The Sting of Purity

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? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? 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.”

Therefore, “Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.” And, “I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”

Therefore, 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 want to look at that final verse one more time, because this is really the summary verse of this section.

This whole text could really be put into two categories. Paul says, “Since we have these promises, let us purify ourselves.”

There are a series of promises.

Look at verse 16:

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.”

“I will live in them,” God says — it’s a quote from the Old Testament; it’s a promise — “and walk among them,” — God will dwell intimately with his people — “and I will be their God, and they will be my people.”

There is a possessiveness God will have for his people.

Therefore, “Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.” And, “I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”

“I will receive you, and I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”

These are the promises of this text.

Paul is saying we have these promises. God has offered them voluntarily — no strings attached, we don’t have to earn it. He promises to dwell with his people.

Now, in light of that fact, Paul says, we must do some things — not to earn these promises, but to be able to receive them.

We must do some things to be able to receive and experience and live in this promised presence of God.

Do you understand the distinction?

It’s not stuff that we have to do to earn God’s being with us, but if we’re going to actually experience it, have our lives transformed by it, there are things we must do.

So, Paul says, “Let us purify ourselves.”

And the other verses in this text talk about that purification process:

Verse 14 — Don’t be yoked together.
Verse 17 — Come out, be separate, touch nothing unclean.

Paul uses very strong language to talk about this business of purification.

And to explain why he writes this strongly, almost harshly, I need to spend a minute or two looking at the town of Corinth, because Paul is addressing a very specific situation with some severe challenges that I think have a lot to say to us about the need for purity and the barriers to being pure.

So, we need to spend about two minutes or so talking about the setting of Corinth, including the geography of Corinth, and I need you to stay with me a moment or two, okay?

And I need you to stay with me a moment or two, okay?

In the ancient world, Greece was separated between the north and south and Corinth was right in the middle.

Now, what that means is all of the trade has to go through Corinth.

Also, ships in the Mediterranean generally did not want to go underneath Greece. They did not want to go south because there were a lot of storms there, and it was very dangerous for ships.

So, generally ships traveling from Europe to Asia or vice versa would go to Corinth, and if they were small ships, they would actually put them on little carts on wheels and wheel them across — about four miles — to the other side.

If they were very large ships, they would take the cargo out and transport the cargo and load it on other ships on the other side.

So, Corinth was really a central, in many ways the central, place for trade and for sailing and so on in the ancient world, at least in ancient Greece.

It was a booming place.
It was filled with sailors.
There were people looking for quick money.
It was filled with pleasure seekers.
It was a culture that placed a high value on entertainment and luxury.

Now, because of its strategic location, it was actually known as “Wealthy Corinth,” and ancient writers regarded it as kind of the epitome of materialism.

Listen to a description from one author who was a contemporary of Paul’s. This was a description that was written in the first century of Corinth. He says:

Corinth is filled with crowds of wretched demagogues around the temple shouting and abusing one another.
Corinth is filled with fortune-tellers trying to exploit people for money.
Corinth is filled with hucksters peddling whatever they could lay their hands on.
Corinth, he says — this is a direct quote — is filled with lawyers innumerable perverting justice.

I’m not even going to comment on that one.

Now, Corinth was also filled with primary temples for at least four Greek gods.
It was also the site of emperor worship for the Roman emperor.
It was also the site of worship of Egyptian gods who got transported by some Egyptian sailors.

All of these different gods and forms of worship coexist side by side, and the people of Corinth don’t think twice about worshipping multiple gods. It’s a very pluralistic society, a very diverse society.

The main shrine in Corinth is the temple of Aphrodite, the Greek goddess of love, and one writer tells us this temple was so rich that it owned 1,000 temple slaves, and they served as temple prostitutes. That’s what they did.

So, there’s a close association in the minds of the people of Corinth between idolatry worship on the one hand and sexual immorality on the other.

Now, because of the level of luxury and vice, the term “corinthianized” actually became a euphemism in Paul’s day for immorality in general, and sexual immorality in particular.

