The Social Network

2 Corinthians 14 says, “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? ¹⁵ What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? ¹⁶ What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God.”

Paul is speaking to the church at Corinth. By reading the first letter with the second letter we begin to see that he was having to give much instruction about righteous living. It seems that they were doing just about everything possible to abuse grace and freedom, and were mixing their old ways of sin with their new lives in christ (which by the way is not new to us today). In this passage he was explaining what we might call the social network. People who were claiming to call themselves Christians were being pulled away by social relationships from their walk with Christ.

In this passage the first important concept is when he says “do not be yoked together with unbelievers.” It’s very important to understand this concept. A yoke was used to connect to ox or cattle together to become one in their work. When two beasts of burden were equally yoked it was like a finely tuned mustang. It was powerful and effective. But when the two animals were unequally yoked, the weaker animal would pull down the stronger animal and both would become less effective.

The yoke concept was also used in the old testament to describe the law passed down from Moses, like a burden that was difficult to keep. But in the context of 1 Corinthians I believe that the exact usage of this word is only used once in this context (Stong’s number 2086).

The first thought that comes to mind is that we are not to be friends with non-christians…does this make sense? Not at all! Of course we are to love everyone and encourage those around us with love and the word. We are to minister to others. Paul himself says earlier in the letter: ⁹ I wrote to you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people— ¹⁰ not at all meaning the people of this world who are immoral, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world.”

The concept of the yoke is what puts us in context. It is telling us that when the time comes to do the good work, we can’t be socially networked with the world that it would pull us away from Christ. Facebook seems to be the ultimate network, however, I think it times it is the perfect example of being yoked with the wrong people. We can become consumed with looking into other people’s lives that it is a bit voyeuristic. But that is another conversation.

I pray God bring me into the right relationships at the right time with the right people!

Stumbling over meat

1 Corinthians 8: ¹³Therefore, if food causes my brother to stumble, I will never eat meat again, so that I will not cause my brother to stumble.

This is one of those passages which is easy to take out of context. Here we read Paul instructing the church at Corinth to not abuse their new-found liberty in the new covenant with God. The old covenant was black and white, not much gray area when it came to what was lawful and unlawful. However, the old covenant made it easy to have a bad heart but with your actions and keeping the law, seemingly being a righteous person. The new covenant was more about the heart and less about the “rules.” Paul is explaining to his people who while they have grace and liberty to eat meat that may be “unholy” according to the jewish traditions, that if they do so, do it in a manner that would not offend or cause one to sin.

So how is this passage taken out of context today? Here’s my example: alcohol is not a sin to drink. But if I am with a friend who struggles with alcoholism (the abuse of alcohol) and I offer him a drink, he partakes, gets drunk, beats his wife…what have I done? I have caused him to stumble.

Now the flip side: People can abuse this passage by dictating to others what they think is sinful and not sinful. I could see a friend from church at a bar drinking, and me not being an alcoholic, says to myself, “Self, if they can drink I guess so can I.” So I get drunk, get in a wreck and kill someone. I go to church and say, “It’s not my fault, I saw a deacon at a bar drinking so I figured I could also, but it was their fault because they should have never been drinking.” So what I’ve done is placed blame on someone else when it was my responsibility.

But here is the ultimate point: It’s all about the heart. If I have liberty but there is even a small chance of hurting someone else from it, I should want to NOT use my liberty because I love God and love others as my self.

Funny how it always comes down to the heart.