To the church of God at Corinth… ·Grace to YOU and peace from God our Father, and from the Lord Jesus Christ... ·Our behavior towards YOU…went ‘above and beyond’ in generosity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God... ·…Do we need letters of commendation to YOU, or of commendation from YOU? ·YOU are our letter, …a letter of Christ through our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on stone tablets but on heart-tablets of flesh… ·Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty; ·and we all with unveiled face, mirroring the glory of the Lord, are being likewise transformed from glory to glory into that same image by the Lord, the Spirit...— ·because it is God, who commanded light to shine out of darkness, who in our hearts shines to illuminate the knowledge of the glory of God in the presence of Jesus Christ. (2 Corinthians 1:1a,2,12; 3:1b-3,17-18; 4:6 PH)

Yet we have this treasure in earthenware vessels, that the greatness of the power may be of God and not from us, ·who are being: afflicted in every way but not distressed, perplexed but not despairing, ·persecuted but not abandoned, cast down but not destroyed—·always carrying about the dying of the Lord Jesus in the body, that the life of Jesus in our bodies also might be clearly visible… ·We do not give up! Though the outward part of our humanity is decaying, the inner part is being renovated day by day; ·for our momentary, light affliction …is producing for us a far greater, ever increasing and eternal weight of glory. ·We look not at the things that are seen, which are temporal, but at the things that are not seen, which are eternal…·Now God, who fashioned us for this very thing, has also given us the deposit—of the Spirit. (4:7-11,16-18; 5:5 PH)

Having confidence always, therefore,… ·we walk by faith not by sight…, ·…being transparent towards God, but also transparent to YOUR consciences,… ·so that YOU may hold on against those who boast in surface things and not in the heart… ·From now on we know no one according to the flesh, even if we knew Christ after the flesh… ·If anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation. “See, the ancient thing has passed by; it has been made new” [Is.43:18-19]… ·And we encourage YOU also, co-workers, not to receive God’s grace in vain; ·for… now is the “season of favor”! Now is the “day of salvation”! (5:6-7,9,11-12,16-17; 6:1,2b PH)

Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. What partnership does relational righteousness [dikaiosunee][i] have with lawlessness? What fellowship does light have with darkness? ·What harmony does Christ have with Belial? What shared inheritance does a believer have with an unbeliever? ·And what agreement does the temple of God have with idols? We are the temple of the living God! As God has said, “I will dwell in them, and walk among them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people”. [Lev.26:11-12] ·Therefore: “Extract yourselves from among them and separate yourselves, says the Lord”; and: “Touch no unclean thing!” [Num.16:26a,21,26b]. “I will both receive YOU ·and I will be a Father to YOU, and YOU shall be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty” [Ezek. 20:34 LXX + 2 Sam. 7:14 + Isa. 9:6 & 43:1a,6b]. ·Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all defilement of the flesh and of the spirit, maturing towards relational holiness [hagiosunee] in the fear of God. (6:14-18; 7:1 PH)

‘Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers’ (6:14)? Many Christian teachers have used this text to warn against Christians getting married to non-Christians. While this is good advice, it is not what Paul had in mind! Whatever is happening in the Corinthian church, Paul compares it to serving ‘Belial’ and to bringing an idol into God’s holy Temple. To identify who is doing this we need to look: at the Scripture texts Paul uses to describe them in the same paragraph, and at who the ‘sons of Belial’ were in the Tanakh (Old Testament).

Paul’s first three citations (6:17a) come from the story of Korah, Dathan and Abiram (Num.16:1-40). These men, and 250 others, were Israelite ‘community leaders’ who had claimed their own standard of holiness in an attempt to equate themselves with Moses and Aaron. So God told the Israelites: to ‘separate yourselves’ from them and their followers; to 'move away from' them; and to not ‘touch’ any of their things. ‘Sons of Belial’ was a term used in the Law and the Prophets to refer to Israelites who led God's people astray.[ii] So Paul is warning ‘believers’ in Corinth to not ‘yoke’ themselves together with ‘unbelieving’ leaders inside the church!

