SERIES: Christ is the Answer When the Church Is in Crisis
Biblical Separation
SCRIPTURE: 1 Corinthians 5:9‑13, 2 Corinthians 6:14-18
Introduction: As we start a new year, I want to return today to our study of the biblical book of 1 Corinthians–a challenging treatise about a church in crisis. In the opening verses of chapter 5 we encountered a tragic incident in which the church was tolerating a man among its membership who was apparently having an affair with his stepmother. Paul, of course, rebuked the church for its moral laxness, and later he had to rebuke them again for refusing to forgive the man once he repented.
Today we’re going to return to that same incident, but instead of focusing on the issues of discipline and restoration, I want us to think about how the church was responding to the culture of its day. Our goal is to discover the lessons we as a church can apply in responding to our culture in 2001.
It seems clear that some in the church at Corinth were assimilating the culture and adopting its values and its standards. Others, however, were apparently separating from the culture and retreating into holy huddles. The Apostle Paul does not accept either approach. The appropriate response is neither assimilation nor isolation. We have already seen his rebuke of the assimilation crowd who advocated tolerance for the man living in sin, but what about the other group, the isolationists?
We’re going to begin by reading one verse from 1 Cor. 5 and then a related paragraph from 2 Cor. 6:
(1 Corinthians 5:9) “I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people . . . “
(2 Corinthians 6:14‑7:1) “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? {15} What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? {16} What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God.
As God has said: “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.”
{17} “Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.”
{18} “I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”
Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.
Based upon this Scripture, I suspect the average person might conclude that what God wants is for His children to avoid unbelievers, particularly immoral unbelievers. We shouldn’t become their friends, we shouldn’t join their organizations, we surely shouldn’t marry them, and we shouldn’t be business partners with them. In fact, some churches teach that believers should isolate themselves almost entirely from unbelievers. Probably the groups that have been most consistent in practicing this kind of separation are the Amish and the monastics, those who choose to live in monasteries and convents. They believe isolation from the influences of the culture enables a person to maintain a higher level of godliness. Separation equals purity.
But the Amish and the monastics are not alone in believing that separation from unbelievers is called for in Scripture. For the first 24 years of my life I was reared in what we proudly called “Fundamentalism.” The word itself is a good word; the term was coined in the early 1900’s in response to the radical liberalism (basically unbelief in the Bible) that engulfed many mainline denominations. Originally a fundamentalist was simply a person who refused to compromise on the great fundamentals of Christianity–the authority of Scripture, the Deity of Christ, the Virgin Birth, the substitutionary atonement, and the Second Coming. If that were all “Fundamentalist” meant today, then I would still be one. But the term quickly took on added baggage as it came to be used more of an attitude and a perspective than a theology.
I have not rejected any of the fundamental truths of Fundamentalism, but I did reject in my early 20’s, and still reject, the Fundamentalist attitude, which has been described by some in terms like dogmatic, legalistic, militant, intolerant, superior, pharisaical, and isolationist. It is only the last charge, isolationist or separatist, that I’m going to deal with today.
One of the major arguments among the fundamentalists I grew up with was over how separated a person ought to be from the world. There were the regular the separationists, the secondary separationists, but also the third-degree separationists. Perhaps the simplest way to explain this is to refer to the Billy Graham crusade of 1953 here in St. Louis. Billy Graham, in an effort to reach the widest possible audience, routinely invited clergymen from a variety of denominations to sit on the platform with him and lead in prayer. At that crusade he invited a prominent Presbyterian to be on the program one night.
Now the United Presbyterian Church, even in 1953, was very suspect to us fundamentalists. After all, when you drove past a Presbyterian church on Sunday morning, there would be people standing outside (I almost hate to say it) … smoking cigarettes. Besides that, their pastors wore robes, they baptized infants, and they were amillennial. Because of these and other suspicious practices and beliefs, the fundamentalists routinely separated themselves from Presbyterians. That’s what I call “regular separation.” And even though Billy Graham didn’t smoke, didn’t wear a robe, and didn’t baptize infants, he did associate with the Presbyterians by them on his platform. Therefore, the fundamentalists dissociated themselves from Graham. That’s “secondary separation.”
