Being Made Newਨਮੂਨਾ

Putting the Past Behind Us

What was your favorite construction toy when you were growing up?

Legos?

Maybe Tinkertoys?

Construx?

Perhaps Erector Sets were your thing.

You’re probably guessing the era I grew up in based on the toys I know.

But you know what is frustrating about all of those sets?

None of them are compatible!

You can’t connect a Lego to a Lincoln Log. Erectors and Construx don’t snap together. Of course, the imaginative little boy among us probably figured out how to integrate the various building materials, but that took some doing. And to be honest, it never really worked (or looked) quite right.

Some things are just incompatible.

Actually, we can be stronger than that:

Some things cannot exist together.

That’s the point Paul makes in this part of the 2nd letter to Corinth, and it’s a continuation of a beat that he has been keeping with different drums for a fair portion of the letter.

Paul continues to remind the believers there that they are new and different people since they have come to Christ.

In today’s passage, he is further (and again) calling them to leave behind old ways of doing things and embrace their new identity in Christ and everything that entails.

Through a series of contrasts in 2 Corinthians 6:14-16, Paul demonstrates that believers and unbelievers don’t mix. Our worlds are just dramatically different.

Men, before we think this is calling us to an isolationist existence within a safe Christian bubble (see John 17:15; 1 Corinthians 5:9-11), we have to ask what it means to “be yoked.”

You’ve probably heard that a yoke was used to join oxen together for the purpose of working together to pull a heavy load.

Paul warns believers against being “bound” to unbelievers because our lives have radically different goals and directions.

This advice can be applied in many circumstances, but Paul is trying to make the point that it can be dangerous to commit to pulling with an unbeliever.

In our new lives as followers of Jesus, we are to leave the old behind us. Yet again, Paul calls the Corinthians to be the new creation that Jesus has made us.

This time, he is sounding the horn for us to separate from how we may have done things in the past, and carefully and thoughtfully consider our associations.

Prayer: Father God, help me be a man of wisdom and discernment concerning those I commit myself to and partner with in life. Amen.

Reflection: Are there any associations that reflect your old life more than your new? How can you prayerfully ask God for wisdom in thinking about and walking out those relationships?