>> Jen: Hello and good morning, friends and faithful listeners. My name is Jen. I am the host of this podcast and I am so excited that you're here today because we are going to be talking about 2 Corinthians chapter 6 today and talking about being unequally yoked with an unbeliever and what that means. So today's episode is going to be a little bit different because I'm basically only going to be talking about one verse for the whole episode.
Well, that's not true. I'm going to jump around a lot in the Bible, but we're going to be focusing a lot on 2nd Corinthians 6, verse 14, which once again talks about being unequally yoked with an unbeliever. So I highly recommend grabbing your Bible for this episode because you're going to need it. And I always recommend that everybody reads the Bible when you are listening with
me if you can. Of course, I don't ask you to read your Bible if you're driving or something like that, but if you can read your Bible, I do recommend that you do, because I'm just human and I make mistakes all the time. But Scripture does not lie. So when you have the Bible in front of you, that is the best thing that you can do. And we're going to actually kind of talk about that today. That the scriptures are truly the
guidebook for our lives. So let's read 2 Corinthians 6:11 through 18 today, as I usually do. I'll be reading from the web. So grab your cup of coffee or your cup of tea this morning for you crazy, uh, tea drinkers out there. I need a name for you coffee drinkers. I do. I have never had a name for the coffee drinkers on this channel. I don't know. The normie coffee drinkers and the crazy tea drinkers. I don't know. Alright guys, grab your favorite beverage and let's read this passage.
Our mouth is open to you, Corinthians. Our heart is enlarged. You are not restricted by us, but you are restricted by your own affections. Now, in return, I speak as to my children. You also open your hearts. Don't be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what fellowship do righteousness and iniquity have? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness? What agreement does Christ have with belial? Or what portion does a believer have with an unbeliever?
What agreement does a temple of God have with idols? For you are a temple of the living God, even as God said, I will dwell in them and walk in them. I will be their God and they will be my people. Therefore come out from among them and be separate, says the LORD. Touch no unclean thing. I will receive you. I will be to you a father. You will be to me sons and daughters, says the LORD Almighty. We talked about verses 11 through 13 on Tuesday where the Corinthians just kept rejecting
Paul. And their hearts were kind of hardened toward Paul's ministry and also to the ministry of the other apostles as well. And the other problem that the Corinthians were experiencing is that they had affection for everybody else, but not the apostles. If you read the book of First Corinthians, you'll see all the issues the Corinthians had, that church had just issue after issue. The first couple chapters were talking about just the pride and the
arrogance that the, the Corinthians had. But then when you move into chapter five, there's a story of a man who was living in an incestuous relationship very openly in the church. And the Corinthians weren't doing anything about it. They were actually proud of it is what Paul said. In fact, if you turn to First Corinthians 5 and read the first two verses, it says it is actually reported that there is sexual immorality among you and a kind that even the
pagans don't tolerate. A man is sleeping with his father's wife and you are proud. Shouldn't you have rather gone into mourning and put out of your fellowship the man who has been doing this? So the Corinthians were, like, proud of this. They were like, oh, you know, look at what we accept. We are so accepting and loving here in this church.
So then there's that problem in the Corinthian church. But then when you continue on in the book of First Corinthians, some of their church members were still going to pagan worship services and eating meals at these, these pagan temples. So there are so many problems happening in the Corinthian Church, mainly because, you know, the Corinthian church was in a prime location for a lot of just promiscuity
and idol worship. Because the Corinthian church obviously was in the, um, city of Corinth, which was known as the, like, ancient capital of promiscuity. So Paul had a lot on his plate when he started a church in Corinth. He had a lot to handle and a lot to correct, which is what the entire book of First Corinthians was about. And also the book of Second Corinthians as well. So the Corinthians had a lot of affection for things that weren't the truth, like idol worship and sexual promiscuity
and just other things like that. They had a lot of affection for that, but they didn't have affection for the apostles and for the truth of the Gospel. And so Paul's appealing to them. He's saying, open up your hearts to the truth. Then in verse 14 of our passage today, Paul continues, he says, this is how you can begin to open up your hearts to the truth. Don't be unequally yoked with unbelievers.