My father, who was a pretty good fundamentalist (but didn’t buy into secondary separation), took me to the Billy Graham Crusade that year. Big mistake! When some of the supporters of the Bible College where he was dean at the time, learned that one of its leaders had the nerve to attend the Billy Graham Crusade, they felt obligated to separate themselves (and their money!) from the college, because it wouldn’t separate itself from Billy Graham, who wouldn’t separate himself from those Presbyterians. That’s “third-degree separation.” Obviously, this can get ridiculous pretty quickly, and it did.
There were many, many good and godly people in those fundamentalist churches, but as time went on, it seemed to me, they actually separated themselves from everybody but themselves, including the very people they wanted to reach. They silenced their own prophetic voice and, as a result, their churches began to decline. Frankly, I don’t know of a single fundamentalist church in greater St. Louis that is larger today than it was in 1953. Most are much smaller, and many have gone out of existence.
Well, pastor, you might ask, if you reject fundamentalism’s interpretation of biblical separation, what does Paul mean when he says, “I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people, etc.” I’m glad you asked. The answer lies in what he says immediately after that statement. Let’s return to 1 Cor. 5:9 and read the following through verse 13:
“I have written you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— {10} not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world. {11} But now I am writing you that you must not associate with anyone who calls himself a brother but is sexually immoral or greedy, an idolater or a slanderer, a drunkard or a swindler (nothing there about smoking or dancing or infant baptism or amillennialism or even divorce!). With such a man do not even eat. {12} What business is it of mine to judge those outside the church? Are you not to judge those inside? {13} God will judge those outside. “Expel the wicked man from among you.”
Although we call the letter we are studying “First Corinthians,” it is not the first letter Paul wrote to the church there. The first letter was apparently lost, and in that letter Paul had told them not to associate with grossly sinful people (v.9), but they had misunderstood him. Now, in his second letter (1 Corinthians) he has to correct the misconception. Lesson one:
When it comes to the question of associating with immoral people, the Church has often gotten the separation issue backwards. (1 Cor. 5:9-13)
Isolation from unbelievers is wrong. The world is full of sexually immoral people, greedy people, swindlers, and idolaters. That is the basic nature of mankind, though humanism continues to perpetuate the myth that man is essentially good. If you are intent on separating from unbelievers who are gross sinners, the only way to do it is to leave this world. And that’s just what a famous monk tried to do in the 5th century. He sat on a pole for 36 years, not coming down once, with his food and water hauled up to him daily on a rope. He was intent to keep himself separated (isolated) from the world and its evil influences.
But Paul was no friend of isolation. Nor was Jesus. He beseeched His Father, “My prayer is notthat you take them out of the world but that you protect them from the evil one.” (John 17:15) What we desperately need to learn is how to be in the world but not of the world. We need to recognize that worldliness is not a matter of geography, but rather of heart attitude. In the book of Colossians Paul makes it clear that ascetic practices “lack any value in restraining sensual indulgence.” That monk was not a wise and godly man; he was just an ordinary sinner sitting 50 feet in the air.
When you stop to think about it, isolation is not only completely ineffective in preventing worldliness; it is also completely effective in preventing Christians from sharing their faith. What if all of us lived in communes, hired only Christian employees, shopped only at stores listed in the Christian Yellow Pages, and made sure unbelievers didn’t corrupt our services with their presence? How could the world ever be evangelized that way? How could we ever fulfill Christ’s mandate to be the salt of the earth and make disciples of all nations?
Friends, this is exactly the reason we are launching a new initiative at our Annual meeting February 11 by presenting a candidate for a new position at First Free–Pastor to Postmodern Young Adults. This person is going to be charged with the responsibility of helping our whole church become more sensitive to the unchurched who surround us in our community, our neighborhoods, our schools, and our work. Many of them are so steeped in postmodernism, relativism, scientific naturalism, and materialism that they wouldn’t know a cross from a plus sign. Most of them haven’t rejectedChristianity; they don’t have the foggiest idea what it is. And if they do have an idea, it’s distorted or sadly mistaken. Many of them have never had a single legitimate relationship with a genuine believer.
Our Pastoral Leadership Team and Elders are committed to become more intentional about helping us all develop meaningful relationships with unbelievers. We’re going to become more intentional about having events where unchurched people can be invited to hear the Good News that Jesus loves them, and not be threatened or turned off. But it’s risky. If it works, some weird people will start hanging around here–weirder even than now. There may be more tattoos and body piercings and strange hair colors. Such people may express viewpoints that aren’t orthodox. But we have always claimed that the church is a hospital for those who need spiritual healing; now we’ll find out if we really mean it.
