.
In addressing these false messengers, Paul is calling the Corinthians to a holy life. But what is holiness? The Hebrew word for holy in the Old Testament is qadesh and its primary meaning is to separate, to be unique, to be wholly other, to be distinct, transcendent. When this word is used in the ancient near eastern world it is almost always used in religious settings. The opposite of holy is what is common or profane. The common understanding of holiness is of a moral or ethical nature, but it is simply a statement of being. To be holy is inconceivable and unknowable, belonging to the sacred realm. We only become holy as we are in relationship to God. No one is holy independently from God. In the New Testament what we discover is that holiness is found in a person, the Lord Jesus Christ. Here we discover that God became a man. The life of Jesus is our standard, which God expects of us. People think that this kind of life is impossible, but we fail to realize that in his humanity, Jesus was enabled and empowered by the Holy Spirit. In other words, Christian holiness is not a life of discipline, or struggle alone, but it is the life of Christ dwelling within us by the agency of the Holy Spirit. We were reminded last week that we as believers are partakers of God’s very nature and because of God’s promises to us, God brings his very presence to live within us, thereby empowering us to live a holy life. Paul’s call for holiness requires a response on our part. Here in Paul’s argument regarding acceptance, not only of himself but more importantly the message that he is communicating, there are two reasons we need to break from unbelievers and live a holy life.
THE FIRST REASON WHY WE NEED TO SEPARATE OURSELVES FROM THE OPPONENTS OF THE GOSPEL IS THEIR INFLUENCE
We need to understand what this separation means and what it does not mean. Who are we to break away from and why? The idea of being holy is to be set apart for God and His purposes.
- Who were these opponents?
We need to start with understanding who these opponents were in Paul’s time, and who they are today. Who are the people that Paul is calling unbelievers here in the text? Ralph Martin and Carl Toney explain their unique status and the possibility of three different applications.
These “unbelievers” (a, “not” + pistos, “believer” = apistos, “unbeliever”) may be non-Christians (traditional view), false apostles/opponents (Dahl 1977:62–69), or immoral Christians (Goulder 2003:47–57). … Paul was equating his opponents with these unbelievers. A mark of reconciliation between Paul and the Corinthians was separation from the unbelieving world, of which his opponents, by preaching a false gospel, were a part.[iv]
We need to be careful that we don’t disassociate with other believers who may have some different biblical interpretations in non-essential issues. Issues such as women in ministry, or the role of the Holy Spirit’s gifts in the church world. What Paul is concerned about is the gospel of Jesus Christ. So, what are the essentials? That we are living in a fallen world, and that sin is the issue that needs to be addressed. That God addressed that issue in the person and work of Jesus Christ. We need to understand that humanity is not delivered from sin through its own efforts but is redeemed through the sacrificial death of Jesus. So, what we believe about Jesus and what He did is critical.
- Why should we go about disassociating with these opponents?
Paul then gives a number of reasons why this dramatic stance is critical. In Paul’s defense of his ministry, he has been sharing that those who have been opposing him are doing so because they are promoting a different gospel, which is no gospel at all. It is distortion of the real message of the gospel and will lead people astray. He now warns in this little interlude, his argument that joining with those who are advocating a false message will prove disastrous. Paul asks five questions detailing the contrasts between what is true and what is false.
- What does righteousness and wickedness have in common?
- What fellowship can light have with darkness?
- What harmony is there between Christ and Belial?
- What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?
- What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols?
The answer simply is that these are in conflict and are in contrast to each other. Therefore, the right response is to depart from embracing a dualist or synergistic approach with these opponents.
Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?[v]
Linda Belleville explains the intensity in which Paul is addressing them.
Actually the command is even more pointed: ‘Stop yoking yourselves to unbelievers.’ Use of the present imperative shows that Paul is not merely warning the Corinthians about a potential danger (‘do not start’) but instructing them to stop an action already in progress.[vi]
…The first two questions consider the partnership of moral opposites: What do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? (v. 14). The believer and the unbeliever are driven by a different set of values, the one characterized by righteousness (dikaiosynē), the other by lawlessness (anomia). There are no shared values because the one follows God’s will and the other does not. So there can be no real partnership between them.
The prophet Amos also challenges the idea that people can walk in partnership unless they are in agreement. “Do two walk together unless they have agreed to do so? (Amos 3:3)”
Paul is basically telling them to flee from these false teachers and renew their commitment to the truth.
What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? [Belial is another name for Satan.) Belial comes from the word Beliar, and the Hebrew word means worthless, or good-for-nothing.] Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?
