6:14 The notion of being “unequally yoked with unbelievers” is often associated most immediately with marriage—“Believers, do not marry an unbeliever.” While this is certainly a legitimate extrapolation of the text, the meaning is broader. Paul has spoken of “unbelievers” (Gk. apistoi) in 4:4 as those whose minds are blinded to the gospel of Christ, and Paul will soon come to an extended engagement with the false apostles in chapters 10–13. The mention of “unbelievers,” or those lacking true faith, is likely a reference to these intruders in the church at Corinth who are compellingly drawing the genuine believers back into the mindset of the old age and thus away from the purity of the doctrine of divinely wrought reconciliation in the dawning new creation (5:11–6:2). When Paul speaks of being “unequally yoked” with unbelievers (using a single Greek verb referring to two domestic animals pulling in different directions), he is exhorting the true Corinthian believers to preserve themselves from infectious mingling with professing Christians who are in fact operating out of accord with the true gospel of Christ.

Note that Paul is not suggesting dissociation from those who are openly unbelievers—“since then you would need to go out of the world” (1 Cor. 5:10). Rather he is enjoining dissociation from unbelievers masquerading as believers (“anyone who bears the name of brother”; 1 Cor. 5:11). The question is one of “partnership” (lit., “sharing”) and “fellowship” in ministry and life in Christ, not one of treating other humans made in God’s image with decency and civility.

These are the first two of five rhetorical questions, with each serving to ground further Paul’s exhortation to separate from these false teachers, and each expecting the immediate reply, “None!” Having just spoken of “weapons of righteousness” in a moral or ethical (not legal) sense (2 Cor. 6:7), Paul now reminds his readers of the absolute disjunction between moral righteousness (godliness) and “lawlessness.” There is a certain worldly impulse to mix a little compromise with a general appreciation of uprightness. It can feel overly exclusive or even ostracizing to reject lawlessness outright. Paul refutes such capitulating blending. It is like mixing “light with darkness.” God has already swept us into the new creation by saying “Let light shine out of darkness” in our hearts (4:6). The two are mutually exclusive. And the day of eschatological light has dawned once and for all. The darkness of sin, death, and the Devil has been decisively overwhelmed (Isa. 9:2; 42:16; Matt. 4:16; John 1:5; 8:12; 12:35, 46; Rom. 13:12; Eph. 5:8; 1 Thess. 5:5; 1 John 2:8).

6:15 The third and fourth rhetorical questions move from the abstract realities of verse 14 (“righteousness” and “lawlessness”; “light” and “darkness”) to personal polarities: “Christ” and “Beliar” (cf. ESV mg.), “believer” and “unbeliever.” Paul is continuing his erecting of opposites that are utterly distinct, opposites that describe not only godliness versus ungodliness but also the old age versus the new.

“Beliar” is a reference to Satan, whom Paul earlier designated “the god of this world” (4:4). The term is a Greek transliteration of a Hebrew word meaning “worthlessness” that in Jewish literature of Paul’s time had come to refer to the individual godless spirit who tempts God’s people to sin.61 Beliar thus represents the old age and everything contrary to Christ, who through his atoning work gives people back their worth and forgives their sins.

Thus a “believer” has no “portion” (share, part) with an “unbeliever.” Again, we must remember just what Paul means by such designations, both in this letter and throughout his NT writings. To be a “believer” or an “unbeliever” is not merely a denotation of creed. Though including this, a believer is one who is now “in Christ” (5:17), who is part of the “new creation” (5:17; cf. 4:6) established through the “new covenant” (3:6), indwelt by the Spirit (3:3, 6, 8), reflecting the beginning of the end (1:22; 5:5), belonging to the “light” (6:14) and a part of the eschatological temple (6:16). To be an unbeliever is to remain veiled (4:3), blind (4:4)—in short, to belong to the old age.

6:16 The fifth and final rhetorical question leads into a more sustained category, one that is fundamental for understanding the storyline of the Bible and the significance of Christ: that of temple. “The temple of God” and “idols” are the final mutually exclusive pair. But why?

Once again the answer has to do with inaugurated eschatology and the place in redemptive history in which Paul and the Corinthians find themselves. “For we are the temple of the living God.” That is, all that the tabernacle (the portable temple) and the temple were seeking to capture—restored fellowship with God—has been accomplished in the new age. In Eden, God and man dwelt in harmony. With sin, that fellowship broke and God retreated. The tabernacle, however, was a miniature garden of Eden—complete with a sky-blue ceiling and a lampstand decorated like a flourishing tree (Ex. 25:31–26:37). The temple was a tangible, physical location where the immortal met the mortal, the supernatural and the natural collided, the eternal and the temporal intersected, the sacred and the profane stood face to face. The temple was where the divine and the fleshly could meet—never to mix, but to come into brief contact with one another. It was where God dwelt (cf. 2 Cor. 6:16b). Rumbling through the OT was the development of the theme of the presence of God among his people, a presence centered in the most sacred of Jewish places, the tabernacle and then the temple. But at the center of all human history, the divine and the fleshly did mix. “The Word became flesh and tabernacled among us” (John 1:14 AT; cf. 2:19–22). And then those united to Christ by faith become part of that living temple (Eph. 2:19–22).

