Footsteps #180

No doubt you have heard ” Don’t team up with those who are unbelievers. How can righteousness be a partner with wickedness? How can light live with darkness?” NLT (2Cor.6:14) quoted, it is one of the most familiar passages in the book, but that doesn’t mean it’s one of the best understood. Read 6:14 -7:1. The key principle of this passage is obvious. The application of the principle is harder. The principle: Believers are not to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. In Deut.22:10 the Israelites were forbidden to pull a plough with an ox and a donkey yoked together. Why does God take up precious space in His Word to address such a mundane issue? Apparently, God has significant concern for orderliness throughout His creation. Some things go together and some don’t. And among the things that don’t go together are certain forms of collaboration between believers and unbelievers. But which ones?  

Paul asks 5 rhetorical questions: 

Firstly, what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Nothing! They are direct opposites. Righteousness seeks to conform to the character and commands of God, while wickedness ignores His will or actively opposes it. There can be no compromise between these two, no middle ground. What happens if you put a rotten apple into a barrel of good apples? Does the rotten one become good? Of course not; the good ones become rotten. So, if a righteous person partakes in wickedness, he is no longer righteous but automatically becomes contaminated.  

Second question: What fellowship can light have with darkness? None! The kind of light and darkness he is talking about is moral in nature. Light refers to truth and holiness; darkness to error and evil. Christians are people who have made a transition from moral darkness to spiritual light, for as Col.1:13 puts it, “God has rescued us from the dominion of darkness and brought us into the kingdom of the Son he loves.” Jesus is the light of the world, and believers are drawn to Him like moths to a light, but as for the rest of mankind, they “love darkness rather than light because their deeds are evil” (John.3:19). There’s a reason why certain places of entertainment are dark. Shameful things are done there, and followers of Christ cannot thrive there.  TBC