The essence of true spiritual investigation is to attempt to understand the real meaning contained in the revelation of God. The Holy Spirit conveyed to mankind the will of the Father in words employed by men in their communication with each other. Our task is to determine the meaning which God attached to those words. In order to do this we must divest ourselves of prejudice and bias, otherwise we will read into the scriptures our slanted views. It is an acknowledged fact that every sect in Christendom claims spiritual authority for its exclusive doctrines. Those who go to the word of God expecting to find confirmation for a preconceived idea will generally find it, although they get out of the scriptures something which God did not put into them.
What is generally true of the religious world is also applicable to the various factions in the disciple brotherhood. As a case in point we mention the controversy over the use of mechanical instruments in public worship, in which some of the arguments in its defense are about as ridiculous as those used by its opponents. Both groups have gone to the Book to confirm their respective positions. They found that for which they were looking. On the subject of "fellowship" even wider divergence is found among the two dozen splinter groups, few of whom even take the time to find out what God meant by His use of the term.
A short time ago I wrote a prominent leader in the faction which makes a test of fellowship out of the matter of grouping students to instruct them in the word of the Lord. I presented to him a hypothetical case as follows. There is one brother in a congregation who does not think it is right to have classes to study the word of the Lord. All of the other members have a deep conviction that it is right and proper to do so. The elders go to the dissenting brother and express their regard for him and their respect for his personal views. They encourage him to come and participate in the corporate worship and mutual edification, and assure him that no reflection will be made against him if he waits to come until the classes are concluded. They confirm their love to him as a brother in Christ.
I asked the brother who is a factional leader these questions. What would you advise this brother to do? What scriptural basis would you give for such advice? He replied that he would advise the man to leave the congregation, call for a "loyal" preacher, and try to establish a "faithful" church. In the event that none of the members of the "disloyal" group would come out and take their stand, he would advise the man to move off to a locality where he could worship with a "loyal church." And as a basis for this conglomerate scheme he cited just one scriptural text--2 Corinthians 6:14-15.
Brethren, regardless of your position on grouping students to study the sacred oracles that is sectarianism gone to seed! This preacher, in spite of his protestations of "loyalty" is slashing the body of God's Son to pieces. He is ripping it into bloody shreds. He is giving counsel which may destroy the souls of those who heed it, and is actually doing despite to the Spirit of grace. And he demonstrates his utter ignorance of the very basis he quotes for his divisive advice. We propose an investigation of this scripture which has provided a weapon for carving the church of God into ribbons.
"Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? and what concord hath Christ with Belial? and what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God, as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you."
Nothing is clearer to the honest student of God's word than the fact that the primitive disciples of our Lord regarded themselves as a community of saints, separated from unbelievers and idolaters by faith in the Messiah as the hope of their salvation. Through the bond of this faith in Him, they were linked together as a family of God. They constituted a temple or shrine in which dwelt the living God. Their faith in Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God, constituted the basis of their communal life. The believers were not always agreed among themselves, as witness the congregation at Corinth, but those in Christ who disagreed were not "unbelievers" and were never so designated.
They might hold different views in Christ about the validity of the gifts of the Spirit, or about the proper conduct toward eating in idol temples, or toward the resurrection or the millennium, but these did not make them unbelievers in the great basic truth which united them. There was room in Jesus for differences over many items, and the umbrella of God's love sheltered them all. They were still children of light. They constituted the temple of God. They were not disenfranchised by their views honestly held and advocated.
There were two great communities upon earth. One was the church, the other was composed of the pagan world. The first was a koinonia of light, and in Him is no darkness at all. The temple in which God dwelled through the Spirit was aglow with the light of His presence. It was a kingdom of light not because of the perfection in life and knowledge of those who composed the temple, but because the Light of heaven dwelled therein as the pillar of fire rested upon the tabernacle in the wilderness. It was not the material of which it was composed that lighted the tabernacle, and it is not the stones which compose the living temple which have the light. "In Him was life and the life was the light of men."
The other was a koinonia of darkness. It was the habitation of Belial in whom is no light. Those who walked in it were past feeling, having given themselves over unto lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness. They had their understanding darkened, because they were alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that was in them, because of the blindness of their heart. They were a dominion of darkness from which we were delivered by Him and transferred into the kingdom of his beloved Son.
