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It’s interesting to me that in the midst of a 6-chapter-long instruction on dedicating our lives to ministering to unbelievers, Paul interjects a warning not to become unequally yoked with them.

The “equally yoked” principle may be applied to a wide range of circumstances, but the specific context here is ministry. Paul has been concerned that our ministry not be discredited (2Cor 6:3).

So what does unequally yoked mean in context?

In Deuteronomy 22:10, God said, “Do not plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together.” Think on that. Why? Well, oxen and donkeys simply don’t have the same strength, speed, or even work ethics!

What is the purpose of a yoke? It enables the work animal to remain connected to the work it is doing. When two equals are yoked together, the burden becomes lighter for each. They move together in the same direction and at the same speed. They achieve even greater results together as a team, and they draw on each other’s strength.

But as Paul said in vv.14-16a, we have nothing in common with unbelievers.

Is it true in our actual practice that we have nothing in common with unbelievers? Think about the lives of unbelievers you know and think about your own life. How much overlap do you find? How radically different is the stuff of our lives from Joe and Jane Unbeliever down the street?

We are supposed to be such very different people from the world that being yoked to them would slow us down, weaken us, and make us much less effective.

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Note that the church is the temple (v.16). Remember in John 2:19-21 when Jesus said that if they destroyed the temple He would build it again in three days? The text says He was referring to His own body. And in Rev. 21:22 John wrote, “I saw no temple in the city, for its temple is the Lord God the Almighty and the Lamb.”

The Lord God and Christ the Lamb are the temple. Jesus’ body is the temple. We are His body. We are the temple of God. And God’s temple and idols (which are whatever unbelievers put their trust in) have nothing in common.

The Greek word for “agreement” in v.16 is sugkatathesis (συγκατάθεσις). This is compound word: sug- (“together”) + kata (“with”) + thesis (“decision”). It carries the idea of two people voting together, investing money together, or putting a down payment on a loan together. God warns us here not to build a future with an unbeliever because our desired futures, and what we each trust to get us there, are very different.

So we must come out from among them, be separate, and abandon things that are unclean (v.17).

The obvious question in these verses is “what kind of yoke is he referring to?” Friendships? Business partnerships? Club memberships? Dating? Marriage? We need to answer this question carefully and contextually.

Leading right up to these verses, Paul said we are Christ’s ambassadors (2 Cor 5:20). He gave plain guidance that we must minister to the world. We can’t do that without being present with unbelievers. We can’t do that by staying in our church buildings and hoping they become Christians so that we all show up at the same place on Sunday morning. We must, as we read examples through the book of Acts and see throughout Jesus' earthy life, actively place ourselves in the midst of unbelievers. We must be among them physically. Jesus told His disciples (including us), “I’m sending you out like sheep among wolves” (Matt 10:16), and He prayed to His Father in John 17 that we would be preserved as we do His work in the world.

Two animals together can work in the same field without being yoked. We can work in the same field as unbelievers without being yoked to them. Yokes join so that there is no choice but to do the same things and move in the same direction. Yokes form a binding relationship. One can’t decide to turn left and the other one turn right.

That is what we must avoid with unbelievers.

That is why marriage has always been the primary way this passage has been applied. Certainly marriage is a relationship that binds people in a way that requires them to move in the same direction. Marriage requires compromise, but when we compromise with an unbeliever we lose a part of our orientation toward God. It is why Paul said if we marry we should marry “in the Lord” (1 Cor 7:39).

In 1 Cor 7:12-16 he also realized that some Christians were already married to unbelievers (cf. 1 Pet 3:1-2). He clearly said not to break up those marriages. In fact, he implied that if you live faithfully to God and your unbelieving spouse wants to stay, it may suggest there’s still hope!

But if an unbeliever insists on leaving because s/he can’t handle you living the way you believe, let him or her leave. Don’t be yoked.

The problems - whether in marriage, friendships, business partnership, or any other relationship - come in when you do not feel free to follow God because you feel a divided loyalty to your partner and God. You may even have a friendship in which you don’t want to offend or upset your friend, so you compromise your values or fail to speak openly about an issue. If that is how you act with the other person, you’re yoked to another human rather than to Christ.

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So in the end, he says to cleanse ourselves of divided loyalties. We’ve already seen that God doesn’t want us to break up marriages (remember, marriage is a picture of Christ and the church, Eph 5). But any other type of unequal yoking should be dissolved. And in unequal marriages, we should live with our loyalty first to God rather than to our spouses and allow the consequences of that choice to play themselves out.