April 17, 2009 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1

Warning About Non-Christians
You are not the same as those who do not believe. So do not join yourselves to them. Good and bad do not belong together. Light and darkness cannot share together. How can Christ and Belial, the devil, have any agreement? What can a believer have together with a non-believer? The temple of God cannot have any agreement with idols, and we are the temple of the living God. As God said: "I will live with them and walk with them. And I will be their God, and they will be my people." "Leave those people, and be separate, says the Lord. Touch nothing that is unclean, and I will accept you." "I will be your father, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty." Dear friends, we have these promises from God, so we should make ourselves pure--free from anything that makes body or soul unclean. We should try to become holy in the way we live, because we respect God. ~2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1~

So at first, I was confused as to what this passage was stating. The NIV version of verse 14 says, "Do not be yoked together with unbelievers." What does that mean? In 1 Corinthians 5:9-10, Paul tells us that we must associate with those sinful people of the world, as long as they are not being fake. Now he's telling us to not be yoked with these people. What is he saying? Yoke is a term for the harness that animals wear to keep them together.

I believe what Paul is saying is that we must associate ourselves with the worldly people, but not yoke ourselves. There's a difference between associating and yoking. We should associate ourselves with the worldly people in order to keep them aware that we are believers, that there is a God. We need not to yoke ourselves with them so that we may not do what they do. By yoking ourselves to them, it may prevent us from being able to open up our hearts to God. We need to watch out what kind of fellowship we're having. We need to watch for relationships, dating, and marriage. Those are all things we need to consider when associating ourselves with those worldly people. But no matter what, we need not to be yoked together with those unbelievers. While we separate ourselves from those people, so that we may stay clean and safe, God will walk with them.

The question we need to ask ourselves is...looking back on our relationships, we need to ask if it's a healthy relationship, or if it's a hurtful relationship. Will the relationship with that person lead you closer to God or to fall further away from God?