Original Meaning
THOUGH OFTEN OVERLOOKED, this passage is actually the carefully structured, closely argued, and theologically rich climax to the second major unit of Paul’s letter (2:14–7:1). Its tightly-knit flow of thought falls into three sections: (1) the command of 6:14a, with its first line of support in 6:14b–16b; (2) the second line of support in the chain of Old Testament quotes in 6:16c–18b; and (3) the command of 7:1b, with its own surrounding support in 7:1a.
Thus, the command of 6:14 is restated in different words in 7:1, both of which are supported by the intervening argument from Scripture, which has its own imperative in 6:17. Everything in this section therefore supports this one exhortation, given in three forms. The main point of the passage is Paul’s call to the Corinthians not to be “yoked together with unbelievers” (6:14), which is the specific application of the more general exhortation to “purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit” (7:1). This, in turn, is Paul’s application of the Old Testament injunction to “touch no unclean thing” (6:17).
Nevertheless, because of the distinct style, unique vocabulary, and unusual themes found in this passage,1 recent scholarship has questioned its origin,2 its function within Paul’s ongoing argument,3 and its meaning.4 However, none of the arguments against Pauline authorship of this passage is decisive, especially since this text derives its subject matter from the Scriptures. This use of the Old Testament explains why this passage would be so filled with concepts and vocabulary common to the Judaism of Paul’s day. Moreover, there is no evidence that 2 Corinthians ever existed without this section.
Indeed, once the scriptural backdrop to Paul’s thought in 6:14–7:1 is read against his earlier argument from Scripture in chapter 3, the integral purpose of the passage becomes apparent. Far from being a digression in his thought, these verses play a strategic role in Paul’s ongoing apologetic by drawing to a conclusion the new covenant perspective introduced in 2:14–3:18. Just as 6:3–10 expands Paul’s argument from his suffering in 2:14–17, so too 6:14–7:1 expands the covenant perspective first developed in 3:1–18. And just as Paul’s argument from his suffering in 2:14–17 and 6:3–10 leads to the exhortation of 6:11–13, so too his argument from redemptive history in 3:1–18 and 6:14–7:1 leads to the exhortations of 6:14 and 7:1. In the present section, Paul makes explicit the implications of being part of God’s new covenant people for the current controversy in Corinth. The admonition and argument from his suffering and the Scriptures in 2:14–3:18 and 6:3–7:1 thus frame his apology in 2:14–7:1.
The Command (6:14a)
AS OBSERVED ABOVE, this section opens up with a command, just as the last section closed with one. As “believers,” the Corinthians are not to be “yoked together,” in the sense of being hitched up with someone whose yoke does not fit (cf. NRSV: “mismatched”), or be “allied”5 with “unbelievers” (6:14a).6 But who are these “unbelievers”? Many take them to be non-Christians in general (as in 1 Cor. 5:10; cf. 6:6, 12–20; 7:12–15; 14:22–24). Others see them more specifically to be those Gentile pagans in Corinth with whom the “strong” had earlier participated in idol feasts (as in 1 Cor. 8:1–11:1; see 10:27).7
Both of these interpretations can succeed, however, only if 6:14–7:1 is distanced from its current context, in which Paul has been fighting for the legitimacy of his apostolic ministry and in which there has been no previous mention of the earlier problems facing the Corinthians. In 2 Corinthians the issue is not the relationship between Christians and the unbelieving world, nor is Paul concerned here, as he was in 1 Corinthians, with the Corinthians’ participation in the temple cults and idolatry of Corinth. Rather, if read from the perspective of its own immediate context, Paul’s command in 6:14 is the specific application of his more general command in 6:13. “Not to be yoked together with unbelievers” (6:14) is one way in which the Corinthians are to “open wide [their] hearts” to Paul.
Given the polemic situation in which Paul finds himself, “opening up” to him will necessarily entail closing themselves off from those who oppose him, whom the apostle now labels “unbelievers.” This statement is shocking because “unbelievers” is not a word Paul ever uses to describe erring but still genuine Christians (e.g., those dealt with in 1 Cor. 3:10–15). Rather, “unbelievers” refers to those who are manifestly outside the sphere of God’s people, even if they profess otherwise (cf. 1 Cor. 6:6; 7:12–15; 10:27; 14:22–24; 2 Cor. 4:4; 1 Tim. 5:8; Titus 1:15–16).
Thus, to make clear, in no uncertain terms, precisely what is at stake in supporting his opponents, Paul employs much of the same terminology in 6:14–16 and 7:1 that he used earlier to describe the necessity of breaking free from demon-dominated idolatry (cf. 1 Cor. 10:16–21 with 2 Cor. 6:14; 1 Cor. 8:7 with 2 Cor. 7:1). But now it describes the absolute incompatibility between those who believe (and hence support Paul’s ministry) and those who are calling Paul’s apostleship into question. Paul’s point is stark. In the final analysis, the believers in Corinth must recognize his opponents as “unbelievers” and separate from them. Conversely, if they refuse to obey this command, they too will be considered unbelievers (cf. 13:5).8
Support Number One: The Identity of the Church (6:14b–16b)
THE NECESSITY OF separating from those opposing Paul is first grounded in a series of five rhetorical questions, all of which anticipate a negative answer (6:14b–16a). Taken together, they reinforce the basic incompatibility between righteousness, light, Christ, being a believer, and the temple of God on the one hand, and wickedness, darkness, Belial, being an unbeliever, and idols on the other. The fact that in 6:14 “righteousness” is contrasted with “wickedness” (lit., “lawlessness”) demonstrates once again that for Paul “righteousness” is a concept that includes both one’s relationship with God in Christ (cf. 6:15a) and its outworking in a life of “light” (6:14c) as a “believer” (6:15b).9 Here “light” is not a mystical concept, but a moral designation that refers to the new life of obedience to God, engendered by trusting in Christ and enabled by the power of the Spirit.
Such “righteousness” or “light” is brought about by a reconciliation with God that is expressed both in conversion and in a converted life of continuing transformation into the image of God (cf. 3:9, 18; 4:4–6; 5:21). In contrast, the “darkness” (6:14c) of the “unbeliever” (6:15b) is associated with Satan, since, as 4:4 declares, “Belial” is the ultimate source of unbelief (cf. 2:11; 11:14; 12:7).10
The name used for Satan in 6:15, “Belial” (“Beliar” in some manuscripts), does not occur as a personal name either in the Old Testament or in the rest of the New Testament, though it is found as a proper name for Satan in the literature of Qumran and in apocalyptic Judaism.11 Its creation comes from the common Jewish practice of referring to Satan and his demons by personifying negative terms or images from the Scriptures. “Beliar/Belial” is an extension of a Hebrew equivalent meaning “worthlessness” or “treacherous” (cf. Deut. 13:13; 15:9; Judg. 19:22; 1 Sam. 2:12; 2 Sam. 16:7; 22:5; 1 Kings 21:13; Ps. 18:4). Paul certainly viewed Satan’s work through his opponents to be one of treachery (cf. 2 Cor. 11:13–15).
