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Leeman: No whiff of belonging before believing here.

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One of the most vivid instances of Old Testament—New Testament continuity occurs when Paul reaches back to the cleanliness and ritual purity laws from the Pentateuch, holds them up in his hand, and says in essence to the Corinthians, “Church, be distinct like this!” He writes:

   Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.” Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from every defilement of body and spirit, bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God. (2 Cor. 6:14–7:1)

 Paul envisions quite the line distinguishing God’s people in Corinth from the larger Corinthian population. No partnership. No fellowship. No accord. No portion. No agreement. Instead, go out. Be separate. Cleanse yourselves. Bring holiness to completion.

 He is not talking geography; he is talking identity. He’s not telling them to refrain from befriending non-Christians or living among them. He’s affirming the church in its separate identity as the covenantal people among whom God dwells. They are the “temple of the living God.” Therefore, they must not enter into any partnership, fellowship, or accord with unbelievers that would tempt those unbelievers to think they belong to God, or tempt those believers to think they belong to the world. Yes, moral implications follow, but everything starts with an affirmation of their new identities. This New Testament church should be just as “set apart unto God,” as kosher-eating, Sabbath-keeping, Canaan-inhabiting, male-circumcising, ethnic Israel.

 We might wonder where this passage has disappeared to in the last few decades of evangelical ecclesiology. There’s no whiff of “belonging before believing” here. We use 2 Corinthians 6:14 to persuade the teens in the youth group not to date non-Christians at school, and that’s about it.

 It’s not as if Paul is unmindful of the points of discontinuity between the old covenant and the new. He has already spent an entire chapter explaining those discontinuities (2 Corinthians 3), followed by two more chapters emphasizing the outward missional thrust of the new covenant (2 Corinthians 4–5), which he concludes by calling himself an ambassador on behalf of a reconciling God (5:19–20). 

 He even uses the first half of chapter 6 to explain the extravagant lengths to which he would go to “make many rich” in the gospel (6:1–10). Then, in the second half of chapter 6, Paul tells the church to “go out” and “be separate.” Apparently, Paul sees no contradiction between the call to be an ambassador of reconciliation and the call to exclude unbelievers from the church. Mission and holiness are not opposed to one another; they work together. It’s no wonder that Jesus said that salt that loses its saltiness is useless, like light hidden under a bowl (Matt. 5:13–16).
Leeman, J. (2010). The Church and the Surprising Offense of God’s Love: Reintroducing the Doctrines of Church Membership and Discipline (pp. 255–256). Wheaton, IL: Crossway.


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