BEING UNEQUALLY YOKED
II Corinthians 6:14 Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what does righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?
Is Paul telling us that we should only be with other Christians? I don’t believe so, because it is almost impossible to do unless we live in a commune where only Christians live. Some have tried doing this, but most often it really doesn’t work. Eventually there is a need to go somewhere or do something that requires contact with the world. Besides, how can we ever help others come to know and love Jesus if we never have contact with them?
So what is Paul getting at? I believe he is talking about relationships of covenant or endearment. The Corinthian church was having problem with sin among their believers. Jesus refers to sin as much like yeast. Once yeast is added to the flour, it tend to spread throughout the entire batch of dough. Sin will do the same thing in a person’s life,and in the life of the church as it was doing in the Corinthian church. Once it becomes acceptable in one person’s life, soon others will be doing it as well. Paul points out that Christians are the temple of the living God. We and the church as a whole needs to purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God. While needing to be in the world we need to try and keep the world out of us. We may have to be around talk that is not righteous on our job site, but we don’t need to start talking like them. We don’t need to see them as our enemies or beneath us. We need to love them as Christ loves us. No one was ever born a Christian. We can be born into a Christian family, but each person must make that personal commitment to Jesus on their own. We have to do it at some time in our life. We can live a good life in the world and on the jobsite so that those we associate with will want to become a Christian too. This in itself needs wisdom, insight and leading from the Holy Spirit. Witnessing on the joy can sometimes end up giving a bad witness to non-Christians. They can see us as troublemakers or trying to avoid working. Christians are getting paid to do a job and not evangelize. We need to give our bosses reason to want to hire Christians and not to avoid them. They need to see us as hard workers, someone that their other employees need to be like.
Personal relationships are really a different story. Often a person will marry someone with the anticipation of making them to become a Christian once married. This almost always doesn’t work. The non-Christian feels betrayed regarding their love and trust especially if the Christian mate will use denial as a weapon. Many times two non-Christians will marry and then one will become a Christian. This is certainly different from the standpoint of intent, but it too carries with it frustrations. Paul talks about this in I Corinthians Chapter 7. Often this makes undivided devotion to the Lord very hard, but if the Christian mate only increases their love and affection to the non-Christian it will still work and can even help their mate become a Christian. This is one reason why Paul suggests that for some it might be better to remain single.
As a Christian we must always treat others with the same love and respect and Jesus does them. Judgmentalism and self righteous attitudes will only drive a wedge deep in between relationships, and we will never help anyone to love Jesus that way. Our only recourse is to pray daily for those non-Christians that we associate with and when openings arise to share the love of Jesus with them to do it in love and respect.
Prayer: Holy Spirit, please help us to always be a good witness for Jesus and to choose our relationships wisely. Thank you Holy Spirit. We ask this in Jesus name.