Moreover, it is significant for our present passage, in which Paul is speaking about separation from his opponents, that the name “Beliar/Belial” is often used in contexts that stress Satan’s activity as an opponent of God. Indeed, since Paul has the sanctity of the church in view here, it is striking that in most of its underlying Old Testament uses, “Belial” “functions as an emotive term to describe individuals or groups who commit the most heinous crimes against the Israelite religious or social order, as well as their acts.”12 Paul’s concern to warn the Corinthian believers about his opponents, who are dividing the church as a result of being under the deluding influence of Satan (cf. 2:11; 4:3–6; 11:3, 15), may have led to his choice of this more unusual and specific designation for Satan.
If Paul’s use of “Beliar/Belial” connotes Satan’s opposition against God, especially God’s people, then Paul’s choice of the word used for “temple” in 6:16 (naos) highlights God’s presence. Naos refers to the sacred worship space itself (cf. Mark 14:58; 15:29; John 2:19–20), where God’s presence is manifest within the “Most Holy Place,” rather than to the more general temple building or complex, the hieron, which is often also translated “temple” (cf. Mark 11:11; 12:35; 13:1). Naturally, beginning with the covenant stipulations given at Mount Sinai, the Most Holy Place can have no agreement with idols (2 Cor. 6:16a).13 Paul supports this point in 6:16b: The Corinthians are not to have anything to do with “idolatry” precisely because (cf. the “for” [gar] of 6:16b) they are “the temple of the living God.”
The fact that this reference to the temple is the climax of Paul’s string of contrasts, and the only one that has its own support, highlights its significance. The most likely reason for this special emphasis is that Paul’s last rhetorical question recalls the “new covenant” substructure of his apologetic as a whole, which began back in 2:14. Nowhere in the Old Testament is Israel ever identified with the temple. But the parallel between the phrase “the temple of the living God” in 6:16 and Paul’s earlier reference in 3:3 to “the Spirit of the living God” indicates that he can equate the church with the temple because, under the new covenant, believers themselves are now the “location” of God’s Holy Spirit on earth (cf. the same parallel in 1 Cor. 3:16).
As a result of the pouring out of the Spirit in fulfillment of Ezekiel 36:26–27 (cf. 2 Cor. 1:22; 3:3–6, 8, 17–18; 4:13; 5:5), the church, both in regard to its individual members (1 Cor. 6:19) and in its life together corporately (1 Cor. 3:16), is now the place of God’s presence in the world. Paul’s application of the Old Testament prohibition against idolatry to the Corinthians is based on the identification of the temple with God’s people in Christ since they, like Moses, may be in God’s presence without being destroyed (2 Cor. 3:6, 18).
Paul’s point is clear. Whereas Israel as a people fell into idolatry and disobedience (cf. the vision of Ezek. 8:3–18 as the basis of Israel’s judgment in the Exile), the Messiah has brought the church back into the presence of God’s glory and begun the process of transforming her into the image of God himself (2 Cor. 3:16–18). The separation described in 6:14–16a that is to characterize God’s people under the new covenant is thus the positive counterpart to Israel’s history of syncretism under the old. Paul is therefore stunned that believers would consort with idolatry and wickedness. Here, as in 1 Corinthians 3:16–17, the identification of the church with the temple consequently contains a warning of divine destruction against all who would destroy God’s people, since the Corinthians, as God’s temple, are “holy” (cf. 1 Cor. 3:17 with 2 Cor. 7:1). The righteous who belong to the Messiah have been delivered from their idolatry and wickedness and brought back into the presence of God’s glory.
Support Number Two: The History of Redemption (6:16c–18)
HAVING SUPPORTED HIS command in 6:14 by pointing to the “new covenant” identity of the Corinthians in 6:14b–16b, in 6:16c Paul initiates a second line of support directly from the Scriptures. His command to separate from unbelievers is not an expression of hubris or self-defensive fear. It is the immediate application of the Scriptures’ expectation regarding the reality of the new covenant. Note that the chain of quotes in verses 16c–18 is introduced in verse 16c with a single citation formula, “as God has said,” and closed off in verse 18c with the corresponding formula, “says the Lord Almighty.” Hence, verses 16c–18 do not function to support the fact that believers are the temple of God (6:16b), but are introduced as a single citation, composed of six Old Testament passages, which, when read as a whole, support the command of 6:14 and its restatement in 7:1:14 “Do not be yoked together … as God has said … since we have these promises [i.e., as outlined in 6:16c–18], let us purify ourselves….”
The first Old Testament reference is taken primarily from the promise of God’s covenant presence in Leviticus 26:11–12, which, however, was originally stated in the second person (“I will put my dwelling place among you”), not the third, as it is in 2 Corinthians 6:16 (“I will live with them”). This alternation is due to the conflation of Leviticus 26:11–12 with the new covenant promise of Ezekiel 37:27 (“My dwelling place will be with them”). By interpreting Leviticus 26:11–12 in terms of Ezekiel 37:27, Paul is reflecting his conviction that the original covenant promises and the prophetic expectation of their realization after the judgment of the Exile are now beginning to be fulfilled in the Corinthian church! Furthermore, in combining these texts, Paul brings the Law and the Prophets together to make his point, unified within a promise-fulfillment, old covenant-new covenant framework.
This is confirmed by the fact that the covenant formula found in both Leviticus 26:11–12 and Ezekiel 37:27—God as the God of Israel and Israel as the people of God—occurs in only two basic contexts within the Scriptures. It is first found in relationship to the Sinai covenant instituted after the Exodus, in which God established his intention to live among his people, though this covenant was broken at the incident of the golden calf (cf. Ex. 6:7; Deut. 29:12–13; 2 Sam. 7:24; 1 Chron. 17:22; Jer. 7:23; 11:4). It then occurs in relationship to the promise of a new covenant, to be brought about by the “second exodus” redemption of Israel from the Exile, in which God will finally fulfill his purpose of living among his people (cf. Jer. 24:7; 30:22; 31:31–34; Ezek. 11:20; 36:28; 37:23, 26–27; Zech. 8:8; 13:9). Hence, Paul’s conflation of Leviticus 26:11–12 and Ezekiel 37:27 intentionally reflects this correspondence between the Sinai covenant of the first exodus and the new covenant of the “second.”15
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 is already beginning to take place in the establishment of the church in Corinth.