This whole idea of being unequally yoked comes From Deuteronomy, chapter 22, verses 9 through 11, where God is giving the Old Testament law to His people. And He tells them in verse 10, do not plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together, because obviously that would be very silly to put an ox with a donkey in the same yoke, um, to try to plow a field, because extra burden would be put both on the donkey and on the ox. It would be actually pretty
cruel to do that to your animals. But it's also just inefficient and stupid and very little will get done as compared. If you put two donkeys together or two oxen together, then a lot more would get accomplished rather than a donkey and an oxen constantly fighting against each other to try to plow this field. So that's where this whole concept of being unequally yoked comes from. So Paul says, don't be unequally yoked with
unbelievers. Now, what does he mean by this? Does he mean that Christians are never supposed to associate with unbelievers? Well, um, absolutely not. In fact, if you turn to First Corinthians, chapter five, the, uh, chapter with the incestuous relationship in it, and read verses 9 through 13. It says this, and this is out of of the NIV version I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with
sexually immoral people. Not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral or the greedy and the swindlers or idolaters. In that case, you'd have to leave this world. But now I am writing to you that you must not associate with anyone who claims to be a brother or sister but is sexually immoral or greedy or idolater or a slanderer or a drunkard or swindler. Don't even eat with such people.
So that right there, Paul says, you can't not associate with unbelievers, it's going to be impossible in your life because unbelievers are everywhere. You'd have to leave the world in order to not associate with unbelievers. You're going to associate with them. Paul says. Instead, you're supposed to not associate with the Christians who claim to be Christians but are doing all of these terrible things because they are trying to give Jesus a
bad name and you should not associate with them. So then, going back to our passage today where Paul says, don't be unequally yoked with unbelievers, this doesn't mean that we aren't supposed to associate with unbelievers. Of course we're going to associate with unbelievers. We can even be friends with them. However, we cannot be yoked together with them. And the most obvious application of this
verse has, has to do with marriage. You know, a non Christian shouldn't marry a Christian and vice versa, because if that does happen, there's going to be so many tensions and problems that arise in that marriage that wouldn't happen if two unbelievers got married or if two believers got married. So that is why Christians are not supposed to be unequally
yoked together in marriage. And if you turn to Deuteronomy chapter 7, where God is talking to the Israelites in the wilderness before they go into the promised land, once again, this is out of the niv when the LORD your God brings you into the land you are entering to possess and drives out before you many nations. And then He lists all the nations which I'm not going to list them right now, but moving
on to verse two. And when the LORD your God has delivered them over to you and you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally. Make no treaty with them. Show them no mercy. Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons, or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods. And the Lord's anger will burn
against you and will quickly destroy you. This is what you're supposed to do with them, break down their altars, smash their sacred stones, cut down their Asherah poles, and burn their idols in the fire. For you are a, uh, people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you out of all the peoples of the face of the earth to
be His people, His treasured possession. So obviously here God was talking about the Israelites going to war against all of these nations that were living in the promised land. That had done really terrible things and were worshiping these horrible idols in really egregious ways, which I'm not going to get into that right now. But God tells the Israelites, don't have compassion on these people, because either I'm going to drive them out or I'm going
to hand them over to you. And when I hand them over to you, don't make a peace treaty with them, don't show them compassion, don't intermarry with them, don't give your daughters to their sons. Don't give your sons to their daughters, because if you do, your children will turn away from me and start following and serving their gods.
So don't make a peace treaty with these people. Don't be unequally yoked to them, because if you are, they will cause your hearts to turn astray from what the truth really is. So that's the most obvious answer when we talk about not being unequally yoked with an unbeliever is in the process of marriage. Now, you might wonder though, what about if somebody became a Christian after they got married, but they're husband or wife is still not a
Christian. What do you do in that situation? Well, just read, um, First Corinthians, chapter 7, because 1 Corinthians 7 talks about that entire situation. Specifically, uh, verses 12 through 16. I won't read those verses today. I do recommend you read them though, if you have a question about that. But the gist of those verses just says that if that situation happens, then you are not supposed to get divorced unless they
choose to get divorced. If the unbeliever in that situation wants to divorce the believer, then the believer should let them go. Because in that situation, God has actually called the believer to live a life of peace and not to live in a marriage where he or she is unequally yoked. But obviously there's other ways where a Christian could be unequally yoked to an unbeliever.