What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: ‘I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.’[vii]
God can only be among us if we have separated ourselves from idols. One of the problems is that we can read texts like 2 Corinthians and think to ourselves, we are not engaged in this behavior, or this doesn’t happen today. But that would be naïve on our part. Over the years, even some who have been in roles of leadership in our church have drifted into unbiblical teachings and drifted from a vibrant faith. One of the reasons I taught a course in our church on the Spirit of Truth and Error was to warn and give examples of some of these ideas that take people captive.
- What does it mean not be yoked or partnering with these “unbelievers”?
Craig Keener explains this in an earlier historical context.
Jews who adopted Greek culture and became uncircumcised ‘joined themselves’ (a term also used for ‘yoking’) to Gentiles (1 Macc. 1:15).[viii]
In those days certain renegades came out from Israel and mislead many, saying, ‘Let us go and make a covenant with the Gentiles around us, for since we separated from them many disasters have come upon us.’ This proposal pleased them, and some of the people eagerly went to the king, who authorized them to observe the ordinances of the Gentiles. So they built a gymnasium in Jerusalem, according to the Gentile custom, and removed the marks of circumcision, and abandoned the holy covenant. They joined with the Gentiles and sold themselves to do evil.[ix]
Obviously, these people were renouncing their Jewishness and faith. They were moving away from their uniqueness and identity markers as God’s people. That certainly is what Paul is urging the Corinthians. We need to abandon those ideas, values, and behaviors that are contrary to God’s word, which moves us away from being God’s unique people. However, this did not mean that we live in a spiritual ghetto or a monastery. We need to be aware that total separation was not mandated as they were living among Gentiles when Jewish people were living away from Judea. Jesus had prayed for disciples that we are to be in the world but not of the world (Jn. 17:15). In other words, we are God’s ambassadors communicating his kingdom to a world that is perishing and contaminated by sin.
…Complete separation from Gentiles was not possible in the Diaspora, and even rabbis were very selective in their restrictions; practical considerations also limited restrictions in avoiding less scrupulous Jews. But strict Jews (and Christians) would forbid compromise of one’s faith and heritage. Warning against being “mismatched” would at least include marital unions.[x]
So, what are some of the areas that this should apply to us today, both in our teaching and lifestyle? We need to stick to the basics of our faith in regard to who Jesus is and what He has accomplished on our behalf. In lifestyle, to not be in partnership with people in marriage or business who have totally different values which will prove disastrous. This is not to suggest that if we are married and our spouse is not a believer we should leave them on the grounds of values, but we should not enter into these partnerships to begin with.
THE SECOND REASON WHY WE NEED TO SEPARATE OURSELVES FROM THE OPPONENTS OF THE GOSPEL IS TO BE ACCEPTABLE TO GOD
Not everyone can enter God’s presence. Jesus in His sermon on the mount found in Matthew’s gospel states that only the pure in heart will see God (Matthew 5:8). The O.T. spends a lot of time defining what is clean or pure and what is unclean or impure. Another way of stating it is what is common and profane and what is holy. We find in the book of Leviticus these distinctions. It talks about how what is clean can be defiled by touching what is contaminated. One of the roles of the priest was to distinguish and teach the difference between what was holy and profane. The fact that the priests did not fulfil this responsibility was one cause of why the nation became defiled and God brought them into exile to correct them regarding their false worship (idolatry) and sinful lives.
Her priests do violence to my law and profane my holy things; they do not distinguish between the holy and the common; they teach that there is no difference between the unclean and the clean; and they shut their eyes to the keeping of my Sabbaths, so that I am profaned among them.[xi]
One application we can make in relationship to any nation is that the core issue is that those who are called to preach the gospel need to preach the ‘whole counsel of God,’ addressing the issues of idolatry and sin in the lives of believers. The key to transformation in every nation is that the church turns to God and walks in a biblical lifestyle. When we, as God’s people, walk in holiness, we will impact our society.
- A Call For Holiness.
One of the meanings of God’s call is to live a life of separation from that which is morally unclean. Holiness is a call to put God first and come away or separate us from the defiling values of our society.
Therefore, ‘Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.’.[xii]
This command draws upon Isa 52:11, LXX (depart … touch nothing unclean … go out). Just as exiled Israel, as a priestly community, was ordered to leave Babylon, so Paul expected an immediate and decisive withdrawal. Contact with unbelievers threatened the purity of this temple of God’s people.[xiii]
We have already looked at coming out and withdrawing from being yoked with the things that defile us. Here the expression is “touch not what is unclean.” The expression here means ‘not to lay hold of or fasten to.’ We have to let go of the entanglements the things that have captured our hearts and have caused us to forsake God. What are the unclean things that Paul is talking about? We know from the Isaiah passage that they were to leave behind that which was unclean. They were leaving Babylon, the place of their captivity. They were leaving a place where idolatry was prevalent. To be holy means we have been set apart for God’s purpose. This is a calling upon the church for all time. We are called to be holy.