In Romans 10:15, Paul presents the apostolic proclamation of the gospel as the beginning fulfillment of the announcement in Isaiah 52:7 of Israel’s deliverance from the Exile. Here in 2 Corinthians 6:17–18 Paul portrays the church as the people of this restoration (cf. too the use of Isa. 52:15 in Rom. 15:21). Hence, if the Corinthians are part of God’s new covenant people, they too, like Israel, must separate from the unbelievers around them. In fulfillment of Isaiah 52:11, Paul views the Corinthians as priests fulfilling Israel’s role (cf. Ex. 19:6), so that Paul calls them to separate from what is unclean. Now, however, the “unclean” are not unbelievers outside the people of God, but unbelievers who are threatening the church from within.
Paul’s argument in 6:14–17 illustrates that it is simply impossible to identify the Corinthians as a priestly people who are themselves the temple of God without drawing the moral implications that are inextricably part of it. The threefold scriptural commands of 6:17a-c lead directly to the threefold promises of 6:17d–18, which, like the commands, are also a conflation of Old Testament texts—this time Ezekiel 20:34b, 2 Samuel 7:14, and Isaiah 43:6.
In its original context, Ezekiel 20:34 is God’s promise of welcome to those returning home from the Exile. Just as Isaiah 52:11 calls God’s people to “come out” from the world as a result of the “second exodus,” Ezekiel 20:34 promises that God will “receive” them back when they do so.16 Its subsequent combination with the promise of a Davidic Messiah from 2 Samuel 7:14 points to the Jewish expectation that the redemption from the Exile would take place through the reign of David’s long-promised “son,” who is also identified as God’s “Son.”
In accordance with this expectation, in 6:18 Paul quotes the adoption formula from 2 Samuel 7:14, but now makes it plural (“sons”) to refer to the Corinthians, in accordance with the previous texts. Finally, Paul then combines it with the reference to “daughters” from Isaiah 43:6, where the “second exodus” restoration of Israel is expressed in terms of sons and daughters (cf. 49:22; 60:4). As a result of bringing these two texts together, God’s promise to become the “father” of David’s “son,” who came to be seen as the Messiah, is expanded to include all of God’s people, who, in Christ, become God’s “sons and daughters.” This expansion of 2 Samuel 7:14 in terms of Isaiah 43:6 reflects the Jewish tradition of interpretation in which the regathered people of God (Ezek. 20:34) come to be seen as the adopted sons and daughters of God.17
Indeed, “I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters,” is the “adoption” formula that is used in Scripture to indicate the covenant relationship between God and his people. In using this formula, Paul is reflecting the Jewish expectation that God’s people would one day be “adopted” as his children by virtue of their allegiance to and incorporation in God’s “adopted son,” the Messiah.18 As a fulfillment of this expectation, the Corinthians, already incorporated into Jesus as the messianic “Son” of God, are promised that they too, as God’s “sons and daughters,” will one day participate in the consummation of God’s salvation (for the corresponding use of the concept of “adoption” [huiothesia], cf. Rom. 8:15, 23; 9:4; Gal. 4:4–5; Eph. 1:5). Who the Corinthians are now in the midst of history (2 Cor. 6:16) is matched by who God promises they will be at the end of history (6:18).
Again, Paul’s point is as stark as it is clear. Since the Corinthians are already part of God’s new covenant people in fulfillment of the prophets’ hopes (6:16c-e), they must separate from the unbelievers among them (6:17a-c) in anticipation of God’s final deliverance (6:18). The promise of a continuing covenant relationship and final redemption (6:18) is given only to those who keep the covenant stipulations (6:17), which in this case entail demonstrating their covenant identity by separating from impurity (6:14–16). In other words, the kingdom is here, but it is not yet here in all its fullness.
Thus, 6:16c–18 reflects the same covenant structure and “already/not yet” tension that is characteristic of Paul’s theology as a whole. As members of the same covenant, God and his people belong to one another in the same family, each with their own roles and responsibilities. In this context, the emphasis falls on the responsibility of God’s children to separate from those within the covenant who, in reality, do not belong and are therefore rendering it unclean.
Nevertheless, Paul’s call to the Corinthians is grounded not in their own abilities, but in the present exercise of God’s sovereignty to deliver and protect his people as their Father. This point is reflected in his choice of the title “the Lord Almighty” to close his quotes, which occurs only here among Paul’s writings (but cf. Rev. 1:8; 4:8; 11:17; 15:3; 16:7, 14; 19:6, 15; 21:22). Paul may, however, have used this title simply because it occurs in 2 Samuel 7:8, 27 (LXX), the larger context from which 7:14 has been taken.
The Command and Its Support Restated (7:1)
IN 7:1, PAUL closes this section by restating his command, now bracketed by a summary of its support: “Since we have these promises … [therefore] let us purify ourselves … [in that we are] perfecting holiness….”19 Thus, the command of 6:14a is restated in different words in 7:1, both of which are supported by the argument from Scripture in the middle, which has its own command in 6:17. Everything in this passage supports this one exhortation, given in two forms. And as this carefully structured argument again reveals, inheriting God’s promises in the future is based on keeping his commands in the present, which in turn is brought about by working out the holiness that has already been granted to those who are part of God’s people (cf. 1:1). Obedience is future motivated; hope is the engine of ethics.
On the one hand, the “promises” of 7:1 refer most directly back to 6:17d–18. These covenant promises were first granted to Israel through Abraham and are now being fulfilled, albeit not yet in all their fullness, in the church’s experience of the Spirit (cf. 1:20; also Rom. 4:13–17; 9:4; 15:8; Gal. 3:14, 16, 21). Having received this deposit of the Spirit, the church anticipates with confidence her final reception as God’s sons and daughters. Within the framework of Paul’s conviction that the “second exodus” redemption of God’s people is already beginning to take place in the church (2 Cor. 6:16–18), Paul’s command in 7:1 is to be read from this same “new covenant” perspective. Those who hope in God’s future redemption purify themselves in the present. Specifically, the “purification” imagery in 7:1 picks up the priestly image from Isaiah 52:11 in 2 Corinthians 6:17.20
On the other hand, Paul’s reference to “perfecting holiness in the fear of God” summarizes his earlier statements concerning the incompatibility between God’s people and idolaters, with their implication that to pollute God’s temple is to fall under his judgment. Just as Paul’s own proclamation of the gospel was driven by his “fear of the Lord” (5:11), so too those who receive this gospel should live in light of this same reality.21 For this reason, Paul addresses the Corinthians in 7:1 as agapetoi (lit., “beloved”), which is a specifically Christian form of direct address often used in contexts of exhortation.22 It underscores that the obedience in view is not the believer’s attempt to win God’s love, but the covenant stipulation or response that flows from already being loved by God in Christ (cf. its use in 2 Cor. 12:19; also Rom. 12:19; 1 Cor. 10:14; 15:58; Phil. 2:12; 4:1). Note too that Paul includes himself in the promises and command of 7:1 (“since we … let us …”), thereby expressing his solidarity with his church.
