2 Corinthians 6:17–18

2 CORINTHIANS CHAPTER 6

Admonition to Flee the Fellowship of Unbelievers. 2 Cor. 6, 11–18

V.16b. For ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. V.17. Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, v.18. and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be My sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.

For the sake of emphasizing the entire passage, the apostle explains his last comparison: For we are the temple of a God that is living. Any agreement with the worship of dead and powerless idols, no matter in what form, is therefore out of the question.

And that Paul is right in representing the body of the true believers as a temple of God he proves from a passage of the Old Testament, which he quotes in a free translation: I will dwell in them and walk in them, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people, Lev. 26, 11. 12.

The believers are a habitation of God through the Spirit, Eph. 2, 22. God Himself, the Triune Godhead, has made His abode in them, John 14, 23. Cp. Ezek. 37, 26-28; Hos. 2, 23; Jer. 24, 7. God lives in the midst of His congregation in the Word and in the Sacraments; His Word is effective in them through the ministry of the Word, in effecting faith and a holy life. The believers have no thought for, no interest in, any other God but the one that dwells in them, and He that made them His people is pleased to continue as their God.

From this relation, however, it follows what Paul adds in the form of a peremptory command of the Lord: Wherefore, come out from the midst of them and separate yourselves, says the Lord, and touch not an unclean thing. Paul here, as Luther says, melts together many verses into one heap, and casts such a text therefrom as gives the meaning of the entire Scriptures. The thought is that of Is. 52, 11. 12, where the deliverance of the Israelites from Babylon is pictured as a redemption. The mere touching of the unclean thing will make the believer a partaker of strange uncleanness and a denier of the Lord. “The admonition here is that they should come out in the most decided manner from the whole sphere of heathenish worldly life, should separate themselves in spirit from their heathen neighbors, should avoid all heathenish practices which might defile men consecrated to God, and especially abstain from all idolatrous festivals” (Lange-Schaff, 2 Corinthians, 119).

The result of this uncompromising attitude on the part of the believers is finally stated, also in a combination of Scripture-passages from the Old Testament: And I will receive you, and I will be to you a Father, and you shall be to Me sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty. Compare Ex. 4, 22; Jer. 31, 9; Hos. 1, 10; Is. 43, 6.

The promise of God, contained in all parts of His holy Word, is not only that His grace will make the believers an assembly dedicated to Him, but he promises them the position of sons and daughters, together with the heritage of heaven, Gal. 4, 4. 5. And there can be no doubt as to His ability to make good His promise of adding us to His household and giving us all the blessings of true children, because He is the Lord, the almighty Governor of all things, 2 Sam. 7, 8.

Note: The manner in which the apostle quotes the Old Testament is entirely in line with his own inspired character.

“The concluding verses of this chapter are an instructive illustration of the way in which the New Testament writers quote the Old. 1. They often quote a translation which does not strictly adhere to the original. 2. They often quote according to the sense, and not according to the letter. 3. They often blend together different passages of Scripture, so as to give the sense, not of any one passage, but the combined sense of several. 4. They sometimes give the sense, not of any particular passage or passages, but, so to speak, the general sense of Scripture. There is no such passage in the Old Testament, for example, as that contained in this last verse, but the sentiment is often and clearly expressed. 5. They never quote as of authority any but the canonical books of the Old Testament” (Hodge).

Mark also: The language of Paul in this entire section is held in such a majestic strain and, at the same time, shows his command of the Greek language in such a clear way that it is rightly regarded as one of the finest in all his letters.

And finally: This passage is properly applied in the case of false union with sectarian churches. For inasmuch and in so far as any church-body has the unclean thing in its midst in the form of any false doctrine or antiscriptural practice, insomuch and in so far it is contaminated and may become contaminating. If even that is a contamination for believers to be united with unbelievers in matters which further the idolatrous ideas of the latter, much more is the unionism of the present day to be condemned, which ignores differences of creed and practice with the specious plea that the Church must be a power in the world. It is only by retaining both doctrine and life in the greatest possible, in absolute, purity that the Church will be able to fulfill its mission of being a salt in the world. But if the salt have lost its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? Mark 9, 50.