It is unequal partnerships, relationships that are spiritually unbalanced that believers form with secular society ( unbelievers) that are of concern to Paul. Does this mean that it is not legitimate for the church to be active in society and its structures? Paul addresses this question by means of a series of “five rhetorical questions” that highlight recognized spheres of incompatibility between Christianity and the secular world.
Each rhetorical question is introduced with the relative pronoun tis (what), each considers the partnership of acknowledged opposites (such as light and dark), and each expects the answer "No way."
The first too questions consider the partnership of moral opposites: What do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? (v. 14). The believer and the unbeliever are driven by a different set of values, the one characterized by righteousness (dikaiosyne), the other by lawlessness (anomia). There are no shared values because the one follows God's will and the other does not. So there can be no real partnership betoeen them.
Light and darkness as descriptive of the way of the righteous and the wicked, respectively, are common imagery in the wisdom literature of the Old Testament (for example, "The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day. But the way of the wicked is like deep darkness; they do not know what makes them stumble," Prov 4:18-19). In Paul's writings, light is christological in orientation. The lot of all is darkness until God shines the light of the glorious gospel about Christ in our hearts (4:4, 6). This light makes ethical demands on its recipients in the form of fruit that is "good and right and true" (Eph 5:9; Hahn 1976:494-95).
The second set of questions considers the partnership of personal opposites: What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? (v. 15). It is widely thought that Belial (Greek Beliar) comes from the Hebrew term beliyya`al, meaning "worthless, good-for-nothing" (Brown, Driver and Briggs 1953).
Belial as a name for the devil is found only here in the New Testament. Paul usually refers to the Christian's archenemy as "Satan" (Rom 16:20; 1 Cor 5:5; 7:5; 2 Cor 2:11; 11:14; 12:7; 1 Thess 2:18; 2 Thess 2:9; 1 Tim 1:20; 5:15). In the Old Testament beliyya`al also designates the realm of the powers of chaos and so comes to mean destruction, wickedness and ruin (as in Deuteronomy 13:13-14; Judg 19:22; 20:13; 1 Sam 1:16; Ps 18:4-5; 41:8-9 and many more passages).
In the Qumran Scrolls beliyya`al is the name of the highest angel of darkness and the enemy of the prince of light (Cairo Damascus Document 5:18), while in other Jewish materials Belial is the absolute enemy of God and chief of demons (as in Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs; Jubilees 1:20; The Lives of the Prophets 4:6, 20; 17:2; Sibylline Oracles 2.167; 3.64-74; Ascension of Isaiah 3-4; Böcher 1990:212). It is because the unbeliever's mind has been blinded by the devil to the truths of the gospel (4:4) that the believer and unbeliever hold nothing in common.
Paul's final rhetorical question considers the partnership of religious opposites, which goes to the heart of the problem at Corinth: What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? (v. 16; compare Ex 20:2-6). Turning from idols to serve the living God was a regular part of the message Paul preached to Gentiles (1 Thess 1:9-10; compare Acts 17:22-31). Corinth was home to too renowned temples, the temple of Aphrodite (the goddess of love, fertility and beauty) situated on the Acrocorinth, an 1,886-foot-high fortified mountain, and the sanctuary of Asclepius (god of healing; see the introduction). The pagan temples, which were under the patronage of a particular god or goddess, were a focal point of social activity. Invitations along the lines of "So and so invites you to dine at the temple of Serapis" were a regular social possibility for those living in a city like Corinth.
To be sure, an idol is nothing in the world, and there indeed is no God but one (1 Cor 8:4). Yet to continue to be involved in the pagan cults is to suggest that an idol is in fact something, and to participate in cultic meals and temple worship is to seriously call into question one's loyalty to God. While the meat that has been sacrificed to an idol is itself indifferent, participation in the cultic meal is not. Such participation not only gives credibility to the idol but also forges a union with the patron god or goddess. Christian involvement leads others to think that there must be something to this after all. Moreover, while the idol itself may be nothing, there is a power behind the idol that is not to be overlooked. This is why Paul equates participation in cultic meals with becoming partners with demons (1 Corinthians 10:14-22).
Why so? For Paul, it is because the Church [living followers of Christ] is the temple of the living God, or, better, the "sanctuary" (naos)--the most sacred part of the temple structure (v. 16). Paul's choice of words is significant. The temple of the living God does not refer to a building. From the days of Solomon to the time of Christ, the temple was indeed a physical structure where God made his presence known to Israel. But with Christ's coming, God's temple became the people gathered in Christ's name. The first-person pronoun is placed at the head of the clause for emphasis--We are the temple of the living God (v. 16). This is a theological point not sufficiently grasped within Christendom today, where expressions like "going to church," "the church building" and "entering the house of God" lead insider and outsider alike to think of the church as a physical structure rather than as people.
To be the temple of the living God is to belong exclusively to God and to forsake all associations that would be incompatible with God's ownership. To drive home this point, Paul cites no fewer than six Old Testament passages that spell out what it means to be God's possession. In each case a text that deals with God's covenantal relationship with Israel is reapplied to the church (vv. 16-18). Phrases from each passage are woven together in an almost unprecedented way, recalling the testimonia collections of the early church.
The first, I will live with them, most likely comes from Leviticus 26:11 ("I will put my dwelling place among you"), but Ezekiel 37:27 is also a possibility ("my dwelling place will be with them"). The verb translated live with (enoikeo) means to "inhabit" or "be at home." The notion is active rather than passive. To be at home is to exercise one's rights as the proprietor of the house. So for God to inhabit his church is for him to establish his rule there. The next clause, and walk among them, is taken from Leviticus 26:12, with the minor modification of changing the pronoun from second to third person. To walk among is actually to "walk in and around" (en [in] + peri [around] + pateo [walk]). God does not merely exercise his rights as proprietor but moves with familiarity from one room in the house to the next.
The third quotation, I will be their God and they will be my people, is a recurring promise of Yahweh to Israel in the Old Testament. The first occurrence is in Leviticus 26:12, the most probable source of Paul's quote--although its appearance in the familiar texts of Jeremiah 31:33, 32:38 and Ezekiel 37:27 is also to be noted. The imagery shifts at this point from dwellings to treaties. The language is that of a sovereign to a vassal. In fact, in the immediately preceding verse, the LXX has "I will put my covenant among you" (compare the Masoretic Text, "I will put my dwelling place among you").
Under the terms of the treaty that bound king and vassal together, the king agreed to protect the vassal, and the vassal promised sole allegiance and obedience. This is why worship of God and worship of idols are fundamentally incompatible. And while we no longer relate to God as vassals to a sovereign, the essential principle of exclusive possession underlying the Mosaic covenant still holds true for true Christians today (3:14).