Later in the letter, Paul calls them ‘super-super apostles’ (11:5, Med.#34; 12:11). In our text, he speaks of them: as being focused more on external behavior than on the heart, and as judging fellow believers ‘according to the flesh’. They also judged Paul this way (10:2) and were showing off their ‘letters of commendation’, probably from the Jerusalem church, to bolster their own social power. And they ‘lord it over’ non-Jewish believers by promoting the Mosaic Covenant and the Law (1:24; 3:6-18). So Paul has to deal with a reassertion of Jewish guardianship power, just like he had to do with the Galatian and Colossian churches (Med.#30, #31). The background to the problem in Corinth is somewhat different, however, though no less instructive to us today.

The Corinthian believers had been blessed with many spiritual gifts, but have stopped growing spiritually after Paul left, due to disunity, suing one another, sexual promiscuity, and spiritual pride over their ‘freedom’ in Christ. As Paul writes the above letter, they have finally dealt with these problems. But now many of them are swinging the other way—embracing the teaching of the Jewish ‘super-super apostles’, that the best way to ‘cleanse…the flesh and the spirit’ is still found in the glorious way of the stone tablets brought by Moses.

Ironically, Paul calls these leaders ‘lawless’ even though they are promoting the Law. He also calls them ‘unbelievers’ and their teaching ‘fleshly wisdom’, because they are making the Law an idol by leading people away from a direct relationship with the Father: through Jesus, and through the new and mature way of sanctification by the Holy Spirit. To counter them, Paul quotes several biblical promises. The first one—that was first given to Israel in the Torah, but then broadened to include all nations in the Prophets (Lev.26:11-12; Zech.2:11)—he uses to say that in Christ ‘We are all the temple of the Living God, we are all his people’. And finally he does something really radical. He connects a promise (‘I will receive YOU’) from Ezekiel (20:34 LXX) with the beginning of the messianic promise that God will be a Father to a descendant of David as an adult son (Med.#D). But he combines this with two promises from Isaiah by changing ‘him’ to YOU (plural). Through the Messiah ‘born to us’, the ‘Mighty God’ will be ‘Everlasting Father’ to YOU (pl.) as ‘my sons and my daughters’ (Is.9:6; 43:6, Med.#E).

This is good news, especially for ethnic minorities and women. An emphasis on rules in any church always favors the dominant culture. And life under the guardian powers—in whatever culture—is usually hardest on women. But in the promises Paul quotes, he shows that the 'new thing' the Father has done in the Messiah is for women as well as for men. And it is for all nations! The ancient order has ‘passed by’. For anyone in Christ there is a ‘new creation’. The ‘fear of God’ is not about pursuing a kind of legal holiness, but rather about 'maturing towards our Father's own ‘relatonal-holiness’ [Gr. hagio-sunee][iii], by ‘receiving’ his grace. And we walk in ‘relational righteousness’ [Gr. dikaio-sunee][i] as adult ‘co-workers’ with each other and with our Father: by focusing on his glory; by imitating Jesus' obedience to him, with the help of his Spirit in our fragile bodies; by avoiding sin and confessing it quickly when we do fall (1 Jn.2:1, Med.#52); and by ‘yoking’ ourselves only with godly men and women who imitate Jesus (1 Cor.11:1). As with the Galatians, Paul addresses the believers as adults, telling them that it is their responsibility: to hold on to the Holy Spirit, and to stand up to these unbelieving leaders—by rejecting the ‘different spirit’ and the ‘different "gospel"’ they are proclaiming (11:4; Gal.1:6-9, Med.#30).

The Father’s promises are addressed to you, and his grace is enough for you! Are you cooperating with his Spirit so that he can steadily transform you into full maturity in the image and likeness of Jesus?