Each of these communities had its sacrifices. Each expressed its fellowship the only way it can be expressed, by communal acts. Since eating and drinking together was an open manifestation of fellowship, this came to be the symbol of the mystic bond which united them. One temple sacrificed to God; the other to idols. One temple brought man into sacred unity with heaven; the other into fellowship with the demons who motivated the idolatry. The apostle writes: "What say I then? that the idol is anything, or that which is sacrificed to idols is anything? But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to demons, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with demons. Ye cannot drink the cup of the Lord, and the cup of demons: ye cannot be partakers of the Lord's table, and of the table of demons" (1 Cor. 10:20, 21). Be sure to note the usage of the terms "fellowship" and "partakers."
We are now prepared to note the passage in 2 Corinthians 6:14-18. The admonition to "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers," has no application whatsoever to any alliance or association between members of two branches, or sects, in Christendom. It has been frequently misused with reference to the marriage of a member of the Church of Christ with a Baptist. Regardless of the advisability of two people who have been reared in different legalistic frameworks seeking to form an intimate union, this passage does not deal with it topside or bottom.
Most brethren are not willing to take the recommendation or command to "Come out from among them, and be ye separate." This would break up at once every marriage on earth between people of two sects. But a Baptist is a believer in Christ in the fair sense of the term. The problem of sectism among various kinds of believers is post-apostolic. It did not occur during the time of the apostles and there is nothing written about how we ought to treat each other with our various theological speculations. But to label such people as unbelievers when they freely confess that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God, is to do serious injury to the word of faith.
Sometimes it has been used to keep a brother from buying a filling station in league with a Methodist. How silly can we become? Most of us at sometime or other in our lives are linked with people of various religious opinions. Workers in automobile assembly plants, teachers in the public schools, and employees in almost every kind of establishment in the world are forced to work with those who see things differently than they do, but these people are not pagans. They are not heathen.
The instruction certainly has nothing to do with whether a girl from a "one cup congregation" should date a boy in a "cups generation" as the distinction is so naively and childishly made by some of the brethren. Regardless of whether such ought to happen, or whether they are suited to one another or not, it was not the purpose of the Holy Spirit to suggest it here, and some of the more common applications made of the passage would be downright amusing, if it were not for the serious fact that factional leaders, with more ambition for personal power than love for unity in Jesus, cram such thoughts down the theological throats of gullible and unsuspecting partisans, who in their ignorance defeat the very purpose of the cross, and do so under the guise of "loyalty" to Him whom they crucify afresh and put to an open shame.
In the scriptural usage of the term "believer" it refers to every person who accepts Jesus for what He claims to be regardless of their hang-ups on various concepts of doctrine. It has no concern with legalistic hang-ups which have separated the Christian world. It refers to one who is not a pagan or heathen. By the same token the word "unbeliever" refers to one who is afar off, who has no love for Jesus and no concern for His kingdom. To apply it to those earnest souls today who may understand some of the implications of the doctrine of the new covenant scriptures differently than we do is to do an absolute injustice to those who are as much believers as we are.
What does the passage mean? The koinonia of heaven is expressed by the terms righteousness, light, Christ, believer, and temple of God. The koinonia of the underworld is expressed by the terms unrighteousness, darkness, Belial, infidel, and idols. There is a community attached to Christ. It includes the angels of heaven and the men on earth who have acknowledged Jesus as their prince. There is another community presided over by Belial. It includes the demons of hell and those on earth who are idolaters, refusing to acknowledge the sovereignty of God over their lives. The two are absolutely incompatible. There can be no more fellowship between these communities than there is between their respective princes. They have nothing in common. So long as God walks in us and lives in us, we cannot participate in idolatrous rites, practices and services.
What is meant by the expression, "Come out from among them, and be ye separate and touch not the unclean thing?" This is the handle that fits every factional tool ever devised. It has been used as the wedge to shatter us into fragments. It is the axe in the hand of spiritual demagogues used to split and splinter those who met and worked together for years. It has been made the agent of separation, heartache and tears, and in many localities has clabbered the milk of human kindness, and inspired such gall and bitterness, that those who once sat together at the Lord's Table, have set up rival tables, and treat each other with such lack of courtesy and compassion as is not so much as named among the Gentiles.
