Preface: When I was a boy in the 1950's and 1960's, restaurants often featured "prayer cards" on their tables, with prayers for Protestants, Catholics and Jews. That satisfied 95 people out of a 100. Things have changed. Restaurants no longer have prayer cards, and if they did, they would need dozens of prayers, for strange religions and cults have multiplied and grown in the past decades. We now live in a diverse and multi-religious nation, and this passage takes on an ever more practical value for American Christians. What relationships may Christians have with non-Christians? Let's take this passage a verse at a time, and see what God says to us:
2 Cor 6:14 Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?
2 Cor 6:15 What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?
2 Cor 6:16 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."
2 Cor 6:17 "Therefore come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you."
2 Cor 6:18 "I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty."
2 Cor 7:1 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.
I. "Do not be yoked together with unbelievers." The words "yoked together" translate the Greek word heterozuguntes, which means literally "yoked together with someone different than you." The KJV says, "don't be unequally yoked together." This is an agricultural image. When you plow, don't yoke up an ox and an ass as a plowing team. They pull with different strengths, different speeds, different gaits, etc. The ox is twice as large as the ass, and the yoke won't fit either, and will chafe both.
II. Paul's advice holds true in every area of life. In marriage, business partnerships and education there will be severe problems. Any enterprise demanding common goals, common morality and common ethics will not work well when Christians and unbelievers are yoked together, because it will be a yoke that chafes and hinders both.
III. But Paul's main concern is to stop the Corinthians from mixing Christianity with the idolatries of Corinth. He does this by asking a series of questions:
1. Christians cannot worship with non-Christians, because non-Christians don't honor God's Law. Sin is the transgression of the Law. The word "wickedness" is anomia in Greek, literally "without Law." Lawless would be a good translation. Non-Christians totally reject the first four of the 10 commandments, which all have to do with honoring the one true God, Jehovah.
2. Christians cannot worship with non-Christians, because light and darkness cannot co-exist. Wherever light comes, darkness flees. When darkness conquers, there is no light. Our business as Christians is not to tolerate non-Christian religions as equally good, but to evangelize and try to win to faith in Christ.
3. Christians cannot worship with non-Christians, because Christ and Baal have no common ground. We are in a battle between good and evil, and both God and Satan want total victory. A good illustration is the battle between Jezebel and Elijah. Jezebel slaughtered 100's of God's prophets. When Elijah got the upper hand, he ordered the slaughter of the 400 prophets of Baal. In WW2 the Allies demanded total, complete, unconditional surrender from both Japan and Germany. God will eventually gain total victory, and every knee will bow, and every tongue will confess that Jesus is Lord.
4. Christians cannot worship with non-Christians, because believers are the Temple of God, both individually and corporately. God lives in you personally. If you bow to an idol, you are making God living in you bow before an idol, which is unthinkable. If our denomination holds a joint prayer service with Muslims and Hindus, we are thereby making the one true God a part of the worship of false gods and idols. This is unthinkable and impossible. God will not share His glory with idols and false gods. God said in Isaiah 42:8: "I am the LORD: that is my name: and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images."
IV. God commands three times: don't worship together with unbelievers:
1. Be not unequally yoked together.
2. Come out from among them, and be separate.
3. Touch not the unclean thing.
Conclusion: It is our joy and duty as Christians to live by God commands, and to go against His commands is to invite wrath and disaster. We may, and should, worship together with Christians of other denominations, but we must not participate in joint worship services with those who deny that Jesus is God's Son, and who deny that we have a Saviour. In times of national distress or war, it is very tempting to come together with Jews, Hindus, Muslims and so on, but it is contrary to God's command, and God has said to us: "Obedience is better than sacrifice." If we cannot pray "in Jesus' name and for His sake," then we cannot pray at all. No other prayers go higher than the ceiling.
People of non-Christian religions, have a right to believe as they please. God gives them freedom, and our nation recognizes their freedom. I will defend their right to believe as they please, but as a Christian I cannot join with them in prayer and worship. I will show them the love of God in Christ, and I will evangelize them, and try to win them to the Lord, as Christ commanded us to do in the Great Commission.