Thus, as in 6:14–16a, so too in 7:1 Paul takes the strong language normally used in the polemic against pagan idolatry and applies it to his opponents. This metaphorical use of purification or cleansing is not unique to Paul. In Qumran, to cleanse oneself can refer not only to an actual act of ritual purity, but also, in fulfillment of Ezekiel 36:26, to obedience to the precepts of God as that which “cleanses” one (cf. 1QS 3:8–9). In the same way, Paul’s exhortation that God’s people “purify themselves” recalls his earlier statements in 3:3, where the promise of the Spirit’s purifying work to enable God’s people to obey his statutes (from Ezek. 36:26–27) is applied to the Corinthians under the new covenant. Thus, Paul’s closing admonition in 7:1 recalls his opening argumentation in 2:14–3:6. In keeping with the overarching reality of the new covenant as outlined in 3:7–18, Paul now widens his focus beyond any one particular issue and directs his command to “everything that contaminates body and spirit,” that is, to anything that impacts the believer’s life (cf. 1 Cor. 6:17–19; 7:34).
Within the polemical situation in which Paul finds himself, the specific application of his general command in 6:14, 17, and 7:1 is to flee anything that would keep one from being “reconciled with God” (5:20) and from accepting the grace of God in vain (6:1). Positively, this means having an “open heart” toward Paul (6:13; cf. 7:2–4); negatively, this means separating from those who reject him and his gospel (6:14; 7:1), that is, closing one’s heart to Paul’s opponents with their “different gospel” (cf. 11:4). For nothing less than the true gospel of the new covenant, the genuine presence of the Spirit, and the rightful identity of God’s people are in the balance.
Whether or not one responds to Paul’s call in 6:14–7:1 will reveal publicly whether or not one has been reconciled to God as a genuine believer (cf. 13:5–10). Conversely, as Thrall has pointed out, since the Corinthians are Paul’s letter of commendation (3:2), “if they fail to maintain the holiness proper to God’s covenant people (cf. Lev. 19:2), then the validity of both the message and the ministry of the new covenant will be called into question.”23 Within this framework it becomes evident that 6:14–7:1 is not a later insertion into Paul’s argument, but a fitting application of his covenant perspective.
The “fear of God” that motivates the believer’s perseverance in holiness is therefore not simply a desire to gain rewards or an attitude of “reverence for God.” Rather, as its allusion back to 5:10–11 indicates, it refers to God’s judgment between believers and unbelievers, since the “fear of the Lord” is the distinguishing mark of the wise (Ps. 2:11; 5:7; Prov. 1:7, 29; 8:13). We ought not to downsize our appropriate response to the righteous and sovereign “Lord Almighty” into simply revering who he is. When we encounter God, we encounter ourselves as sinful.
Bridging Contexts
STEP ONE: BEING yoked together. As we have seen, the main point of this passage is Paul’s call to the Corinthians not to be “yoked together with unbelievers” (6:14), which is the specific application of the more general command to “purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit” (7:1). The first step from Paul’s day to our own is to wrestle with the significance of “being yoked together.” We have argued above that to be “yoked together” is not a technical term referring specifically to a legal or culturally binding act (like getting married or joining the army, though such events may indeed represent such an act). Rather, it is a metaphor referring to any kind of joint participation, formal or informal, that significantly forms one’s own identity. To be “yoked together” is to take on the identity of those who are joined together for a common goal or task. It is to be someone’s “ally.”
For example, those involved in politics are “yoked together” when they gain their identity as members of the same party; athletes are “yoked together” on a team bearing the same name; citizens are “yoked together” by geography and civil commitments; workers are “yoked together” by function, gaining their identity from being a plumber or stock broker; members of a social class are “yoked together” by common economic status, lifestyle opportunities, and expectations. By contrast, casual, nondefining participation does not constitute such a yoke. Going to a political convention does not necessarily make one a Republican, just as playing softball periodically does not make someone a member of a team, or fixing a faucet, a plumber.
Determining whether someone is “yoked together” with someone is therefore a judgment call that depends on the degree, significance, purpose, and level of self-identification involved in one’s participation. A person can be a middle-class Republican from Chicago who is a plumber during the week, and on the weekend part of the Aces softball team. Or that same person could live like the middle class, even though rich; support a Republican candidate for election, even though an independent; live in Chicago, but be from Boston; fix a faucet without being a plumber; and play catch without being on a team. Deciding what “yokes” we wear is a matter of discernment. The key question becomes: What associations determine who I am?
Step two: defining unbelievers. This brings us to the second significant interpretive question raised by this text: Who are the “unbelievers” of 6:14 and what is the “idolatry” in view? In other words, with whom should we not become identified, and in what contexts? The answer to these questions will determine how this passage is applied in our contemporary situation.
Recent scholarship has seen three different responses to these queries. (1) Some argue that the “unbelievers” and “idols” in this passage are general terms that simply refer to becoming unduly allied with those who do not follow Christ. This passage is then applied to all areas of life, from worship and work to marriage and education, in order to maintain a purity in the world from all idolatrous defilement. As Furnish puts it, “believers are to avoid any alliance with the world that would be unworthy of a community which understands itself as the temple of the living God.”24 Although we have seen that “unbelievers” does refer to those who do not follow Christ, when taken in this way, our passage creates an unresolvable tension with 1 Corinthians 5:9–10, where Paul recognizes the necessity of participating in the affairs of this world. In fact, Paul never calls Christians to separate from “unbelievers” in the common affairs of society. Moreover, in our present context Paul is not concerned with relationships in the world, but with relationships within the church (cf. 5:11–13).
(2) On the other extreme, some take “unbelievers” and “idols” to refer specifically to the problem of eating meat offered to idols addressed in 1 Corinthians 8–10. From this perspective, Paul is once again calling the Corinthians to abstain from food that has knowingly been offered to idols and from participating in the worship of idols. Paul prohibits meat offered to idols since it violates the consciences of others; he prohibits partaking in feasts held in pagan temples because it compromises the Corinthians’ own Christian commitment and identity as the temple of the living God (cf. 8:7–13; 10:14–30). Read in this way, the passage remains a concrete warning against participating in non-Christian worship. But although there are parallels in terminology between 2 Corinthians 6:14–7:1 and 1 Corinthians 8–10, this interpretation does not do justice to the context of 2 Corinthians itself. There is no indication in this letter that Paul is still concerned with the spiritually strong in Corinth, who were sharing in food offered to idols. Rather, Paul is here concerned with those who are in rebellion against his authority and gospel.