If people wanted to talk about sexual immorality, they would talk about someone corinthianizing.

In Greek theater in Paul’s day, a Corinthian girl was understood to be a prostitute, a harlot, in a Greek play.

So, picture a society that is crude, pluralistic, materialistic, sexually obsessed, superficial.

Does that sound familiar at all?

Paul is addressing a group of raw converts.

Now, the church at Corinth is one that he founded, and it’s not very old. Many of the followers, of the believers, at this church can date their conversion in terms of months, not years.

When compared to most churches today, it has a lot of people from unchurched backgrounds — people that were far from God just a short little while ago.

Sound familiar?

Now, the question is, how do you pursue purity so that you can experience the promised presence of God in a materialistic, sexually obsessed, idolatrous society?

So Paul gives guidance to people about how to purify yourselves… and that’s what we’re going to reflect on in our remaining moments together.

He starts in verse 14 by asking people to reflect on who they’re yoked together with.

I’m going to ask you to think about who you’re yoked together with — to reflect on your yokes.

Who are you yoked together with?

When Paul says, “Don’t be yoked together with unbelievers,” he is not talking about a casual acquaintance. He is not saying, “Have nothing to do with unbelievers.”

That kind of thing would not be possible, and it certainly wouldn’t be desirable. I mean, it is essential to people who are followers of Jesus to, like Jesus, associate with and befriend and love people who are outside of the faith.

Paul uses this image of a yoke, and he’s talking about a special kind of relationship, the kind of relationship that will significantly impact your trajectory in life.

Paul is saying there are going to be certain key relationships in your life, and he uses this metaphor of a yoke, and what he’s talking about is influence.

A yoke is a picture of influence or attachment.

If you’re yoked together with another person, if you’re in the yoke with someone, you are committed to moving together in the same direction with that person. You’re going to share a common goal and destiny.

Being yoked is not a casual commitment.

You don’t yoke two animals together unless you want them to travel together, because it’s very difficult for one animal to be yoked to another animal and for them to go in opposite directions.

This is not a deep thing. You can follow this.

A yoke is something that you get into with someone when you’re going to go down the same road.

Paul is saying: “Ultimately you choose between one of two trajectories — toward God in life or away from God and toward death.”

Then, he’s saying: “Once you’ve chosen God, don’t do anything to put yourself back on that other trajectory, because it leads to death. Don’t make a commitment to a deep relationship that you know is going to pull you away from God.”

Now, throughout the history of the church, the single most important relationship that falls under Paul’s discussion of being equally yoked has been marriage.

The church has understood the most significant relationship in this category of being yoked is marriage.

When I was in college, I saw a girl named Kathy who has an intriguing, mysterious presence about her… and I was captivated with her.

I asked her out on a date and she said no… which made me want to date her even more.

Eventually she gave in and we dated for two years — where we learned about our values and interests and passions and pursuits — before we decided to be yoked together.

Now, understand, we are human. We certainly have our issues that we face. I am not the easiest person in the world to be married to… and Kathy is not married to the easiest person in the world.

I thought a long time about that one.

Many of you know what it is to be equally yoked.

And if you do, you have been given a gift — understand, this is not a merit thing — this is a gift, this is a grace.

To have a spouse who is consistently pulling you toward God is a gift of grace.

Now, if you get into the yoke with someone who is not a follower of Christ, if you get into the yoke with an unbeliever, it may mean that you’ll get pulled away from God. It may be that you’ll get pulled in a different direction.

But even if that doesn’t happen, because it doesn’t always happen, even if it doesn’t happen, there is still this problem that what is nearest to your own heart is something that you cannot share with this person with whom you’re in a yoke.

If Kathy were not a believer, I believe that I would still be committed to loving and honoring God. I think that I would hold onto that, but there are so many moments that I would have lost — moments when we pray together, moments of worship together, moments when God has called both of us to something together, or God has uses one of us to affirm his direction in the other.

If she were not a believer, my life would be immeasurably poorer.

Paul says, “Don’t be unequally yoked.”