Another way other than marriage could be if you have a friend group who is not saved and they influence you to do things that go against your moral compass and the things that you know are true in scripture, if you go along with that and you get influenced by those friends, then that would be another way you're unequally yoking yourself to somebody who is an unbeliever. So you got to be careful who your friends
are as well. As a Christian not saying we can't have unchristian friends, but we can't allow those friends to influence Our morality. Now, a third way we could be unequally yoked with unbelievers is if we allow the media and the entertainment that we consume to influence our decisions and our morality. And unfortunately, Western churches have a very bad habit of doing this. They allow pop culture to influence
how the church is run. They bring in some of these bad ideologies that aren't necessarily true, that are just popular to teach right now. For example, the biggest one I can think of is the issue of immigration, abortion, and sexual identity. Those are the really big pop culture issues right now that the church is actually allowing to influence how they are run and
what they are preaching on Sunday mornings. And sometimes these pastors will just preach on something that is more politically correct than they will about the truth of the gospel message or the truth of the Bible. I actually just heard a, um, a pastor speaking on immigration recently, and he was saying, well, you know, God says multiple times in scripture that we should have open borders, because if we have open borders, that means that we are
loving the immigrant. But what this pastor was not reading from were the passages that say that we are supposed to obey civil law and obey the rules and the government of the countries that we are in. And he also wasn't reading from passages of Scripture like the one we just read in Deuteronomy, where God actually replaced the Canaanites with the Israelites. And God does do
that throughout much of the Old Testament. He will replace one group of people with another group of people, and He will drive out nations that are causing damage or causing harm. Now, was that pastor correct that we
are supposed to be kind to foreigners? Absolutely. There are so many passages about how Christians are supposed to be kind to people, but that pastor was giving the politically correct answer instead of going back to Scripture and really reading what Scripture has to say and also seeing what God has done in the past. And it's not just churches that do this, though. It's many people. People will just jump on whatever is popular without really
thinking about it. And Christians are very guilty of this. They will just, you know, jump on the, um, next most popular thing and allow it to influence their thinking and their decisions. So for many Christians, they're using the world as a guidebook for their lives. But the Bible is the true guidebook for our lives. It is the ultimate guidebook. It teaches us so many things in so many different topics. I mean, just read the book of
Proverbs. It is filled with knowledge in pretty much every single category, uh, that you could find, think of from health and wellness, to financial success, to how to treat your neighbors, to how to properly love God. The proverbs are just filled with so much knowledge, and so is the entire Bible. The Bible should be our guidebook, not the next new thing that is popular right now. So that's the, the third way that Christians can
yoke themselves with unbelievers. And I'd say the fourth way is allowing things that are tempting in this world to cause us to stray away from God. Because that's kind of what Paul talks about next. He says, what fellowship does light have with darkness? What agreement does Christ have with Belial? Now, belial is just a name for satan. I believe the word, uh, is a Hebrew word which means useless. And Paul used it for satan, which is kind of funny. What portion does a
believer have with an unbeliever? And then verse 16. What agreement does a temple of God have with idols? If you turn to first Corinthians, I briefly talked about this a moment ago, but in First Corinthians, chapter 10, Paul had to yell at some of the Corinthians because they were going to pagan temples to eat there. Because apparently back in Paul's day and in ancient Rome, there were, like, idol, uh,
restaurants you could go to. You go and sit down at this, like, restaurant that was inside of a temple, and they'd come out with all of this food that was blessed by the priests of that pagan temple. And then you would eat and fellowship with, you know, your other, I, um, guess, pagan friends, and then you'd go home. So this was a very common practice back in Paul's days.
And apparently the Corinthians were doing this. They would go to these pagan restaurants and eat the food and fellowship with all of the other people. And Paul's like, no, you shouldn't associate yourself with that. Because even though there's nothing specifically wrong with a piece of meat that has been blessed by a pagan priest, you shouldn't, as a Christian, act as if you are a pagan. So he says in 1 Corinthians 10, 14 - 16. Therefore, my dear friends, flee from idolatry.