(3) The position taken here is that Paul’s concern is to call the Corinthians to align with his ministry by separating themselves from those who continue to side with his opponents. He drives this point home by identifying those still in rebellion against him as “unbelievers,” despite their own claims to the contrary, and by framing the issue in terms of idolatry and the temple of God. For this reason, Paul calls the Corinthians of genuine faith to separate from those “unbelievers” whose lives, under the deceptive influence of “Belial,” are characterized by the wickedness and darkness of unbelief (cf. 11:3–4, 13–15). The call in 6:14–7:1 for “the temple of the living God” to separate from “unbelievers” and idolatry parallels Paul’s earlier warning concerning destroying the temple of God (1 Cor. 3:16–17) and his call to disassociate with anyone who bears the name of “brother” if he is guilty of immorality or idolatry (1 Cor. 5:11).
Accordingly, the issue in 6:14–7:1 is not identical with the issues of Christian discipleship outlined in 1 Corinthians (esp. 1 Cor. 6:1–20; 7:10–16). Paul is not concerned here with the need for perseverance among believers within the church, nor is he concerned with relationships between believers and unbelievers outside the church. Rather, his focus is on separation from unbelievers who are seeking to divide the church from within. Hence, 2 Corinthians 6:14–7:1 is not about separating from fellow believers who do not share all of our theological commitments or ministry perspectives. Only God, in the end, can decide which of us is building with wood, hay, and straw (cf. 1 Cor. 3:10–15).
In other words, Paul’s concern here is that the faithful in Corinth separate from those who are not identified with Christ at all, despite their outward professions. Their words aside, they remain idolaters because they deny the Son with their worship of health and wealth, and unbelievers because they deny the life-transforming power of the Spirit, substituting instead a desire for spiritual ecstasy and miracles (cf. 3:3, 18; 11:4). In this sense, Paul is urging the same kind of separation from idolatry and pagan temples in 6:14–7:1 as in 1 Corinthians 10:14–22. Now, however, the pagans are not found in the temples of the Corinthian idols, but within the church herself.
This means that Paul’s admonition in 6:14 does not refer to civil affairs, as if Christians should do business only with Christians, live only in Christian neighborhoods, eat only with Christians in Christian restaurants, play only on Christian sports teams, and go only to Christian schools. These are all secondary associations that are not even available in most places of the world and do not necessarily define one’s primary identity as a member of God’s people. Indeed, such involvements will be necessary, unavoidable, and even essential for the spread of the gospel (cf. 1 Cor. 5:9–10; 9:19–23; 10:32–33). Paul envisions no separation between believers and unbelievers in social and civil contexts, even in “mixed” marriages created by a subsequent conversion of one of the spouses, as long as the unbeliever consents (cf. 1 Cor. 7:12–15; 10:27).
Our present passage is not a call to create a Christian ghetto, but a summons to purify the Christian community. Paul does not have in view the life of the church in the world, but the life of the world in the church. For as we have seen, the purity of 7:1 refers to both the cultic and moral expressions of the Christian life. That which contaminates the “body and spirit” is the compromise of the gospel within the life of God’s people. In 6:14–7:1, Paul is concerned with teaching, ways of life, and false expressions of worship that defile the purity of God’s people and hence, like participation in pagan temples, must also be avoided.
Step three: the church as the temple of God. The third step is to come to grips with the implications of the fact that Paul interprets the church as “the temple of the living God” (6:16) in terms of her being “adopted” as God’s sons and daughters (6:18). In fact, this identification is the key to Paul’s passion in this passage. His 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.”
To move from Paul’s day to our own in this regard requires taking this point seriously. The church’s horizontal relationships with one another derive from a common vertical relationship with God. Having been transformed by the presence of God in their midst (6:16; cf. 3:18), the glue that holds believers together is their common “fear of God,” not their common social class, race, or cause (6:17). The imperatives of 6:14, 6:17, and 7:1 all flow from the indicative reality of already being the “temple of God” (6:16b), and they all lead to the indicative promise of being God’s sons and daughters (6:17d–18). Without these realities, Paul’s commands degenerate into a self-protective and isolating separatism on the one hand, or into a legalistic casuistry on the other. In order to bridge from Paul’s context to our own, his family framework is therefore crucial: The church is the people of God, created by his presence, living in relationship to him, and existing for the purpose of glorifying him.
Step four: recovering the covenant perspective. The fourth step in bringing this passage to our day is to recover the covenant and eschatological perspective once again expressed in this passage (see above to 3:3–18). The realization that God’s final stage in redemptive history has begun should fuel our work to purify the church. The last days of God’s unfolding plan for the world are here. In the midst of this evil age, God is establishing outposts of the kingdom in anticipation of the return of Christ. God has a plan for the world—and the church is it! Believers need a bigger picture of who they are. J. B. Phillip’s famous line, “Your God is too small” needs a sequel, “Your church is too small,” not in terms of numbers, but in terms of her self-understanding. The people of the new covenant have cosmic significance as the people of the last days of God’s unfolding plan for the world. Living between the two comings of Christ is consequently the key to Paul’s emphasis on the necessity of obedience.
Many commentators are uncomfortable with Paul’s insistence that the future reception of the divine promises in 6:17d–18 and 7:1 depends on our present obedience to the commands, thus apparently implying some kind of “works theology.” Nothing is farther from the truth. Paul is not advocating some kind of synergism in which we cooperate with God by doing our part, now that God has done his. Salvation is his work, past, present, and future. From Paul’s perspective, the promises in view in this passage have already begun to be fulfilled in the lives of God’s people, even though they are not yet consummated. We should cleanse ourselves from every defilement (7:1b) because of the promises God has granted us (7:1a).
Yet these promises were themselves grounded in the reality depicted in the rhetorical questions of 6:14b–16b. God promises what he does not because his people will earn them through their obedience, but because they already belong to the church. His promises are given to his people. Paul did not say, “Obey the command in order to become God’s people”; he said, “Obey the command because you are God’s people.” That is why all obedience is an expression of the same grace and power that saved his people to begin with.
As the references to the church as the temple of God indicate, Paul is thinking covenantally here. God’s acts of deliverance in the past, which are the basis of the covenant, lead to his commands for the present, which make up the stipulations of the covenant. In turn, keeping these stipulations is tied to God’s promises for the future, which are the blessings of the covenant. Thus, as we live in the present, based on what God has done in the past, our focus is on the future. The call to faith is not a call to remember the past, but to trust God in the present.
Obedience is therefore the consequence of what God has already done for us, driven by what he promises yet to do for us. The necessity of obedience is the flip side of the righteousness in Christ that forms our identity as the temple of the Holy Spirit (6:14–16). It follows then that inheriting God’s promises is contingent on our obedience, because our obedience is the expression of having already begun to inherit these very promises. Moreover, the down payment of these promises is the Holy Spirit himself, who empowers us for the very obedience to which we are called. What God has already done for us in Christ and through his Spirit secures our hope for what he will do when Christ returns (1:22; 3:3, 6, 8, 18; 6:16).