Now, I recognize this is a painful word for many people in this room.

Some of you in here are single, and you would like very much to get married. It’s hard enough to find someone who’s just sane and healthy out there. I mean, isn’t that the truth?

Those are fairly minimal criteria when you think about it.

You think about when you were in high school — you know, the long, long list that everyone starts for Mr. Right or Miss Right, and you end up with sane and healthy.

And there’s some give on the sane one — you’re willing to negotiate on that one. That’s fairly minimal criteria.

I understand it’s hard enough to find someone that just meets those criteria — sane and healthy — and that if you narrow the field down to where it has to be a believer, it’s like looking for a needle in a haystack. You’re just ready to give up on this one.

Let me just suggest that if you give up on this one, you will pay a price that’s not worth paying.

Don’t get yoked with someone who will lead you away from everything that matters, because the day is going to come when you and I, who were created for eternity, will stand before the living God, and the trajectory of our lives will have played itself out and our hearts will be open and yielded and pure before him, or they will have become hardened and cold and small.

You’ve got to live your life in light of that moment.

For someone in this room, this is a painful word because you’re married to someone, but for any number of reasons, it is not a soul-mate relationship, and it’s like a little knife goes inside you.

All you can do is cling to God and recognize that God is the God who redeems pain and that God never wastes a wound and recognize that one day the intimacy that you so deeply crave will be fully satisfied by God alone and that as you do the best you can to be faithful where you are, God will use that to draw you to himself.

Paul says, “Think about who you’re yoked up with.”

Now, this relates not just to marriage.

I have a friend who was involved in a job that consistently exerted pressure, that pulled him away from God, pulled him to neglect his family, pulled him to treat clients sheerly as sources of revenue to be manipulated, pulled him to maintain a lifestyle with a high degree of visible affluence. It was a strong pull away from God.

He was yoked to people who were leading him where he did not want to go, so he got out of the yoke. He just walked away, and it cost him a lot.

But if he were here, he would tell you it didn’t cost him anything compared to what the cost would have been to stay in that yoke. It did not cost him a thing.

You have choices that you’re going to make in life about who you’re going to be yoked up with.

Again, understand I’m not talking here about casual acquaintances and so on. I’m talking about the people who are going to deeply influence the fate of your soul.

You have spouse choices.
You have business choices.
Partner choices.
Recreational choices.
Counseling choices.
Trusted advisor choices.

And you’ve got to play it through.

If you start a business, you enter into an intimate partnership with the average Corinthian out there, and somewhere down the road, as the money comes in, you think it’d be a wonderful thing if we took some of the money that God has blessed us with and made it available to the poor, made it available through some place City Team in Oakland.

Your partner that you’re in the yoke with is saying he wants to fudge on taxes to increase the profit margin. You’ve got to ask, “What then?”

There’s two parts to this deal really.

Paul says, “Don’t be unequally yoked,” and then by extension, by implication, the question is, who are you yoked up with? That is, are you yoked up to people who are consistently drawing you closer to God? Do you have people who do for you what Paul did for the church at Corinth?

It may be that you want to become a part of a small group in a quest to find people who you can yoke up with, who are going to help lead you into purity before God.

Now, Paul raises a series of rhetorical questions after he talks about this yoke business:

For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols?

“For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common,” and so on.

Essentially these questions are a call for single-mindedness.

What Paul is saying to these questions is, once you’ve directed your life towards righteousness, towards the light, towards Christ, towards faith, towards being the temple of God, don’t do anything that could move you towards impurity.

Don’t do it, he says. It’s just not worth it, because we’re the temple of the living God.

And then he gets into some material

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.”

And the only thing I can suggest on these verses, on these promises, is that you take some time outside of this service — you take some time as a student of the Bible — and just reflect on them, just meditate on them, just live in them, because they’re promises about God’s presence in your life.

God says, “You know how you always associated temples with my presence? Well, I want you to associate that with yourself.”

God says, “I will live with you. I will walk among you. As you get up and walk some place, as you do with your friends sometimes, I want you to understand I’m going with you. When you’re in the car going to work, I’m going with you. I’m going with you,” he says.

