We Are the Temple of the Living God (2 Corinthians 6:14-7:1)
Today’s Word
[The Temple of the Living God] (NIV)
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?
6:15 What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?
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.”
6:17 Therefore, “Come out from them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.”
6:18 And, “I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”
7:1 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.
Background
This passage feels a little out of place the moment you read it. Just before it, in 6:11-13, Paul pleaded, “Open wide your hearts also.” Then verse 14 suddenly begins, “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers.” And in 7:2 he returns to his plea: “Make room for us in your hearts.” Because you could skip straight from 6:13 to 7:2 and the letter would flow smoothly, scholars have long debated this section. Some think it is a fragment of an earlier letter; others think Paul placed it here on purpose. Either way, it has come down to us as part of 2 Corinthians, and we read it where it stands. The most natural way to hear it is alongside the plea just before it (The Narrowing Was in Our Own Hearts, 2 Corinthians 6:11-13). This passage shows that “open wide your hearts” never meant leaving the door open to anyone and anything.
Start with the picture of a yoke. A yoke is a wooden frame laid across the necks of two animals so they can pull one plow together. The Old Testament forbade plowing with an ox and a donkey yoked together (Deuteronomy 22:10). Put two animals of different strength and stride under one yoke, and the furrow runs crooked and both of them wear out. Leviticus 19:19 also forbids mating different kinds of animals, and the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint) uses a word from the same root as the one Paul uses here. Paul takes this old farming rule and applies it to life. Once you are bound to the same yoke, you end up being pulled in the same direction.
So what was the “yoke” the Corinthians faced? Corinth was a port city crowded with temples. Merchants’ gatherings, trade guilds, and family banquets were often held in temples or centered on food sacrificed to idols. Paul had already spent three chapters on eating in idol temples (1 Corinthians 8-10), and he had told them, “You cannot drink the cup of the Lord and the cup of demons too” (1 Corinthians 10:21). That is why many scholars read the yoke here as being bound into relationships tangled up with idolatry, partnerships where the direction of faith splits. This verse is often narrowed to marriage alone, but the context is wider than that.
The distinction matters. In his first letter to the same church, Paul made clear that he did not mean they should have nothing to do with the immoral people of this world, since they would then have to leave the world (1 Corinthians 5:9-10). He said they could accept a dinner invitation from an unbeliever (1 Corinthians 10:27), and he urged believers married to unbelievers not to leave them (1 Corinthians 7:12-14). So this passage is not telling us to wall ourselves off from unbelieving neighbors. It is telling us not to be harnessed to what runs against Christ.
The five questions in verses 14-16 all expect the same answer: no, they cannot. Righteousness and wickedness, light and darkness, Christ and Belial, believer and unbeliever, the temple of God and idols. As the pairs line up, they become more concrete, moving from principles to people to the place of worship. “Belial” comes from a Hebrew word for worthlessness or wickedness, and in later Jewish writings it became a name for the chief of evil. It appears only here in the New Testament.
Verse 16 gives the reason behind every question: we are the temple of the living God. Corinth was full of temples to idols. Yet Paul tells a small community meeting in the middle of that city that they are the real temple. He had already called the church God’s temple (1 Corinthians 3:16-17) and each believer’s body a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19). The quotation that follows weaves together the promises of Leviticus 26:11-12 and Ezekiel 37:27. The promise that once rested on the tabernacle in the wilderness and the temple in Jerusalem has now come to rest on the church of Christ.
Verses 17-18 also layer several Old Testament texts. “Come out from them and be separate… Touch no unclean thing” comes from Isaiah 52:11. Originally it was God’s call to the exiles in Babylon to leave and come home. “I will receive you” echoes Ezekiel 20:34, where God promises to gather his scattered people. “I will be a Father to you” recalls the promise to David’s son in 2 Samuel 7:14. But Paul adds “daughters” to “sons,” much as Isaiah 43:6 speaks of “my sons” and “my daughters” together. A promise once given to a royal line is now open to all of God’s people.
Then 7:1 ties it together: “since we have these promises.” Paul does not end with a prohibition; he ends with a promise. The promises are the three in the quotations: I will live among them, I will receive you, I will be a Father to you. People who have received these promises purify themselves, and they do it from “everything that contaminates body and spirit,” in what they do outwardly and in the depths of the heart. “Perfecting holiness” shows that this is not a one-time event but something carried forward day by day.