Don’t panic. Our leaders don’t feel called to become a seeker-oriented church. We are a believer-oriented church and will remain so, but that doesn’t mean we cannot become a little more seeker-friendly. I’m still going to preach through the Bible, and yes, probably still 35-40 minutes at a crack. We’re still going to sing hymns and worship songs. You may not notice much difference at all in our worship services or even in your Small Church. But then again, I can’t promise that.
I’m an aging boomer; in fact, since I was born in ’44, I guess I technically missed the Boomer generation altogether and came in on the coattails of the Builder generation. Builders don’t like change, but I’m going to commit myself to be open to any change God wants me to make, and I ask my geezer buddies to do the same. I’m asking all of you. I resisted using the video screens in my preaching for a long time, but several months ago I said to myself, “Self, get with it. We live in a video culture. God gave us this technology, so use it.” Lightning didn’t strike, and as far as I know, no one left the church. Even a little change like that can make truth a little more accessible to seekers.
The reason we’re taking these steps is that we believe we should not be isolated from unbelievers but rather welcome them, even embrace them. Too many of us know very few unbelievers, because our whole lives are wrapped up with believers. That’s where we’re comfortable, but it’s also why we’re not seeing more people come to faith in Christ. Just think how many of you became Christians because some believer loved you enough to leave his or her comfort zone.
Well, if isolation from unbelievers is wrong, what should we be doing instead?
Isolation from professing Christians living in gross sin is right and, I might say, necessary. (11‑13) The isolation many of us have practiced toward worldly neighbors and fellow‑employees should instead be transferred to those who claim to be Christians but worship money, spread slander and gossip, or live immoral lives. I won’t elaborate further on this because I preached an entire message a month ago on the need for church discipline.
Do you notice something ironic here? Frequently throughout history the orthodox church has practiced separation of the exact opposite kind the Scriptures call for. We have separated ourselves from unbelievers, from the poor, from people of color, from the divorced, and from those who differ with us on non-essential theological issues. We’ve practiced isolation from everyone but those whom God actually calls us to isolate from, namely those who may be pillars in our churches but are living in blatant disobedience to God’s Word.
Paul takes us one step further in verse 12 as he tells us …
Even judging unbelievers is wrong. It is very easy for us as Christians to become self-righteous and rail against those in our society who are tearing down its foundations. I think we need to be more careful about this than many of us have been. I will accept some blame myself in this regard. As you know, I have occasionally made gratuitous negative remarks about people like Ted Turner, Bill Clinton, Stephen Gould, Jane Fonda, and Madonna. I think it’s perfectly appropriate for me to criticize their viewpoints and some of their actions, but I must be more careful not to judge their persons. Every one of them matters to God and was created in His image. On the other hand,…
The judgment of fellow believers is right. Here’s how Paul ends the chapter: “Are you not to judge those inside the church? God will judge those outside. ‘Expel the wicked man from among you.’” Our critiques should be directed more internally than externally. If we would keep our own house in order, maybe our impact on the outside world would be greater.
OK Pastor, you say, maybe you have a point here in 1 Cor. 5; it’s pretty hard to argue with the fact that our obligation is to separate ourselves, not from outsiders but from insiders. But what about the passage in 2 Cor. 6 that we read earlier? There, the same Apostle clearly tells us, “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers.” And then he adds, “Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord.” Even if 1 Cor. 5 doesn’t teach separation from unbelievers, surely this one does. Yes, but let’s be careful here.
Lesson Two: There are times when separation from unbelievers is required. (2 Cor. 6:14-18)
A believer should not be “yoked together” with an unbeliever. We need to understand the meaning of “yoked together.” If we don’t know what it means, then we can’t not do it the way we should. I would like to suggest that being “yoked together” has to be understood in terms of the visual picture it provided to the recipients of this letter in the first century or in the early America. Think about the covered wagons you have seen in western movies. A yoke is a wooden frame or bar with loops at either end, fitted around the necks of two animals, tying them together and forcing them to function as one. It’s not easy for two animals to do that, so it’s important for the wagon driver to use two animals of the same kind and size.