“I will be your God and you’ll be my people,” he says.

“I’ll welcome you the way that you do with your best friend when you haven’t seen them for a while and you see that person and your face just lights up and your heart leaps for joy.”

God says, “That’s how close I am to you.”

See, the point of these promises is God is as close to you as you will let him be. God is all around you.

What I want to suggest is that, although if you’re a Christian, you certainly affirm that as a doctrine, it takes a while to actually believe it.

I think to a large extent, Christians don’t actually experience it as true.

I have a confession to make.

In college — it was a Christian college — we would play a game before eating.

We would all sit down, and when the last person sat down we would play a game called “nose goes.” Everyone would put a finger on their nose. Do you know why?

To see who would pray. It was like a game and everyone would put their finger on their nose, and the last person to put his finger on his nose lost, which meant that was the person that had to pray.

Now, understand, I’m not in favor of this game. I’m not advocating this game.

But I want you to think about what that says about our sense of God’s presence.

Imagine for a moment a family sitting around the table, and the kids are going to thank the parent — Mom or Dad — who’s responsible for this meal.

And the kids look at each other, and they say: “Well, one of us needs to say thank you. Who’s going to do it? I don’t want to do it. Do you want to do it? No. Let’s play a game, and whoever loses the game, that will be the person to say thank you to Mom.”

So, they play a game and the loser turns to Mom, who’s been standing there the whole time, and the loser says, “Mom, thank you so much for this meal. It is our delight to be able to thank you, and we’re so grateful for it.”

Do you sense a basic incongruity in communication like that?

The kids would never do that. Why?

Because they’re very aware of the fact that Mom’s standing there watching them play the game.

Why is it that people play the nose goes game before eating?

Why is it that sometimes when we come into worship, someone will say things like, “God, now we come into your presence”?

It’s because we simply have not yet absorbed the reality of God’s promise, which is that he’s closer than you can imagine, that he is right at hand right now for you.

Paul says, “This is God’s promise, and it means you can be pure. But the question is, are you prepared to say no to whatever in your life might keep you from walking with God? Are you prepared to say no to whatever in your life might keep you from walking with God?

Look at verse 17. Now, God has made these wonderful promises about being with us.

Therefore, “Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.”

So, Paul says, “Therefore,” that is, on the basis of this promise of God’s to dwell with us. “Therefore, come out from them and be separate,” says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing.”

Now, let’s pause there for a moment.

What is an unclean thing?

Now, this is a quote from the Old Testament, but now in 2025 in Pleasanton, what is an unclean thing?

An unclean thing is whatever keeps you from walking with God.

An unclean thing is whatever keeps you from walking with God.

It could be almost anything.

Now, it will take some thought for you to discern what the unclean things are in your life — those things that keep you from walking with God.

Some of you may have some things that come to mind immediately.
Some of you will need time to reflect.

I’ll tell you one of mine.

If I’m going to connect with God in a vital way that’s going to stay with me through the day, morning is the best time for me to do it.

Now, there was a period of time in my life where I got in the habit of reading ESPN news first thing in the morning.

Understand, there’s nothing wrong with reading about sports, but for me, it kept me from walking with God. So, for me, for a time, the ESPN app was an unclean thing.

It’s clean now. It’s almost a religious experience for me to read it now.

Understand what I’m saying. I’m not saying ESPN is a bad thing. If you read about sports or watch ESPN first thing in the morning, it doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing.

I could read it at lunch, because at lunch I don’t have the same quality of experience with God. There were other times that it was okay, but first thing in the morning, I needed to identify that this was something that could keep me from walking closely with God.

It may be something that’s hard to give up.

I have a friend who struggled with sexually addictive behavior… and we live in a culture that is far harder than Corinth to deal with that one.

There was a certain type of show he watched that fed into this problem and he would watch them, but then he would feel so far from God. Those shows kept him from walking with God.

It finally reached a point where he was willing to face up to it, finally reached a point where he was willing to talk to his wife, to a couple of friends.

