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.
17 Therefore go out from their midst,
    and be separate from them, says the Lord,
and touch no unclean thing;
    then I will welcome you,
18 and I will be a father to you,
    and you shall be sons and daughters to me,
says the Lord Almighty.” ESVUK

In a previous note we have considered Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 5:13-17, and we have seen that we have to balance what Paul says here in 2 Corinthians 6 with what we read there. However, in the church we do seem to find it difficult to maintain a balance, and there is a suggestion that some of the Corinthians, reading 5:13-17 in letter number 1, may have overreacted and moved too far in the opposite direction. I repeat that the constant challenge we face is to be in the world, but not of it.

Paul’s exhortation has at its heart an understanding of the church’s identity. We are ”the temple of the living God”. So we must ”separate” ourselves from those things that are incompatible with our true identity. (See how Paul describes the local church as God’s temple in 1 Corinthians 3:16,17, and he uses the same image regarding the individual Christian’s body in 1 Corinthians 6:19,20).

In John Stott’s magnificent commentary on Paul’s epistle to the Romans, at the end of a chapter dealing with 5:1-6:23, he says: ‘So, in practice, we should be constantly reminding ourselves who we are…On 28 May 1972 the Duke of Windsor, the uncrowned King Edward VIII, died in Paris. The same evening a television programme rehearsed the main events of his life. Extracts from earlier films were shown, in which he answered questions about his upbringing, brief reign and abdication. Recalling his boyhood as Prince of Wales, he said: ‘My father (King George V) was a strict disciplinarian. Sometimes when I had done something wrong, he would admonish me saying, ”My dear boy, you must always remember who you are.” ‘ It is my conviction that our heavenly Father says the same to us every day: ‘My dear child, you must always remember who you are.’