I know a pastor who was traveling in the Middle East and saw a farmer plowing his field with a camel and a donkey tied together. The camel was three times the height of the donkey, and the donkey had to run as fast as he could to keep. It was cruel, and both animals were obviously miserable. God is concerned enough about cruelty to animals to forbid such a practice in Deut. 22:10: “Do not plow with an ox and a donkey together.” It is unprofitable and unwise to yoke together two things of incompatible natures.
But Paul isn’t principally concerned about animals here. He is saying there are certain associations a Christian can have with an unbeliever that constitute a yoke. These are dangerous in that they will hinder us, limit our usefulness, and keep us from enjoying the fullness of life that God has planned for us. Paul then elaborates with five rhetorical questions, each of which elicits a strong negative answer. I wish I had the time to go through each of these in detail, but let me make just a few brief observations:
1. “What do righteousness and wickedness have in common?” What kind of teamwork can there be between a person who loves right living and believes in absolute truth with a person who is a relativist?
2. “What fellowship can light have with darkness?” The Bible tells us that Christians are in the light and unbelievers are in darkness. That is nothing for us to feel superior about; it is true simply because the believer has come to The Light, namely Christ.
3. “What harmony is there between Christ and Belial?” Belial is another name for Satan. Is any fellowship possible between Jesus and Satan? The thought is ludicrous.
4. “What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?” Their standards are different, their goals are different, their loyalties are different; sooner or later they are going to experience a train wreck.
5. “What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God.” According to Scripture, if you do not worship the one true God, you worship a false god, and behind the false gods are demons (1 Cor. 10:20). Therefore, if a Christian, whose body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, becomes unequally yoked with an unbeliever, he is attempting an impossible thing–the linking of true worship with the worship of demons.
Now if we’re not careful, we might wrongly infer from these questions that all believers are attractive, wonderful people devoted to truth, while unbelievers are all unpleasant, evil, and ignorant. But that is not at all true, is it? A lot of believers are very difficult to be around and many non-Christians are engaging, delightful people. Paul would not argue with that fact; rather he is dealing with ultimate issues here. In the final analysis, when the journey is done, believers and unbelievers are very different from one another and they are headed in very different directions.
So far, we have seen that an unequal yoke with an unbeliever is a very dangerous thing. The difficult question is how to apply this. Is marriage a yoke? Is a business partnership a yoke? Is belonging to a political party, or a union, or a service organization like the Lions Club a yoke? How about a date with a non-Christian? Or attending a public school? Or even working for a non-Christian? Are all these relationships verboten for a Christian?
I’m not going to answer all these questions, but I will try to give you some guidance. Yokes have two characteristics by which we can identify them:
1. A yoke is hard to escape.[i] That’s the purpose of a yoke–to keep the animals in lock step. No ox voluntarily walks in a straight line next to another ox while pulling a plow, so a yoke is needed. The first time an ox saw some greener grass, he would try to escape. That is why the believing church has almost always taken this passage to refer to marriage, at the very least. Marriage is a yoke that is hard to escape (or at least it ought to be). It is an intertwining of two lives, which the Bible refers to as “becoming one flesh.” The value of the legal status established by a marriage license is that it forces people to work out their differences instead of splitting at the first disagreement.
Well, if marriage is hard to escape, then it’s not hard to understand why Paul makes the point explicitly in 1 Corinthians 7 that marriage must only be “in the Lord.” Believers should not marry outside the Christian faith, for how can a marriage live up to its potential if a believer is yoked to an unbeliever? Some, of course, are in mixed marriages not because they married an unbeliever but because one of them became a believer after the marriage. To that person Paul urges continuance in the marriage and hints they can rise above the difficulties by faith. But there are no biblical grounds for a believer entering into a marriage with a non-believer.
