2 Corinthians 6:14

14. St. Paul trusts now, by warming the affections of his Corinthians, first to draw them into separation from sin, 2 Corinthians 6:14 to 2 Corinthians 7:1, and to bring them to an acceptance of himself, 2 Corinthians 7:2.

Be ye not The richer your Christian affections the easier your separation from a wicked world. As Christ, his gospel, his Church, his apostles, and holy happiness, fill your hearts with abounding satisfaction, withdrawal from earthly idols becomes spontaneous.

Unequally yoked An allusion, doubtless, to Deuteronomy 22:10, where an ox and an ass are forbidden to be yoked together. To be unequally yoked is, therefore, to be connected with an unfitting associate. There will be pulling different ways, and danger for a Christian to be pulled into danger and ruin. This unequal yoking, this binding of the Christian with the loose thinker and free liver, is a source of myriads of apostasies and destructions. Marriage is not specially indicated, but it is eminently included as the most striking instance of yoking in life. A false marriage of Christian with unbeliever is often a disaster for eternity.

Righteousness with unrighteousness This antithesis is truly, if seen with a true eye, the greatest possible contrast in the universe. There are many opposites known or conceivable, but the greatest possible of all oppositions is that between absolute right and absolute wrong. But as the eye of the ethical man is apt to be dim and dull, Paul immediately addresses another contrast, the most powerful conceivable, to the bodily eye light with darkness. This image is known among all religions which in any degree inculcate the idea of holiness.

In a series of intense questions, five in number, St. Paul arrays before the minds of the Corinthians a series of images to impress them with a vivid sense of the absolute contrariety between a pure Christianity and a world of wickedness. The images are drawn from ethics, from nature, from the antithesis of Christ and Belial, from faith, and from the sanctity of God’s temple. it is, doubtless, by a summary rehearsal of those lessons of holiness with which his preaching had often impressed these converts from heathenism, that he is here recalling them to first principles.

In the five words used to designate the denied connexion between the contracted objects, namely, fellowship, communion, concord, part, agreement, Meyer sees proof of Paul’s command of copious Greek. But Stanley remarks that there is no special fitness of each to its own place; they might be interchanged.