S217P6 – A life of light: life among the strange

2 Cor. 6:14-16a

Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers.  For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness?  And what communion has light with darkness?  And what accord has Christ with Belial?  Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever?  And what agreement has the temple of God with idols?  For you are the temple of the living God.

We all know that evangelism can be rather challenging.  Particularly when we are trying to share Christ with someone 1-on-1, we might not even know how to start the conversation.  The good thing is that sinners can see themselves in the saints because we once were lost sinners as well.  This is valuable relatability when we are trying to reach someone who currently might seem so different from us.  In an effort to make that point of relatability, some christians have bumper stickers or T-shirts with slogans indicating that they are just like the world except they are forgiven.  I would say that this is not only too simple a statement but totally incomplete because our salvation brings us much more change than that.

While we might have had great commonality with the world in the past, we do not have this now.  We cannot forget that the word of God tells us that we have been made completely new.  Our salvation and transformation from children of darkness to children of light is a complete change in every spiritual way.  We are not just “a little different” because we have been forgiven.  This is why we are told that our yoking and fellowship with the world cannot continue.  The same way we cannot deny the complete and obvious difference between darkness and light, we cannot deny how different we now are from the world.  Living in this dark world means that we must live not only among our friends but also among enemies and strangers.

This passage uses several statements to show how drastic the change from sinner to saint really is.  We should be living totally differently now that we are living in the light.  This does not necessarily mean that all personal tastes or personality traits must change.  It means that the way we live is no longer informed by darkness but is driven by God’s light.  Our thoughts, our actions, our words, our desires, and so much more should be changed.  We are aliens in a strange land living among strangers of whom we once were counted but are no more.  Father, show us where we have wrongly navigated our relationships with those still in darkness, that we would keep a right distance from the world.