Part of what helped him, see, was he was yoked up with the right people.

If he’d have been yoked up to the wrong people and struggled with an issue like that, he would have been in major problems.

He canceled the service that provided those shows, agreed to talk on a regular basis about his sexuality and sexual issues with a few people that he trusted, and it brought him such an immense sense of relief.

See, for years, he had been pulled in two different directions, and now he was saying he was willing to do whatever it took.

Although it involved significant pain and embarrassment, he was willing to say no to anything he needed to say no to, to remove anything in his life that would keep him from living as the temple of God from walking with Jesus.

The great question is, are you willing to eliminate anything in your life that keeps you from walking with God?

I don’t know what that will be for you.

It might be the remote control.
It might be a credit card.
It might be ambition.
It might be a relationship that you know is headed in a seriously wrong direction.
It might be a problem with anger.
It might be a character issue.

I don’t know what it is.

The question you have to ask yourself is, am I willing to give them up?

Because the rule for purity is that purity calls for the ruthless abandonment of everything that’s in the way of walking with God — the ruthless abandonment of everything that’s in the way of walking with God.

Purity requires the ruthless abandonment of everything that gets in the way of walking with God.

Paul quotes this verse from God: “Therefore come out from them” — that is, from the environment of your Corinth — “and be separate.”

Because a dangerous thing happens.

Live in a place like Corinth long enough, and do you know what happens? You get used to it. Live there long enough, and you just get used to it, and it stops bothering you after a while.

Let me see a quick show of hands on this one, because this one is a basic trait of human nature.

How many of you have ever moved into a new home, a new apartment or something like that? Just raise your hand, would you?

Alright, now, you move in there, you observe everything, it’s all very fresh to you.

How many of you have ever seen things in there that you felt like, I’ve got to change this, I can’t live with this?

How many of you have ever made a list of things when you moved into a place that you knew you had to change? Anybody do that when they made a list of repairs and so forth?

Alright, last question. How many of you didn’t make it all the way through the list? Raise your hands.

See, after a while, what happens? You find out you can live with it. It doesn’t bother you anymore. At first, it drove you nuts. It just stops bothering you. You can live with it. You build up tolerance.

See, we live in a place like Corinth. It’s not just our society. It’s all the stuff that went on in Corinth goes on not just around us but inside of us. We all carry our own little Corinth inside of us.

I have my own set of impurities, and you have yours. I’ve got my list, and you’ve got yours.

The great danger in settling for a mediocre spiritual life, for a contaminated and impure heart, the great danger is, you get used to it.

You get used to it, and things that once bothered you don’t even bother you. You don’t even notice them anymore.

So, Paul says, “Come out and be separate,” which does not mean get away from Corinth… because you cannot get away from Corinth. And it would not be good for Corinth if you could.

It means that while you live in Corinth, you are called to inwardly progressively be becoming the dwelling place of the Almighty, holy, living God.

Now, some of you know what you need to do. As you reflect on who you’re yoked up with and on the unclean things that need to be eliminated from your life, some of you sense the Holy Spirit speaking to you pretty clearly right now.

Some of you are aware that to at least some extent, you have been going through the motions and, in some ways, you have been far from God.

There are yoke issues to deal with or there are unclean things issues to deal with, and I know that it can be painful. But I know that the joy of pure life, of being purely human is by so far worth the cost, worth the sting. The sting is so brief and light in comparison.

Some of you have things that you’ve just gotten used to. If you’re really honest, somewhere in the basement or the attic or the closet of your life, there’s something that bothered you at one time that you haven’t noticed for a long time, but you know it’s there.

It may be a little painful. There may be some sting to it. You may need to confess, maybe to another person.

You may need some help from others here that you can yoke up with, but God is prompting you right now, and you don’t want to ignore that.

Who are you yoked up with? What are the unclean things in your life? What are the things that used to bother you that you’ve just gotten used to?

Let’s pray and ask for God’s help to identify what’s getting in the way of us walking with him.