So our hopes for the future and our ability to obey in the present are both founded on God’s acts in the past. Christ died on the cross in order that we might become the righteousness of God and inherit this eternal home, having granted us a foretaste of his glory in the Spirit (3:9; 5:21; 6:14). This hope determines how we now live. Like all people, what we long for determines how we act. All human behavior is driven by what we think is going to happen or what we want to happen in the future. All action is goal-oriented. The past makes the present possible, but the future determines what the present actually looks like. In short, the foundation of faith is God’s redemptive acts in the past; the focus of faith is his promised redemption still to come, the life of faith is depending on God to meet our needs in the meantime. Hope is the engine of ethics.
This movement from the past to the future to the present once again reflects the tension in the New Testament between what has “already” happened in Christ and what has “not yet” taken place. Christians are “saved in hope” (Rom. 8:24). Because of God’s saving work in Christ, his people already experience God’s presence (2 Cor. 6:16). At the same time, they look forward to that time when the kingdom will be established in all its glory (6:17d–18). The link between this present experience and future expectation is the growing purity of God’s people, since it is based on what God has already done and motivated by the promises that derive from it (7:1).
In Christ, God’s promises have already been granted to his people as matter of unconditional grace. But at the same time their continuing and future enjoyment is conditioned on keeping the covenant stipulations that flow from his prior acts of deliverance. Not to keep these commands is to deny the reality of God’s presence and power that has been bestowed under the new covenant. Paul calls us to strive for holiness precisely because of the holiness we have already experienced through Christ. Indeed, the keeping of these commands is itself an expression of the enabling work of God’s grace in our lives. Rather than “quenching the Spirit,” a recovery of serious theological reflection on the nature of our covenant relationship with God and on our place within the history of redemption is therefore crucial for the life of the church. It is this reflection to which Paul drives us in this passage.
The perspective argued here is therefore distinct from those who do not take Paul’s reference in 7:1 to “perfecting holiness” to signify a process of moral transformation. Instead, they interpret it to refer merely to separating from idol cults or to continuing in faith, defined as mental assent to the truth of historical data. Such views cannot accept that growth in sanctification is the necessary way by which believers purify themselves. They fear that the reading of the text argued for here introduces an insipid legalism into the gospel of grace.
This fear, however, is unfounded. Furthermore, these interpretations cannot account for the parallel between the process of transformation in 3:18 and 7:1, or for the parallel between the “fear of the Lord” in 5:11 and the “fear of God” in 7:1 (cf. too Eph. 5:21; 6:5; Phil. 2:12). These parallels indicate that the holiness in view must entail an actual progress in living according to God’s will that manifests itself in deeds by which we will be judged as part of the “new creation” (2 Cor. 5:17). As part of this new creation, the Corinthians testify by their separation from evil that the consequences of humanity’s fall in Genesis 3 and of Israel’s idolatry in Exodus 32 are being reversed in their lives.
Against this backdrop, 6:14–7:1 is not a later insertion into Paul’s argument, but a fitting application of his covenant perspective. The call to separate from unbelievers, like the calls to reaffirm their allegiance to Paul and his ministry that frame them (cf. 6:11–13 and 7:2), is grounded in the covenant formulae and their implications as quoted in 6:16–18. In the light of the new covenant, Paul’s operating assumption is that it is simply impossible to be in God’s presence and not manifest a transformed life (cf. 1 Cor. 6:9–11, 19–20; 2 Cor. 3:18; 5:17).
Contemporary Significance
STRIVING FOR PURITY. In drawing out the significance of this passage, the stress in 7:1 on purifying ourselves “from everything that contaminates body and spirit” is striking. In 6:14–7:1, Paul is concerned with teaching and ways of life that defile the purity of God’s people. Like the Corinthians’ earlier participation in pagan temples, believers must avoid such pollutants at all costs. For the Corinthians, obeying this call entailed separating from those still opposing Paul and his ministry. Today, too, any commitment, relationship, or practice that adversely impacts our identity as members of God’s people must be separated from the church. Moreover, it is important to keep in mind that in this passage “purity” is first and foremost not a ceremonial designation, but a moral one. “Righteousness” in 6:14 is contrasted with wickedness. It is the character of the Christian that is primarily in view.
As we strive for this purity, we must think anew concerning the ways in which people are “yoked together” in a society of individual isolation and private morality. Determining whether one is yoked together with others can be difficult in a culture that is less and less community-based and more and more unsure of moral absolutes. In our day, we increasingly live alone in a mass culture. The only thing that ties us together is the ever-present, all-pervasive media. As a result, our “yokes” are usually not experienced concretely with specific individuals or groups, but established privately with disembodied values. In Western society today, “yokes with unbelievers” are more readily established through TV and the shopping mall than with a neighbor. Most of us do not even know the names of our neighbors, though we know the names and family histories of dozens of movie, sports, music, and TV personalities.
The parallels in this passage between being “yoked together” and sharing things “in common,” “having fellowship,” creating “harmony,” and being in “agreement” with unbelievers should therefore not be reduced to a narrow category of behavior that applies only to marriage and to worshiping in non-Christian ways. Neither should they be interpreted as a broad category that includes agreements between Christians and non-Christians in areas of common cultural participation. Paul is not calling for a Christian ghetto. Instead, in the words of Hauerwas and Willimon, he is calling for a Christian “colony,” that is, “an island of one culture in the middle of another,” a “colony of resident aliens within a hostile environment, which, in the most subtle but deadly of ways, corrupts and co-opts us as Christians.”25
Like Paul, pastors today should consequently be “called to help us gather the resources we need to be the colony of God’s righteousness.”26 At the heart of this calling is the preservation of the Christian community through the cultivation of Christian character and the weeding out of wickedness. Paul’s concern is that believers, who bear the name of Christ, not maintain relationships of shared values that will pollute and eventually destroy the character of God’s people.
In addition, Paul’s suffering on behalf of the Corinthians demonstrates that his call for separation, which strikes us today as harsh and uncompromising, is, in reality, a reflection of his deep love for the Corinthians (cf. 6:11–13; 7:2–4). For, as Hauerwas and Willimon again observe,
how is falsehood confronted except in a manner that always seems severe to the one tangled in deceit? The cost of
not confronting our deceit is high also: nothing less than the death of our life together. The ancient
Didache begins, “Two ways there are, one of Life and one of Death, and there is a great difference between the two ways.” The ethical stance of these early Christians … was a concrete application of their theological assertions. The church was called to be colony, an alternative community, a sign, a signal to the world that Christ has made possible a way of life together unlike anything the world had seen.
Not to confront lies and deceit, greed and self-service … would be the death of this church.
27For the good of God’s people, Paul can stomach no compromise between idolatry and the temple of God for which he has laid down his life. Paul’s call for separation grows out of his profound understanding of the life-changing difference between being in the world and being in the church (6:14–16). In contrast, though confronted with a church that is yoked together with the idolatry of its culture’s materialism and with the pride of its moral laxity, we have lost this moral and spiritual power because of our vacuous views of God and our consequent unwillingness to suffer for others and the gospel. As a result, our contemporary concerns over the weakness of the church, usually framed in terms of numerical growth, are often thinly veiled special pleadings for the sake of our own status and meeting the budget.
