Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? 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.”
Therefore,
“Come out from them
and be separate,
says the Lord.
Touch no unclean thing,
and I will receive you.”
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. (2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1)
I have entitled this sermon: “Christ & Culture: Not a Yoking Matter”. Since this is a serious sermon, I’ve decided to get the funny stuff out of the way right at the beginning. So here we go…
- What did the comedian say to the chicken? … Got any good yokes?
- Why don’t oxen laugh at funny gags? … Because the yokes on them.
- I made a joke about boiled eggs the other day… It was a solid yoke.
OK. On to the serious stuff…
A Difficult Passage
There are at least two difficulties involved with interpreting this passage from 2 Corinthians. First, when one reads straight through 2 Corinthians in one sitting, this passage, from 2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1, appears to be an interruption in Paul’s flow of thought. Some scholars have explained this digression by suggesting that this passage is from a completely different letter. Others have suggested that this section was not written by Paul at all. Still others point out that Paul was quite capable of digressing from his main argument in numerous places in his letters.
The second difficulty we find when trying to interpret this passage concerns the fact that we do not know what specific situation in Corinth Paul was addressing when he wrote: “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers.”
Paul says something like this in 1 Corinthians 5:9. There Paul says, “I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people.” “Sexually immoral people” is one word in Greek: πόρνοις. At the most literal level, this word means “a prostitute”. In 1 Corinthians you may remember that Paul also addressed the issue of a man in the congregation who was sleeping with his stepmother. Paul condemns this behavior and encourages the Corinthians to withdraw from fellowship with this man. Perhaps these were the sorts of situations Paul had in mind when he said, “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers.”
Though we do not know what specific situation or situations Paul was addressing with this command, we can guess from whence Paul is drawing his metaphor of the “yoke”. In Deuteronomy 22:10 we read, “Do not plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together.” In the book of Leviticus also (see 19:19) there is the idea that certain things are fundamentally incompatible and were never meant to be brought together.
When Paul asks, “What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols?” he may also be thinking of Hebrew Scripture. In 2 Kings 21:1-9 evil King Manasseh brings a graven image into the temple of God. And later, in 2 Kings 23, we read about good King Josiah destroying such things.
With this background in mind, let us examine the application of Paul’s teaching to three areas of life…
Application
Work
First, let’s think about how this principal might apply to work life. There were many challenging decisions that the first Christians had to make. As William Barclay points out, when a man became a Christian in the first century it might mean that he would have to give up his trade. What if a Christian stone mason was asked to make an idol? Or what if a Christian tailor he was asked to sew a garment for a pagan priest? Or what if a Christian soldier was asked to offer a pinch of incense in honor of the divinity of Caesar?
Barclay rightly says, “No man is keeper of another man’s conscience. Every man must decide for himself if he can take his trade to Christ and Christ with him to his daily work.”
Social Life
Secondly, there is an application of Paul’s teaching to social life. When someone became a Christian in the first century it meant that they might have to give up aspects of their social life. In our study of 1 Corinthians, we saw how many feasts were celebrated in Pagan temples during the first century. Could a Christian participate in such a feast? Paul thought not. Yet, at the same time, Paul indicated it was alright for Christians to share a meal with non-Christians in their home. (See 1 Corinthians 10:27.) And Paul obviously thought it was a good thing for non-Christians to attend Christian worship services. He saw such activity as providing a good opportunity for evangelism. (See 1 Corinthians 14:22-25.)
Family Life
Thirdly, let’s think about the application of Paul’s teaching to family life. When I was a young Christian, still a teenager, I often heard Christians apply this Scripture to dating. They said, rather straightforwardly, “Don’t be unequally yoked” means “Don’t date a non-Christian.” Well, Paul probably would have agreed with that advice. But this command has application far beyond the dating game.
Becoming a Christian in the first century often brought about tension in one’s family. If a wife became a Christian, her husband might drive her out of the house. Or if a husband became a Christian, his wife might leave him. Similarly, if a son or daughter became a Christian, they might find themselves kicked out of the house.
Of course, we also saw in 1 Corinthians how Paul recommended that a Christian should remain with a non-Christian spouse if that non-Christian spouse was willing to remain married. (See 1 Corinthians 7:12-14.) Paul’s approach to this was very different from that of Ezra, in the Old Testament, who urged the Jews to separate from their pagan wives. (See Ezra 10.)
Barclay sums up the bottom line this way: “However hard it may be, it will always remain true that there are certain things a man cannot do and be a Christian. There are certain things from which every Christian must get out.”
And N. T. Wright summarizes this passage in this way:
… if you really are the returned-from-exile people, the people for whom sin and death have been defeated, the people whom the living God has embraced as his own sons and daughters, then you must look around at the pagan world, learn to see it as it really is, and take action appropriately. Paul does not want them to hide from the world, to live in secret… But he doesn’t want them to enter into close partnerships with those who are still living by the old way of life, which is in fact the way of death.
The question is: where do we draw the line? Though certain Christian communities have rules about such things, personally I don’t think having written or unwritten rules is the way to go. I think the Holy Spirit is alone the one who can guide us as to when and where we should “not be yoked with unbelievers”.
