Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 2 Corinthians · About this commentary
Unequally Yoked
2 Corinthians 6:14-18
14 Don’t be unequally yoked with unbelievers, for what fellowship do righteousness and iniquity have? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness? · WEB
The image is of two animals mismatched under one yoke, and five questions press the same objection before any promise is offered.
Don't be unequally yoked with unbelievers.
The picture is agricultural and precise. A yoke joins two animals to one load, and joining unlike animals was forbidden in the law because it does not work — different heights, different strides, and the weaker is dragged while the stronger is held back. The word Paul builds on means differently-yoked, so the objection is to mismatch rather than to contact.
That matters for how wide the warning reaches. Nothing here forbids dealing with unbelievers; the letter assumes such dealings throughout, and Paul has just spent eight verses describing his reputation among outsiders 2 Corinthians 6:8. What is in view is binding oneself into a shared pull with someone heading elsewhere.
Five questions follow, and each pairs two things that cannot combine. What fellowship do righteousness and iniquity have? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness? What agreement does Christ have with Belial? Or what portion does a believer have with an unbeliever? What agreement does a temple of God have with idols?
The pairs escalate. The first two are qualities, the third names persons, the fourth names people, and the fifth arrives at a building — and none of the five is answered, because the answer to each is nothing.
Then the fifth question turns into a statement about them: for you are a temple of the living God. That is the ground of the whole instruction. The objection is not that mixing is dangerous but that the readers are already occupied premises, and the quotation attached says by whom — I will dwell in them and walk in them.
What follows is a chain of promises with a condition in front of them, and the order is fixed. Come out from among them, and be separate. Touch no unclean thing. Then I will receive you, then I will be to you a Father, then you will be to me sons and daughters.
The separation is asked for first, and the family relation is described after it. And the titles offered at the end are the largest in the passage, spoken by the Lord Almighty — which is what the yoke was being compared against.
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