First of all suspicion has been sown, generally secretly and clandestinely. Those who are soft have been sought out like termites look for soft wood. Suspicion leads into doubt of faithfulness to the thing that is made the rallying-ground and when the time comes the boom is lowered and division comes. Then there are two opposing parties who regard each other across well-defined lines and proselyte each other with a fervor which was never shown in former days when the world was on one side and the church on the other.
Does the scripture mean that when my Baptist neighbor, who is so kind, generous, and friendly, invites me to listen to his preacher in a special meeting, that I must draw the garments of my self-righteousness closer about me, to keep from being defiled by his touch, and insult him, because he does not know that I am to "be separate and touch not the unclean thing"? What is the unclean thing? Is it a Bible class for little children, individual cups, fermented wine, a special way of breaking the loaf, colleges, orphan homes, etc.?
Remember the preacher to whom I posed the question about the brother who did not believe in classes, would advise him to try and rend a congregation at peace among themselves in Christ, and this was the scripture he gave for dividing believers in the Lord! To him "the unclean thing" was a system of grouping students to teach them to develop faith in the Christ. Could ever a more damaging, destructive idea be advanced from that which would take the word of God and completely ignoring its purpose, use it in such a manner as to shatter the body of the Lord? This is carving the body of Jesus into bits with the sword which he furnished to subdue an alien world.
The unclean thing which we are not to touch, refers to the contaminating lust and vice associated with the impure mystery of idolatry. The term is not even remotely related to differences among brethren as to interpretation of various scriptures. It would be impossible to describe the degradation and degeneracy growing out of idolatrous worship, and believers in the Christ are to have nothing to do with such practices or those who engage in them. It was an age of moral suicide, of unnatural lust, and of murder. What agreement hath the temple of God with idols?
Even though modern sectism is deplorable, it is still a condition existing among believers in the Christ. Our opposition to it must not be based upon the idea that our religious neighbors are infidels or idolaters, motivated by a voluntary love for an attachment to Belial. My Baptist and Methodist friends are firm believers in the truth that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God. They are certainly mistaken about certain items contained in His will and they have exalted their love for a party above their love for a unity of all believers. But to quote the verses under consideration and apply them to those who are of a different order in Christendom, for the purpose of forbidding association, even in order to reason with and teach them, is to make of us the most rabid of all sectarians. These people do not constitute a realm of "darkness" or "unrighteousness" as the terms are used here. Many of them live above moral reproach and have never engaged in filthy or immoral conduct because of idolatrous leanings. They are frequently good examples in moral behavior for some of their attackers. It ill becomes a preacher who is carrying on an affair with another man's wife, to get on the radio and slash away at others of the religious community as sectarian and in "darkness" when their lives are a credit to his own.
Every honest, sincere believer in the Messiahship of Jesus of Nazareth is my brother, either in prospect or in fact. If such a believer has submitted to immersion on the basis of his faith in Jesus, he is my brother in reality, a child of God, and a member of His family. He may not have understood all of the blessings accruing from baptism into Christ, and he may have been mistaken as to the time of the bestowal of some of them, but his ignorance of effect or time will not nullify God's grace or promise, if he surrenders his will to that of the Messiah. Since his birth, he may be in error about many things pertaining to his responsibility, worship or service, and he may require a tremendous amount of teaching and adjustment, but he is still my brother, and I will teach him as a brother, and not count him as a pagan or an infidel. If our hearts are both honest we will grow ever closer to each other as we both "grow in grace and knowledge of the truth." The transformation in our lives through conformity to the life of Christ, will produce uniformity of heart and thought in the two of us.
Not all believers have been immersed. Some are still in the womb of the new covenant, the Jerusalem that is from above. What shall be my attitude toward these who are in that state? It will be the same as that of a family toward an unborn child. We do not revile, castigate or belittle a child in the womb. We rejoice that it has been conceived and with an air of expectancy prepare for its arrival. So I shall labor to aid those who have been conceived by faith, to come to birth and full delivery into the glorious fellowship of the sons of God. If they die before delivery I shall mourn our loss; if they are born again I shall seek to nurture, strengthen and support them until they can walk alone. To this I am dedicated, believing it is the will of him whose slave I have become.