The Congregational and Presbyterian Churches have both emphasized throughout their history that “God alone is Lord of the conscience.” (Westminster Confession of Faith, Chapter XX, Section 2; see also James 4:12 and Romans 14:4.) That is still a vital principle to live by.
Christ & Culture
This command to not be yoked with unbelievers raises additional questions for me… How does the command not to be yoked together with unbelievers relate to Jesus’ statement that we are the light of the world? How can we be a light to people with whom we have no connection? In John 17 Jesus talks about our being in the world but not of the world. How do we strike the right balance?
Christians have been wrestling with these questions for 2000 years. In the mid-twentieth century, H. Richard Niebuhr outlined five different approaches to the relationship between Christ and Culture…
1. Christ Against Culture (Separatist)
The first position is that of Christ Against Culture. This position is taken by those Christians who seek to separate themselves from the surrounding non-Christian culture. Some examples of this would be monks and nuns down through history and the Amish of today. Those who take this position believe that loyalty to Christ and the church entails a rejection of culture and society. There is something very appealing, in a way, about those who hold to this position. They are sincere and quite clear in their commitment. But one wonders if it is possible, or even good in all cases, for the average person to extricate themselves completely from their surrounding culture.
2. Christ of Culture (Accommodationist)
The second position Niebuhr calls Christ of Culture. He suggests that a large swath of mainline Protestants hold to this accommodationist position. According to this view, Jesus is the fulfiller of society’s hopes and aspirations. Thus, there is a lack of tension between the church and the world. For those who hold to this worldview Jesus is “the great enlightener, the great teacher, the one who directs all men in culture to the attainment of wisdom, moral perfection, and peace” (92). Despite the appeal of this position to the elite and powerful groups within a civilization, Niebuhr sees it as inadequate. Those who hold to this view can all too easily allow loyalty to culture to trump loyalty to Christ, and the New Testament Jesus ends up being replaced with an idol who merely shares his name (110).
3. Christ Above Culture (Synthesist)
The third position that Niebuhr outlines is that of Christ above Culture, According to Niebuhr, this was, in the past, the dominant position of the Church throughout history. He calls those who hold to this view “The Church of the Center”. This is a synthesis approach. Advocates of this viewpoint do not choose between Christ and culture but rely on “both Christ and culture”. God uses the best elements of culture to give people what they cannot achieve on their own. Thomas Aquinas is the supreme example of this position as he tried to balance reason and revelation, creation and redemption, nature and grace. The downside to this view is the institutionalization of Christ and the Gospel (145).
4. Christ and Culture in Paradox (Dualist)
The fourth position outlined by Niebuhr is that of Christ and Culture in Paradox. This position presents a dualistic vision. According to those who hold this view, the conflict between God and humanity, as well as the conflict between Christ and Culture is ever present and cannot be escaped in this life. “Grace is in God, and sin is in man,” Niebuhr writes (151). Human depravity pervades and corrupts all human work and culture. There is an ever-present paradox between law and grace, divine wrath and mercy. The Christian lives always between two magnetic poles. Niebuhr claims the apostle Paul as an early advocate of this dualist approach, which was later represented by Martin Luther, Sören Kierkegaard, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer (187).
5. Christ as Transformer of Culture (Conversionist)
The fifth and final position outlined by Niebuhr is that of Christ as Transformer of Culture.This is the conversionist approach to culture. It is most clearly represented in the work of Augustine and John Calvin. According to this view, all of culture is under the judgment of God, and yet culture is also under God’s sovereign rule. Therefore, “the Christian must carry on cultural work in obedience to the Lord” (191). What distinguishes conversionists from dualists is their more positive and hopeful attitude toward culture. Emphasizing the goodness of creation, the conversionist affirms what can be affirmed in culture and seeks to transform what is corrupted by sin and selfishness. Eternal life begins in the present, Niebuhr writes, claiming the apostle John as a biblical advocate for this perspective.
Niebuhr ends his analysis with a postscript encouraging readers to not settle on one of these views to the exclusion of the others. No “Christian answer” exists that applies definitively for all time, since faith is “fragmentary,” and we do not all have “the same fragments of faith” (236).[1]
Conclusion
If these five approaches to Christ and Culture seem too complicated, allow me to simplify matters by saying this… Over the course of some thirty plus years in ministry, I have seen churches and individual Christians tend to two extremes. A few years ago, I heard a great summary of these two extremes from an unexpected voice. While watching television one day I heard political operative, Paul Begala, say this…
There are two kinds of parties, just like there are two kinds of churches: those who hunt down heretics and those who seek out converts.
I have seen these two types of churches many a time. There are churches that are so focused on purity that they never reach out to people outside their little circle. Then there are other churches that are so open to everyone that they lose their Christian distinctiveness.
I believe God wants us to be both distinctive as Christians and reaching out to those outside our circle. In fact, I believe that God wants us to be like his Son Jesus. In Hebrews 7:26 we read that Jesus was “holy, blameless, pure, set apart from sinners, exalted above the heavens.” Yet, in Luke 7:34 we read that Jesus was “a friend of tax collectors and sinners”. Only the Holy Spirit can help us to achieve the perfect balance that Jesus did.
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