I speak to sensible people, so judge for yourselves. What I have to say. is not the cup of thanksgiving for which we give thanks, a participation in the blood of Christ. And is not the bread that we break a participation in the body of Christ. So there we go. Because these Corinthian Christians were partaking in the communion with the other believers, like the Christian communion, they shouldn't also be partaking in communion with their pagan friends. Because
that is crossing the lines. That is blurring the lines between Christianity and paganism. And that's also a Christian yoking themselves together with an unbeliever. But to take this even further, there were other Corinthian church members that were actually, uh, getting pagan prostitutes for themselves. That's talked about in 1 Corinthians, chapter 6, verses 15 through 17. Once again, out of the NIV. Do you not know that your bodies are
members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never. Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said the two will become one flesh, but whoever is united with the LORD is one with Him in spirit. So obviously, these issues with both the idol restaurants and also the prostitution happening with some of the Corinthian Christians was a
big problem. And these church members who were partaking in these things were actually uniting themselves with unbelievers, yoking themselves together with unbelievers. And Paul says, no, you are a temple of God. God has chosen to give you his Holy Spirit. And because you house the Holy Spirit, you are now a temple of God. And this, of course, is a picture of the temple in the Old Testament. The temple in the Old Testament was supposed to be the house of
God's Spirit. And God's Spirit would come down and actually reside in that temple. The Spirit would sit on the mercy seat behind the curtain inside the most holy place. And not even the high priest could see the Holy Spirit because of how holy the Holy Spirit really was. But that temple was a house for God. But when Jesus came and died on the cross, the curtain to the most holy place in the temple was torn in two, which signified that the Holy Spirit no longer lived in that
temple. Instead, now He lives in you and I. We have become the new temple of the Holy Spirit. That's another reason why we should not be unequally yoking ourselves together with things that are not moral. Because we should be making our temple as comfortable as possible for the Holy Spirit. That's where He lives right now. And we don't want Him to feel uncomfortable in His own house. So to conclude in, uh, 2 Corinthians 6, verses 17 through 18, come out from among them and be separate, says the
LORD. Touch no unclean thing. I will receive you I will be to you a Father. You will be to Me as sons and daughters, says the LORD Almighty. The entire story of the Bible is God pursuing sinful people and sinful people always trying to do something even more sinful and not coming back to God. So if you read the Old Testament, it's going to be very consistent with the New Testament as to what God wants His people to do. He wants them to be set apart and to be
holy. In the Old Testament, Israel was supposed to be set apart and to be holy among all the other nations. And now us Christians are to be set apart and to be holy, different from other people who do not have the Spirit of God. And the reason God wants us to do that is, is so that we can actually minister even better to the unbeliever.
Instead of yoking ourselves together with them and following in their footsteps, we do something different, which will cause the unbeliever, hopefully to be interested in our lifestyle, to wonder why Christians seem hopeful when the rest of the world does not. We are trying to make Christianity appealing to the rest of the world so that more and more people can actually receive that gift of the Holy Spirit, receive Jesus as their Savior, and then receive God the Father
as their own Father. That is why we do not yoke ourselves together with unbelievers. It is not loving for the unbeliever, but being different. That is what is truly loving to the unbeliever. Not gonna lie, I did not think I'd be able to talk so long about one verse in the New Testament. But yeah, there is a lot to cover just with that
one verse today. So I hope you guys enjoyed this episode and if you did, check out all the links in the description of the episode and go over to my website because I did a lot of work on it and I want you guys to, um, see it and say how good it looks because I honestly have really put so much effort into that website. So go over and check it out and also sign up for the emails that you never miss What is going on with P40 Ministries or the Bible
Explained podcast. I hope to see you guys tomorrow on the Bible Explained on Fridays. If you want to become a member and gain access to those episodes, go over to KO Fi, which is also linked in the description of this episode. Faithful listeners, have a fantastic and wonderful rest of your day. Happy listening and God bless.