PURITY POLLUTED

Lake Ontario empties into the Saint Lawrence River which flows crystal clear. However, near Montreal the Ottawa River flows into the Saint Lawrence. The Ottawa’s waters are muddy with silt. As these rivers come together you can see the flow of each river side by side—one clear the other dirty. Yet as the Saint Lawrence continues its flow to the Atlantic Ocean the flow of the waters combine as one dirty river.

• 14 Don't become partners with those who reject God. How can you make a partnership out of right and wrong? That's not partnership; that's war. Is light best friends with dark? 15 Does Christ go strolling with the Devil? Do trust and mistrust hold hands? 16 Who would think of setting up pagan idols in God's holy Temple? But that is exactly what we are, each of us a temple in whom God lives.
  2 Corinthians 6:14-16 (MsgB)

Paul shows the Corinthians the vast spiritual difference between those who have been saved and those who have not. This is not just a distinction like the proverbial line in the sand. Rather the separation between the two is like the chasm of the Grand Cannon. The differences between the two are irreconcilable. The delineation is between:

1. Righteousness and wickedness,
2. Light and dark,
3. Christ and Satan,
4. The belief of faith and the rejection of unbelief, and
5. God’s “Temple” and the “temple” of idols or demons.

Paul instructs us to not be “YOKED TOGETHER with unbelievers” (NIV), or to “become PARTNERS with those who reject God” (MsgB). We often think of this in terms of marriage. As a youth pastor I encouraged kids not to engage in “missionary dating” because all to often it was the values of the believer that were compromised and led into sin. Yet Paul is not just talking about marriage. As important as that may be, we are to avoid any union with the non-Christian.

Paul is not saying we should have no contact with the non-Christian. We are Christ’s ambassadors with a message of reconciliation; nevertheless we are in the world yet not of it (see 1 Corinthians 5:18-20; 1 Peter 1:1; 2:11; 1 John 2:16). Paul wants us to avoid putting ourselves in a position of compromise. The tighter our connection with a non-believer the more we will be tempted to give in to the world’s ways. It’s a lot like the Saint Lawrence and Ottawa Rivers. When they come together the purity of one is polluted by the other. What do you think?