Let me pause here to acknowledge that this is a great temptation to young people and to divorced people, in particular. They are lonely, their emotions and hormones get in the way, and they easily become convinced that so-and-so is Mr. Right, regardless of his relationship with God. This week I came across a prayer addressed to God written by a girl in her diary on her wedding day:
“Dear God, I can hardly believe this is my wedding day. I know I haven’t been able to spend much time with you lately with all the rush of getting ready, and I’m sorry. I guess too, I feel a little guilty when I try to pray about all this, since Larry still isn’t a Christian. But Oh! Father, I love him so much. What else can I do? I just couldn’t give him up. Oh! You must save him some way, somehow. You know how much I have prayed for him. I’ve tried not to appear too religious, I know, but that’s because I didn’t want to scare him off. Yet he isn’t antagonistic and I don’t understand why he hasn’t responded. Oh! If only he were a Christian. Dear Father, please bless our marriage. I don’t want to disobey you, but I do love him, and I want to be his wife. So please be with us, and please don’t spoil my wedding day.” [ii]
I read that, not with contempt, but with sadness. I understand the emotions at work here, but when you peel those away, what do you have left? Just a simple request for God to bless disobedience. Friends, He doesn’t promise to do that. I don’t know the end result of that girl’s decision, but I know the end result of many, many similar decisions. There are individuals in this church who could tell us about the heartache of being unequally yoked in marriage with an unbeliever. And, by the way, you’ll never marry someone you don’t date, so I think it’s very wise to set the standard that you won’t even date someone who is not a believer. Friendship evangelism is high-risk ministry where dating is concerned.
2. A yoke determines one’s direction. Oxen that are yoked are forced to go the same way. The yoke does not permit independent action. And any relationship we enter that forces us to comply with what another person wants, and does not allow us to follow the Lord’s direction, is an illegitimate yoke. A 50-50 business partnership may very well be such a relationship. Even a friendship can be a yoke. If it is the kind of deep friendship where you cannot do what God wants you to do because your friend will be offended, then that is a yoke that must be broken.
What should be very clear this morning is that the Scriptures do not forbid every kind of relationship between Christians and non-Christians–only the kind where the individuals are “yoked together,”where the relationship is unbreakable, inflexible, and determinative of our direction in life. But friendships, acts of love and service for non-Christian neighbors, joining the Lions’ Club and neighborhood associations, meeting for business or recreation, and other casual social relations with unbelievers are not wrong; they are to be encouraged.
After all, we are the light of the world and are not to hide our light under a basket. We should not hoard life for ourselves. We Christians ought to have more relationships with non-Christians, not fewer. Yet we must not become “yoked together.” That’s the tightrope we must walk.
I want to make one final point very briefly.
A believer must be committed to purifying himself and pursuing holiness. If you read the OT quotations that fill verses 16-18 of 2 Cor. 6, which we read earlier, you can see that they are directed toward the need for purity and holiness in our lives: “Come out from among them and be separate,” “touch no unclean thing,” and then the concluding verse (which unfortunately was made the first verse of the next chapter), “Since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God.”
Conclusion: Biblical separation–what is it? It is not isolation from the world or from unbelievers. It is not judging them or writing them off. It is not isolating ourselves even from believers who happen to differ with us on minor doctrinal issues or make different lifestyle decisions than we do. It is isolation from those who claim to be Christians but live in open sin, and it is isolation from any relationships that prevent us from living pure lives to the glory of God.
Let me close by recalling for you the story of Helen Keller, who died in 1968. As a young child, she could not see, she could not hear, she could not speak. There was no possibility of the world ever opening up to her except through the sense of touch. It was all she had. Eventually a Christian woman named Anne Sullivan, in her concern for Helen Keller, was able to communicate to her through touch that there were people out there, knowledge to gain, relationships to have, beauty to experience, poetry to know, and worlds to lead. This girl, who had lived in darkness and quiet and isolation all her life was able, because of the investment of one person who cared, to break out of that world into something that was bigger and better, more satisfying and fulfilling than she knew anything about.
We live in a world full of people who don’t know there’s anything better than the meaningless lives they are living, who don’t know that it’s possible to be different, and who really have no hope. No one’s ever invested enough in them to give them a reason to believe. What we need is to examine our associations, breaking off those that prevent us from being God’s people, but establishing and cultivating others that will give our world hope. And as your Pastor, I want you to know that First Free is fully committed to helping you do this.
Prayer: Father, this Scripture is very challenging, to me and I’m sure to many others. I pray that each of us will resolve to build a bridge to one, at least one, unbeliever this year. I pray that we will break off any relationship that we know displeases you. May this be one New Year’s Resolution we really keep, by Your grace and with Your help.
DATE: January 7, 2001Amen.
Tags:
Separation
Isolation
Fundamentalism
Unequal yoke
[i] I reworded it a bit, but this idea came from Ray Stedman’s sermon entitled, “Watch Out for These,” http://www.pbc.org/dp/stedman/2corinthians/3688.html, 4.
[ii] Stedman, 6-7.