Fellowship with unbelievers has consequences you cannot avoid. You cannot ignore the Godly mandate delivered in Scripture to avoid becoming ensnared in the works of unbelievers.
The pledge of the sovereign's presence and protection carried with it certain moral mandates for the follower. The mandate for Israel was that they were to come out from them and be separate. . . . Touch no unclean thing. Similarly, Paul quoted from Isaiah 52:11, changing the order of the commands and adding the phrase says the Lord. In Isaiah 52:8-12 the Israelites are warned as they leave Babylon that they are not to take any material goods acquired in exile back with them; and those who carry the sacred temple vessels, which had been carefully preserved in exile, are first to purify themselves.
The mandate to Israel – cut all ties with the idolatries, practices and impurities of their pagan captors. The same is true for the Church. God always demands holy living from his people. Since he takes up dwelling among us, we in turn are called to separate ourselves from everything incompatible with His holiness. We are not to treat this command lightly, a casual withdrawal from fellowship with unholy things that offend God. Our response must be a swift, immediate and decisive separation from even the appearance of fellowship with unholiness.
If the Corinthians do this, the pledge is that God will receive them and be a father to them. They, in turn, will be sons and daughters (2 Corinthians 6:17-18). The second part of the pledge is taken from 2 Samuel 7:14 (2 Kingdoms 7:14): "I will be his father, and he will be my son." Paul sees God's promise to David that he will be a father to Solomon and Solomon will be a son to him fulfilled yet again in God's relationship to the Church. The singular son is changed to the plural sons, and the phrase and daughters is added, probably under the influence of Isaiah 43:6 ... "Bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the ends of the earth". There are to be a family likeness and family affection between God and his people.
Paul concludes his counsel to the Corinthians with an exhortation to be pure and holy: Let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness out of reverence for God (2 Corinthians 7:1). The language and phraseology are not typically Pauline. It may well be that he is quoting a well-known ethical injunction. In the sphere of agriculture, katharizo ("purify") means to "prune away" or "clear" the ground of weeds--which may not be far off the mark here. The more usual way to construe the verb is to "wash" or "cleanse" of dirt or other filth. Paul's use of the reflexive heautous would support this sense ("to cleanse yourselves"). The aorist tense suggests a decisive action of cleansing (katharisomen). Cleanliness as next to godliness fits well the religious mentality of Paul's day. Both Greek religion and Judaism placed an emphasis on physical and ritual purity. Within Judaism this mentality was grounded on the presupposition that uncleanness and Yahweh were irreconcilable opposites.
From what, though, are the Corinthians to cleanse themselves? According to Paul, it is from everything that contaminates body and spirit. Contaminates is actually a noun denoting that which stains, defiles or soils (molysmos). The noun is found only here in the New Testament, although the verb is used twice in Revelation (3:4; 14:4) and once in 1 Corinthians (8:7) of defiling the conscience through the indiscriminate eating of meat sacrificed to idols.
This brings us back full circle to Paul's opening injunction to stop entering into unequal partnerships with unbelievers (2 Cor. 6:14). The close association of molysmos with idolatry suggests that Paul is thinking especially of defilement that comes from dining in the local temples, membership in the pagan cults, ritual prostitution, active engagement in pagan worship and the like.
The defilement in view affects body and spirit. The Greek text is literally "flesh and spirit." Paul could be using popular language to designate the material and immaterial elements of a person. But the fact that he uses "flesh" and "spirit" interchangeably at 2:13 and 7:5 suggests that he is looking at the human being from too differing perspectives. This fits with Hebraic thinking, which did not compartmentalize the human being but viewed the whole person from different vantage points, such as physical, spiritual, mental.
The positive side of the exhortation is perfecting holiness out of reverence for God. Looked at this way, holiness becomes a reality as we purify ourselves from physical and spiritual pollutants. Purifying ourselves is to be done out of reverence for God... that is, in deference and devotion toward Him to whom we owe everything.
Striving to live a holy life is a wholly appropriate response to the promises of God's presence in our lives and his fatherhood to us.
