“What agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; as God said, “I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people. Therefore go out from their midst, and be separate from them, says the Lord, and touch no unclean thing; then I will welcome you, and I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me, says the Lord Almighty.” (2 Corinthians 6:16-18 ESV)

In the verses just before this, Paul warns the Christians in Corinth not to be ‘unequally yoked.’ There is no way to link together sin and righteousness, light and dark. A heart devoted to God cannot be also devoted to thoughts, attitudes and values that stand contrary to Him. We cannot live both in the world and in the Spirit and expect God to be okay with it. And yet that is our daily struggle. Every single day, we fight and stand on that line. Devoted to God, yet still dealing with the effects of sin on our heart. Constantly bombarded by the world and its influences, yet being drawn into the will of God.

These two landscapes stand in stark contrast to one another. There is no resemblance, no chance for merger. The people that God has redeemed are to ol live a life apart from the world, not a a life a part of the world. I don’t pretend for a moment that this is a cake walk, and that everyday isn’t going to have a struggle to be dealt with, but the truth of the he matter is that we cannot have a divided heart and honor God. Yes grace saves. Yes Hs mercies are a made new every moment. But we cannot have divided loyalties. We cannot claim Christ and still have a firm grip on the world and sinful condition that He died to save us from.

This is yet another reminder that we are in the world, but not of it. We live and walk and move here, but we do not do so according to this world’s template. We do not stand with it, we stand in Christ despite it. We do not live each day, ingesting its poisons willfully, we breathe in through the Spirit, filtering influences through Him. If a lifestyle or a television show or a goal or a song or a book or an industry or anything else, whether a thought, an activity or any other influence or pursuit, if it doesn’t sync and vibe and mesh with the truth and authority of Scripture and the example of Christ, then it has no business in our life.

And this is vital to understand: we cannot do this on our own. We do not have the strength to stand in but not be a part of, we are too small, too weak, too frail to withstand the onslaught of sin and death and decay that wreaks havoc on the world around us. It is only by the strength and power of Christ that we have hope to stand. It is in our daily devotion to Him, our moment by moment living in Him that this is ever remotely possible. It is in Christ that we gain perspective, that we can so see this world and its offerings for what they are, a diseased, bloated, corpse. Rotten and covered in filth, the death that we stand in the midst of should be repulsive and not fighting for our attention the way it still does.

Only in Christ do we have hope for redemption. Only in Him can we stand firmly separated, devoted to righteousness. He is our strength for walking the narrow road of life, and it is in this strength that we find our commission to GoLove others possible. A life lived for self is a life still consumed by the world. A life lived for others does so in His great love.