For the flow of the whole letter, see Introduction to 2 Corinthians.
Key Words Made Simple
- Yoked together with: Greek heterozygeō. A compound of “different” and “yoke,” meaning to be bound under one yoke with something of a different kind. It appears only here in the New Testament.
- Wickedness: Greek anomia, literally lawlessness. A way of life that pays no attention to God’s will. It is set directly opposite righteousness.
- Fellowship: Greek koinōnia. A deep sharing in something together. Paul uses it often for the fellowship of believers, which makes the question about light and darkness all the sharper.
- In common: Greek metochē (v. 14) and meris (v. 15). Having a share in the same thing, like partners who split one portion.
- Harmony: Greek symphōnēsis. Sounding together, the same root as our word “symphony.” Christ and Belial cannot sing in one chord.
- Agreement: Greek synkatathesis. Literally casting a vote together, being of one mind. The temple and idols cannot stand on the same side.
- Belial: From a Hebrew word for worthlessness or wickedness. In later Jewish writings it became a name for the leader of evil.
- Temple: Greek naos. Not so much the whole temple complex as the innermost dwelling place where God himself resides.
- Live with, walk among: Greek enoikeō, emperipateō. Literally “to dwell in and walk around in.” God is not promising a brief visit but to live in the middle of our everyday lives.
- Receive: Greek eisdechomai. To open the door and welcome someone in. There is a home waiting for those who come out.
- Contaminates: Greek molysmos. A stain or defilement. Verse 7:1 says it can mark both body and spirit.
- Holiness: Greek hagiōsynē. Being set apart and belonging to God. Paired with “perfecting,” it describes something brought to completion over time.
Expressions Worth Noting
- “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers” (6:14)
- A yoke is not a burden you carry alone; it makes two walk together. When one side turns, the other is pulled along.
- So this is less about choosing your friends carefully and more about asking what you are harnessed to and where it is taking you.
- “What fellowship can light have with darkness” (6:14)
- Paul does not ask whether the two can be mixed in moderation. He asks whether such a mix is even possible.
- Light and darkness do not split a room half and half. When light enters, darkness retreats. The question is not meant to frighten us but to remind us who lives in us.
- “For we are the temple of the living God” (6:16)
- The reason for the warning is not a rule but an identity. What we refuse to do flows from who we are.
- We do not become a temple by being clean; we keep ourselves clean because God already dwells in us. The order matters.
- “And I will receive you” (6:17)
- The call to come out comes with a promise of welcome attached. God does not just say “leave”; he opens his arms to the one who comes.
- Being set apart does not mean being left alone. It means moving into a larger embrace.
- “Since we have these promises” (7:1)
- The call to holiness stands on a promise. We receive the promise first, and then we live in a way that fits it.
- We do not purify ourselves in order to become God’s children. We long to be clean because he has already promised to be our Father.
What the Passage Says
- Watch what you are harnessed to (6:14-15). Paul says things headed in opposite directions must not be bound under one yoke. Righteousness and wickedness, light and darkness, Christ and Belial cannot walk together to the end.
- We are the temple where God dwells (6:16). In the middle of a city crowded with idols, Paul tells the church that they are the temple. The ancient promise that God would live and walk among his people has been fulfilled in the church.
- The call to come out comes with a promise of welcome (6:17-18). God receives those who leave what is unclean and becomes their Father. The same promise is open to daughters as well as sons.
- Those who hold the promises purify themselves (7:1). They turn from every stain of body and spirit. This is not a single decision but a life of carrying holiness forward day by day out of reverence for God.
- Discernment does not close the heart; it guards it (the flow of 6:11-7:2). Paul says “open wide your hearts” on one side and “do not be yoked together” on the other. The two do not clash. The temple where God lives is wide open to people and firmly shut to idols.
Standing Before This Word Today
The first reaction to this passage is often to flinch. Do not be yoked together. Come out from them. Touch no unclean thing. With one “do not” after another, our minds drift toward calculation: so who should I keep my distance from? But read it again slowly and you notice that Paul’s attention is not on sorting people. From beginning to end it rests on one sentence. We are the temple of the living God.