Thus, there is nothing more significant from this passage than Paul’s persuasion that the church is the place of God’s presence within the history of redemption. Today, however, the church is often merely “a conspiracy of cordiality,” in which we refuse to confront each other out of a lukewarm definition of “love” that “keeps everyone as distant from everyone else as possible…. This accounts for why, to many people, church becomes suffocatingly superficial. Everybody agrees to talk about everything here except what matters…. The loneliness and detachment of modern life, the way we are all made strangers, infects the church too.”28 But Paul loves the Corinthians too much to settle for anything less than their being received as God’s sons and daughters. Having been reconciled to God, believers are to be known by their “righteousness” as the “temple of God.” Christians are a people who worship God only and trust in him alone for their future.
Hence, in order to determine the pockets of idolatry in our lives together as God’s people, we must evaluate carefully the influence of our daily commitments, our social practices, and, most important, those values that we share in common with our culture. Most often, the idolatry we face is our culture’s smothering covetousness, in which happiness is derived from more possessions and security comes from increasing our financial stability. As believers, we sanitize this covetousness by perverting God’s power and presence into a means to some other end. Since all we need to be happy is Jesus and the Christian family, Jesus and material blessings, Jesus and a growing ministry, Jesus and my neighbor’s spouse, Jesus and whatever it is we do not have now, we turn following Jesus into a means to these other ends. Such a perversion makes serving Jesus the means to satisfying our idolatry!
Yet, as God’s people, our yoke is to the “living God” alone (6:16). We must be careful here. It is not usually our self-chosen identity labels that indicate with whom we are yoked (e.g., “I am an evangelical, Calvinistic, Baptist”). Rather, it is the “labels” that our behavior suggests to others that offer a good clue to the various “yokes” we carry and with whom we carry them. Do our lives demonstrate publicly and privately that we belong to the “colony” of the church, with its distinct subculture of righteousness, or to the dominant culture of the world around us?
We must not create churches that preach the glory of Christ while at the same time cultivate lifestyles that focus on attaining the pleasures of this world. We cannot declare the sovereignty of God and at the same time promote looking to the self-help strategies of our culture as the pathway to salvation. We cannot preach the power of God and wink at sin. The arrogant exaltation of our human egos and the love of money are the twin pillars of the wickedness and darkness that the opponent of God is using today to bring the idols of the health and wealth gospel into the church. May God grant us the strength to be his people alone.
Seeking to be the church. It is not enough, therefore, to police our private lives. In this passage, Paul’s primary concern is for the purity of the corporate church as the temple and family of God. Like Paul, we must not shrink back either from exercising church discipline whenever it becomes evident that unrepentant idolatry exists within the body of Christ. This is not easy in modern society. Because of the church’s weakened self-understanding of what it means to be the people and place of God’s presence in the world, porous conceptual and ethical boundaries now exist between the church and the culture. And disciplining the church is made even more difficult by the consumer attitude that allows members to church-hop if they cannot “get along” in their former congregation.
Nevertheless, such difficulties must not deter us from working hard to sustain our identity as God’s people in a particular place who, because of his presence in our lives, may live in a way the world regards as peculiar. Those who forsake living for the pleasures of this world because they pale in comparison to living for Christ will look exceedingly strange to those for whom this world is all there is (cf. 4:16–18). Our freedom from idolatry is our witness to the world.
Christianity is mostly a matter of politics—politics as defined by the gospel. The call to be part of the gospel is a joyful call to be adopted by an alien people, to join a countercultural phenomenon, a new
polis called church. The challenge of the gospel is not the intellectual dilemma of how to make an archaic system of belief compatible with modern belief systems. The challenge of Jesus is the political dilemma of how to be faithful to a strange community, which is shaped by a story of how God is with us….This church knows that its most credible form of witness (and the most “effective” thing it can do for the world) is the actual creation of a living, breathing, visible community of faith….The most creative social strategy we have to offer is the church. Here we show the world a manner of life the world can never achieve through social coercion or governmental action. We serve the world by showing it something that it is not, namely, a place where God is forming a family out of strangers….The only way for the world to know that it is being redeemed is for the church to point to the Redeemer by being a redeemed people. The way for the world to know that it needs redeeming, that it is broken and fallen, is for the church to enable the world to strike hard against something which is an alternative to what the world offers.
29This acknowledgment of the desperate need to regain a living expression of what it means to be the community of God’s presence is growing today across all church boundaries. For example, the concern expressed above by the Methodists Hauerwas and Willimon is echoed in the recent work of Everett Ferguson. When summarizing what it means to be the people of God, Ferguson, a Church of Christ scholar, takes his initial cues from Hans Küng, the liberal Catholic theologian, only to conclude by quoting John Howard Yoder, the Anabaptist ethicist!30 From Küng, Ferguson draws the fundamental point of our passage: “The church must be separated from the conduct characteristic of the world. Since you are God’s people (2 Cor. 6:16), therefore you must live as God’s people (2 Cor. 6:17) in order truly to be God’s people (2 Cor. 6:18).”31 From Yoder, Ferguson supports his own observation that Paul’s understanding of the church as “true peoplehood … found in God through Jesus Christ (Gal. 3:28; Col. 3:11)” transcends all of the “false (and potentially sinful) principles of unity around which people organize themselves” (e.g., citizenship, race, occupation, economic status, political doctrine, social class, education, etc.).32 In Yoder’s words:
This new Christian community in which the walls are broken down not by human idealism or democratic legalism but by the work of Christ is not only a vehicle of the gospel or fruit of the gospel; it is good news. It is not merely the agent of mission or the constituency of a mission agency. This
is the mission.
33Yoder’s words remind us that Paul’s concern for the purity of the Corinthian church must not be construed as a desire for isolation. It is separation for the sake of mission. Just as Paul’s life embodied the cross and mediated the Spirit (cf. 2:14–3:14; 4:1–18), so too the character of the covenant community is the embodiment of the gospel in the world. We show the all-sufficiency of God’s sovereignty and our satisfaction in his presence by the way we live. In this sense, our way of life is part of our worship. We praise God by prizing him above all people and things.
Thus, Paul’s admonitions in 6:14–7:1 are not only those of a pastor; they are also those of a missionary. The mission of the church is not merely to spread a message, as if the goal of the gospel were information, but to replicate itself within every people group on the globe. In this passage Paul is speaking not as someone whose feelings are hurt, but as the missionary apostle to the Gentiles. The Corinthians are not students in a classroom taking notes on theology (as important as the doctrinal formulation of the church is), but a pocket of God’s presence from which Paul hopes to launch even more forays into enemy territory (cf. 10:12–18). So part of the reason Paul’s call for purity in the church seems so foreign to us today is that we have lost his missionary zeal for the world. May God use us to witness to his all-sufficient power and love as the “Lord Almighty.”