But just as he who called you is holy, so be holy in all you do; for it is written: ‘Be holy, because I am holy.’[xiv]
These promises which Paul explains are simply the O.T. promises regarding the people God calls into covenant with himself.
In 6:17–18 Paul draws the scriptural conclusion (note ‘therefore’) that flows from a covenant relationship with God: three commands from Isaiah 52:11 (‘come out … be separate … touch no unclean thing’) and three ensuing promises from Ezekiel 20:34, 2 Samuel 7:14, and Isaiah 43:6 (‘and I will receive you, I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters’). In its original context, Isaiah 52:11 is directed to Israel, calling her as a priestly people to separate from Babylon in conjunction with her ‘second exodus’ redemption from captivity. Paul’s application of these commands to the Corinthians again reflects his conviction that the promised restoration of God’s people already beginning to take place in the establishment of the church in Corinth.[xv]
And, ‘I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.’ Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.[xvi]
It is not just about separating ourselves from those who are doing evil, as we well know, the problem as mentioned here is that we must all take responsibility to address the things that can easily contaminate our own body and spirit.
It was Aleksandr Solzenitzyn, in his trilogy The Gulag Archipelago, who spent years incarcerated in Siberia as a Russian dissident, who upon discovering Christ wrote:
If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?[xvii]
We recognize that it is not just those around us who contaminate us, but it is far more sinister than that. We need to address our own hearts. We are being instructed to “purify ourselves.” It means we need to identify and confess our sins and then forsake them, turning to God for forgiveness, cleansing, and empowerment to do what it right.
Scott Hafemann challenges us:
His [Paul’s] call for separation and purity makes sense only if the church understands herself not to be just one more institution playing an essential role within the fabric of society. Nor is the church a social service meeting the felt needs of her neighbors. Such a domestication of the church could not be more foreign to Paul’s view of God’s people or to her status as a disenfranchised minority in the Roman world in which Paul lived. Instead, as the new covenant people of God, the church is the ‘family of God’ united by a common identity in Christ and gathered around her common worship and fear of ‘the Lord Almighty’.[xviii]
It is when we walk with God and each other that God’s presence is most manifested, not only in our lives, but radiates out to our contaminated society. The only hope for our contaminated society is a church which has been washed by the word of God and is presenting herself to her heavenly bridegroom as Paul describes for us in Ephesians 5:27, “as a radiant church without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish but holy and blameless.”
https://pixabay.com/photos/prayer-bible-christian-folded-hands-1308663
[i] https://www.britannica.com/biography/Jim-Jones.
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] 1 Corinthians 5:9-11, The New International Version of the Bible, Zondervan, 2011.
[iv] Ralph Martin, Carl Toney, and William Baker, 1 & 2 Corinthians, Cornerstone Biblical Commentary, Vol. 15, (Tyndale House Publishers, 2009), 325.
[v] 2 Corinthians 6:14.
[vi] Linda Belleville, 2 Corinthians, TheIVP New Testament Commentary Series, Vol. 8, (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1996), 2 Cor. 6:14-7:1.
[vii] 2 Corinthians 6:15-16.
[viii] Craig S. Keener, 1 & 2 Corinthians, The New Cambridge Bible Commentary, Ed. Ben Witherington III, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), 194.
[ix] 1 Maccabees 1:11-15 New Revised Standard Version, (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
[x] Craig S. Keener, 1 & 2 Corinthians, 193-94.
[xi] Ezekiel 22:26.
[xii] 2 Corinthians 6:17.
[xiii] Ralph Martin, Carl Toney, and William Baker, 1 & 2 Corinthians, 326.
[xiv] 1 Peter 1:15-16.
[xv] Scott Hafemann, 2 Corinthians, (Zondervan Publishing House, 2000), 284.
[xvi] 2 Corinthians 6:18-7:1.
[xvii] Aleksandr Solzenitzyn, The Gulag Archipelago, (New York: Harper & Row, 1975), as quoted by Michael Green, Illustrations for Biblical Preaching, (Grand Rapids, Mi: Baker Book House, 1989), 103.
[xviii] Scott Hafemann, 2 Corinthians, 284.