Once we hold on to that sentence, the question changes. It is no longer who to avoid, but what is sitting with God in the place where he dwells. For the Corinthians, idols were statues they could see. We do not have those statues. But the heart of idolatry is seating something else in God’s place. Success can take that seat. So can the approval of others, or anxiety, or money, or the restless habit of comparison. Get yoked to one of these, and our days follow wherever it pulls. At first we think we are only walking alongside it for a while. Before long, it is the yoke, not us, that sets the direction.
That is why the image of a yoke is so honest. A yoke is not something you can shrug off on your own. When the one bound to you pulls, you follow. So Paul does not tell us to struggle after we have been dragged off course. He tells us not to be harnessed in the first place. When we join hands in some venture, put our name to some commitment, or let some habit become part of our daily rhythm, discernment means first asking where it will pull us.
None of this is meant to separate us from the world. Paul himself said believers could sit at an unbeliever’s table and should not abandon unbelieving family. Jesus was called a friend of tax collectors and sinners. Light does not hide from darkness; it goes into dark places and fills them. The danger is not light entering darkness, but light being bound to darkness until it goes out. Loving our neighbors is one thing. Being yoked to the idols they serve is something else entirely.
Verse 17 invites us to linger. Come out, and I will receive you. Leaving anything is always frightening. There is the familiar place, the people we laughed with, the benefits we enjoyed. So God attaches a promise right after the call to come out. He will not leave the one who comes out standing empty-handed in the road. The first people to hear these words in Isaiah 52 were exiles going home from Babylon. Their leaving was not a loss but a homecoming. It is the same when God calls us out of something. We are not coming out to lose something; we are going home.
Then verse 18: I will be a Father to you, and you will be my sons and daughters. Right in the middle of a passage about holiness sits the warmest language there is, the language of a father and his children. Holiness is not cold rule-keeping. It is living as children who fit their Father’s house. Children raised in a home come to share its way of speaking and its way of walking. They do not copy it by force; they become like it by living there.
That is why 7:1 begins the way it does: since we have these promises. The grace of this passage is that the order never flips. God does not receive us once we are clean; we long to be clean because he has already promised to receive us. Lose that order, and holiness turns into endless self-inspection and a ruler for measuring others. Keep it, and holiness becomes the desire of a beloved child to bring joy to the Father.
In the previous passage Paul told us to open wide our hearts. Here he tells us not to be yoked. Put the two side by side and the shape of the heart God wants comes into view: wide toward people, narrow toward idols. We often live the other way around, closing the door on people and flinging it open to idols. Perhaps the prayer we can bring before this word today is something like this: Lord, show me the places in me where something other than you has taken a seat. Clear them out, and make me a home where you live and walk.
Living It Out
- Write down what you are harnessed to. Think about the work, groups, commitments, and habits you are part of right now. Ask whether any of them is pulling you in the opposite direction from where Christ is going. This is not about sorting people; it is about noticing direction.
- Name one thing sitting in the temple seat. If something has quietly taken God’s place, give it an honest name. It might be success, approval, anxiety, or comparison. Simply naming it makes it harder for it to keep playing master.
- Draw near to an unbelieving neighbor as light. So that this passage is not misheard as a call to build walls, offer one act of kindness today to a neighbor or coworker who does not believe. Not being yoked is not the same as not loving.
- Read the promise of verse 16 aloud. “I will live with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be my people.” Read it slowly, believing it is true in your home, your workplace, and the road between them today.
- Practice repentance that starts from the promise. Verse 7:1 speaks of stains on body and spirit. If something weighs on you, bring it to God, not with the fear of being condemned but trusting his promise to receive you. Just as we asked God for a wide heart in the last passage, The Narrowing Was in Our Own Hearts (2 Corinthians 6:11-13), a clean heart is also something we ask him for.
Questions to Sit With
- What am I yoked to right now? Which direction is it pulling me?
- Am I confusing “turning from what opposes Christ” with “keeping my distance from unbelievers”?
- When am I most likely to forget that I am part of the temple of the living God?
- When God calls me out of something, do I experience it as loss or as homecoming?
- Does my pursuit of holiness come from fear or from promise? How does that difference show up in my life?
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