Living as a redeemed community. How then can we begin to recover and respond to Paul’s admonitions today? (1) We must recover our sense of redemptive history. As we have seen, Paul’s calls in 6:14 and 7:1 are based on his understanding of the church’s place within God’s saving purposes and plans. Our lives are part of his story. Indeed, “the moment that life is formed on the presumption that we are not participants in God’s continuing history of creation and redemption, we are acting on unbelief rather than faith.”34 This recovery will require a concerted effort of biblical and theological study, as well as a pattern of preaching that takes the biblical canon and flow of history seriously. For as William A. Dyrness points out, we in the West have trouble conceptualizing ourselves as part of an ongoing history, since culturally “our incurable optimism has replaced history with anticipation…. Middle-class Americans seem to have lost all sense of a narrative connection with the past.”35
Without an understanding of God’s redemptive work in creating a community of faith, the church will have trouble surviving the pressure of our culture to succumb to the power of positive thinking, the assumption of progress, and the humanity-worshiping “incurable optimism” that pervades our thinking. Faith takes root not in the latest mystical experience on the market, but in the history of redemption that stretches from the covering of Adam and Eve and the call of Abraham to the exodus from Egypt and the coming of Christ.
(2) We must recover our understanding of the church as a “peculiar people.” This will take a concerted effort of cultural analysis as well as a willingness to consider ourselves “cross-cultural” missionaries to our own culture. To this end, we must resist turning this text into moralism. The divide Paul makes in the world is not between those who are trying hard and those who are not; it is a fundamental divide between those who belong to Christ and are empowered by the Spirit and those who are still dead in their sin because they are living under the rule of the spirit who, as “Belial,” is now working against God in the sons of disobedience (cf. 2 Cor. 4:4; Eph. 2:2). It is for this reason that God’s people, who are now the Most Holy Place, can have no agreement with idols (2 Cor. 6:16).
The heart of sin is to bring an idol into the Most Holy Place (i.e., into our lives) through adopting the values and goals of the godless culture in which we live. The first commandment, “You shall have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:3), is most likely a spatial reference to bringing false idols into the temple in order to worship them along with Yahweh, the one true God who had rescued his people from Egypt (20:1–2). Similarly, the temptation to idolatry among God’s people today is not to deny God outright but to distrust his all-sufficiency and sovereignty, so that we continue to need God and something else to get us through and make us happy: God and a better job, God and a better spouse, God and a better front lawn, God and my neighbor’s cottage, God and a vacation.
Again we are reminded of what Paul tells us in Ephesians 5:5 and Colossians 3:5: Covetousness is the heart of idolatry, since the first and the last commandment are, in reality, the same commandment. To say to oneself, “If I only had what Suzie or Jim had, then I could be happy,” is to be an idolater who denies the sufficiency of the presence, power, and love of God to satisfy our souls (see the Contemporary Significance section of 3:4–6 and Bridging Contexts section of 5:1–10).
(3) Most important, we must recover a God-centered focus that exalts God’s sufficiency in all that we do and say within the church. God alone can free us from idolatry by satisfying the deepest longings of our hearts. It is no accident that although Paul is describing the believer’s entire way of life and not a gathering to worship as such, his language throughout this passage is nevertheless the language of the temple and of worship. Our willingness to forsake the happiness offered by the idols of our culture is an act of worship that exalts God through our dependence on him alone. It is also the natural magnet that draws others to God by displaying the life-changing majesty of his righteousness, moral light, and saving mercy (6:14–15). God’s presence is seen in the idol-free lives of his people, who as God’s temple are being transformed into his own image by virtue of his glory (6:16; cf. 3:18).
In the end, such heartfelt and heart-filled worship, expressed in separation from idols, cannot be faked or manufactured. The covenant structure of Paul’s argument in 6:16–18 and 7:1 has again underscored that only those who belong to Christ now will value and long for God’s promises for the future, and only those who long for God’s promises for the future will be motivated to purify themselves in the present. The pathway to holiness, therefore, is not more willpower, but worship. The exaltation of God’s character is the pathway to holiness since it displays the worth of being his people, as well as creating the fear of forfeiting his promises that keeps God’s people persevering in faith. At the same time, such God-centered worship will expose those whose doctrine and way of life denigrate the holiness of God, the value of his promises, and the saving significance of Christ.
Hence, since it is ultimately the “fear of God” that drives Paul’s concern for the Corinthians, his ethics can never be reduced to a “self-help” program of organized common sense (cf. 5:11 with 7:1). Rather, his admonitions are the expression of knowing that God walks among us as our God (6:16). For this reason, “All ministry can be evaluated by essentially liturgical criteria: How well does the act of ministry enable people to be with God?”36 Yet, because the contemporary church has so often failed to be the place where his holiness is manifest by our idol-free lives, Paul’s concern to purify the life of the church from idolatry has become almost unintelligible today. Indeed, over thirty years ago Langdon Gilkey asked, “How the church can minister to the world, which is its task, without losing itself, which is always its danger.”37 In view of Paul’s argument in 6:14–7:1, Gilkey’s analysis of the situation holds the answer:
All around us we see the church well acclimated to culture: successful, respected, wealthy, full, and growing. But are the transcendent and the holy there? In the area of belief we find widespread indifference to the Bible and ignorance of its contents—and strong resentment if a biblical word of judgment is brought to bear on the life of the congregation. In worship we find notably lacking any sense of the holy presence of God and of what worship is for…. In ethics we find the cultural ideals of friendliness and fellowship more evident than the difficult standards of the New Testament or historic Christendom.
38Paul’s words in this passage are an iron shot in the arm of the anemic church. Paul reminds us that nothing less than inheriting God’s promises is at stake in how we live with God and with one another. To be received as God’s sons and daughters on the day when Christ judges the world, we must live as God’s children now. This means cultivating a purity of devotion to our heavenly Father that separates from anyone or anything that would compromise our lives as those who trust in God alone for our future.
The fear of losing God keeps us close to him. The fear of falling under his judgment rather than being welcomed into his presence as his children keeps us persevering. Of course, such a fear of God, grounded in his grace, makes sense only to those in whom he already dwells, over whom Christ already reigns, and among whom the light of divine righteousness is already shining. Only believers fear God truly, since only those who have already begun to enjoy his presence can taste the horror of what it would be like to be without it. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, just as it is the beginning of the passion for holiness among God’s people. Those who fear his judgment because they love his presence put away the filth of God-compromising idolatry and wickedness from their lives, both individually and corporately.
May God grant us a fresh glimpse of his glory and a renewed vision of the splendor of his promises, that we may perfect our holiness by fearing him alone.