Tackling Tradition (Part 4) - Do Not Be Unevenly Yoked

2 Corinthians 6:14–16 (ESV): Do not be

unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership has righteousness with lawlessness? Or what fellowship has light with darkness? 15 What accord has Christ with Belial? Or what portion does a believer share with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement has the temple of God with idols? 

This text is parallel with 1 Corinthians 6:12 - 20.  Both texts are dealing with the use of the Aphrodite temple to do business, sex with prostitutes, & worship a pagan pseudo-deity.  In both instances food sacrificed to idols was involved. 

In Corinth, there were two warring parties relative to this food issue.  Those of weaker conscience were those who believed that eating the food was unwise & most likely a sin regardless of the motive of the person eating it.  They judged those who ate the meat with little or no regard to the motives of those people. 

I Corinthians 10, Paul agreed with the people of weaker conscience with respect to their belief that demons underwrite pagan rites & eating such food when consumed as a meal for Aphrodite or under her patronage.   He disagrees with their solution & the manner of their judgment, judgment that sought to determine Paul’s own liberty as a person of stronger conscience by way of their conscience. 

Rather than enjoining them to refrain from eating food sacrifices to idols, he gave them advice on how to deal with this issue as a church, encouraging those of stronger conscience to either abstain altogether or be extremely circumspect about the places & people involved in their eating this meat. 

In 2 Corinthians, the same issues persisted.  The church may have been fracturing due to this issue, due to the activity of those who were failing to heed Paul’s advice & they were very certainly still doing business by seeking Aphrodite’s patronage & blessing at the temple and/or at home.  Still, Paul does not end the practice altogether. 

People sitting in judgment of Christians like me & the other members of Philadelphia APC, all of whom reject Situational Ethics and also understand that we are not living in a 3 - 5 year old church in a nation that is going to make our religion illegal in 10 years like Rome did in AD 64 are at times targeted by the Situational Ethicists in the covenant community for our beliefs .  

We live in America, where there is no state church and whose system of jurisprudence & body politic & churches are the recipients & custodians of 2000 years of Scripture and teaching drawn from it from the days of Thaddeus, Silas, & Paul through Augustine, Aquinas, Calvin, Beza, Knox, Turretin, Edwards, Leland, Dagg, the Hodges, Warfield, Vos, Henry, Sproul, and now me.   

The Bible - not liturgical philosophy & not your unargued traditions - is the inerrant & infallible warrant for faith & practice.   Correctly understood, it most certainly disagrees with  obstinate, deliberate, & profane ideas about degrees of separation from the world - especially the sort that arises in & out of some fundamentalist sects like the Independent Fundamental Baptist churches. 

The only road to 2 Corinthians 6 supporting their ideas would necessitate Paul contradicting his teaching in 1 Corinthians in order to placate those of weaker conscience.  How so?  One of the defining characteristics of those of weaker conscience as they grow more strident in their protestations is their call to abstain from the ecclesiastical & secular outrage du jour. 

He did not call for the abstention of eating food altogether.  Why? Because he understood that the church in Corinth was relatively new.  Consequently, his regulations on their behavior were meant to be temporary at best and a tool used yo prevent use of the Aphrodite temple for business, worship, & pleasure.  He was neither contradicting, suspending, nor repudiating Matt. 5:41 in favor of his own teaching.   

The Situational Ethics committee & the legalists in the churches would have us all living under rules & regulations that are for younger churches where the pews are full of people who are fairly knew Christians or analogous people.   J.I. Packer was right about the pews being  larded with people with bad theology.  It’s also true that Situational Ethics has become axiomatic.   

However, our situation is not like that in Corinth.  Rather, it is like the one in 1st Century Judea.  Unlike India or Iran where Christians are in the minority, we live in a nation-state that benefits from the full sweep of the Judeo-Christian tradition.  Our churches aren’t new, & to whom much is given much is required.

In Romans 2, Paul reminded the Jewish people in the Roman church that their people had guarded a 1500ish year old deposit of faith and consequently were held to some high standards.  Yeshua, in Matthew, was doing the same thing.  

The Sermon on the Mount is the NT version of Deuteronomy.   It is clear that there is no religious liberty exemption that applies.  If the jackbooted gay couple asks you as a baker for weddings, to paraclete them by baking their cake, then you are to ignore Napoleonic judgment by your fellow believers, remember that they want to bully you into reasoning like the Zealots, Sanhedrin, & the Superapostles & their stoolies & their Situational Ethics, & fear God, not them into baking the cake.   

God bless us all, every one, & “Go & sin no more.”