It is this theme of the presence of God that draws Paul back to Leviticus 26:12, which forms the first part of the constellation of OT quotes in 2 Corinthians 6:16–18. Throughout the OT, God promises to be his people’s God and they his people, a promise clearly anticipated in the tabernacle/temple but that burst onto the scene in the coming of Christ, through whom presence with God was truly accomplished. That God’s “dwelling among” his people is a temple reality is made clear by examining the immediate context of Leviticus 26, where God says, “I will make my dwelling [lit., “tabernacle”] among you” (Lev. 26:11).

6:17 Paul now transitions from a text in Leviticus to one in Isaiah, perhaps deliberately tying together both the Law and the Prophets to underscore the whole-OT nature of his point about the temple and the presence of God. He cites Isaiah 52:11, and we remember that throughout 2 Corinthians 5–7 Paul is drawing on Isaiah 40–55 to argue that the Corinthians and all believers (whether Jew or Gentile) are the true people of God (cf. comment on 2 Cor. 6:2). Specifically, Isaiah 52:11 is a call for God’s people to come out from Babylon and return to Jerusalem. Paul thus takes a text that originally applied to Israel’s return from exile and applies it to the Corinthians’ situation to call them to dissociate not geographically but spiritually from the paganism around them.

The last line of 2 Corinthians 6:17 (“then I will welcome [eisdechomai] you”) is drawn not from Isaiah but from Ezekiel 20:34, where God promises to “gather” (LXX eisdechomai) his people out of the nations among whom they are exiled and scattered. This return-from-exile theme is viewed in Isaiah 40–55 as a second exodus event and hooks into the Leviticus 26 text, which is a promise of God’s presence following the first exodus.

Throughout this catena of OT quotes, then, Paul is melding two major whole-Bible themes: return from exodus/exile and temple. These reflect the land promise and the divine presence promise of the original call of Abraham (Gen. 12:1–3). Even in the Isaiah 52:11 text, which speaks of return from exile, the temple theme is not absent: the verse goes on immediately to identify who is to “go out”: “you who bear the vessels of the Lord” (Isa. 52:11)—that is, the priests of the temple. But notice what Paul does here. He applies this statement made to Israel to the Gentile Corinthians. Paul understands the Corinthians to be fulfilling the promise made to ethnic Israel in Isaiah 52. This fits in with Paul’s overarching point that the new age has broken in on the Corinthians. How then could they live as if they still belonged to the old age?

6:18 Paul concludes by drawing on a high point of OT redemptive history: God’s promise to David (among other promises) to be a father to him (2 Sam. 7:14). While Hebrews 1:5 speaks of Christ himself as the fulfillment of this promise, Paul is here applying the Davidic promise to the Corinthians. This can be so only when we bear in mind the hermeneutical presupposition of corporate solidarity (cf. comment at 2 Cor. 5:14). Christ is the fulfillment of the Davidic hope; those who are in Christ become coheirs of that fulfillment by virtue of their union with and representation by Christ.

But, given the presence of texts from Isaiah 40–55 throughout these middle chapters of 2 Corinthians, it is likely that we should understand Paul’s reference to God’s “sons and daughters” as picking up Isaiah 43:6: “bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth.” This is, like Isaiah 52:11 and Ezekiel 20:34, a context in which God is speaking of returning his people from exile, and using exodus categories to do so (see esp. Isa. 43:2–3). The adoption promised here is expounded at length by Paul in Romans 8:14–30 and Galatians 3:23–4:31.

7:1 This verse synthesizes what Paul has been saying since 6:14 and presents the point into which everything in this passage has been funneling. Paul speaks of the constellation of OT texts here as, in a word, “promises” (cf. 1:20). He understands the cumulative impact of this catena of OT texts as grace from God and comfort for his people. A clear note is struck of divine initiative. Yes, the Corinthians are exhorted to abstain from pagan defilements (6:17). Viewed in the abstract this is a command, not a promise. But this command is sandwiched between promises of divine presence (6:16) and adoption (6:18). God’s commands never come alone; they are always fueled by his grace and provision (e.g., Ex. 20:2). And both his commands and his promises are for our good.

This rhythm between the indicatives of the gospel (what God does) and its imperatives (what we are summoned to do) is given crisp expression here in 2 Corinthians 7:1. Because we have these promises (indicative), we are to walk a certain way (imperative), namely, cleansing ourselves from defilement (negatively) and “bringing holiness to completion.” The verse ends with a final motivation: “in the fear of God.” As in 5:11, there is not only an unhealthy fear of God that misunderstands his deepest heart but also a healthy fear of God that rightly impels right living.

The Christian life is neither bare indicative nor bare imperative. Indicative alone would be what Dietrich Bonhoeffer called “cheap grace”: assurance of divine pardon, only to go on living any old way we please. But equally disastrous is imperative alone: moral exhortation divorced from the empowerments of the gospel such as assurance of forgiveness, the granting of the Spirit, and so on.