If you have accepted Jesus Christ as your personal Savior, you are no longer what you once were. 2 Corinthians 5: 1 says that as Christians we have become a new creation in Christ. One of those things that makes us different is that our bodies became the temple of the Holy Spirit. We became a spiritual being while we struggle against the carnal natural self to live a righteous life. The unredeemed person has no such struggle. All the way back to the book of Leviticus, God’s people were called strangers and sojourners. They were not migrants from Egypt to Canaan. They were more than that. 1 Peter refers to believers as sojourners and pilgrims. 1 Chronicles 29 refers to God’s people as aliens. (NKJV) Hebrews 11, 1 Peter and 2 Peter refers to believers as pilgrims. Eph 2:19 says, “Now, therefore, you are no longer strangers and foreigners, but fellow citizens with the saints and members of the household of God,”
The passage in 2 Co 6:14 warns us “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness?” There should and must be a difference between a believer and nonbeliever! The world was not won to Christianity by the use of printed lessons or maps or grand church buildings. Christianity spread rapidly because of the difference that others saw what Christ made in the lives of believers. They wanted that same conviction and faith.
God has drawn a distinct line between believers and unbelievers. The word yoked refers to oxen that had a board designed to connect the two as they pulled a plow or circled the gristmill. It would not have been appropriate to yoke an oxen to a horse or an oxen to a goat. We must never have a close relationship with the nonbeliever. This is not to say that we cannot be their casual friend. This is not to say we cannot testify to them. This is to say we cannot go to questionable places with them or engage in questionable conversation with them. This also means that one cannot associate with professing Christians who are not living the Christian life according to 1 Corinthians 5. There MUST be a difference between uncommitted and the committed.
It is for this reason that believers must see themselves as noncitizens of this world but pilgrims and sojourners. We cannot live a healthy spiritual life if we value the things of this world. We cannot have our eyes focused on Christ while looking at what seems to be interesting or valuable things of this world. We must see ourselves as aliens. The Scripture in Ephesians above reminds us that our citizenship is with saints and members of the household of God. The walk we walk must be toward our heavenly goal without compromise. We must be careful not to appear arrogant or rejecting. We are simply a different breed of persons that has become a new creation in Christ with different ideology and that which we appreciate more than what others appreciate in this world. Jesus said in Matthew 6: 33 “But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness;”
This is a hard saying. This is a saying that must be constantly applied. This is a saying that must be absolutely drilled into our thinking. As believers, this must be a saying that we want to have true in each day of our lives. Paul boldly insisted when he said in 2Th 3:6 “Now we command you, brethren, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye withdraw yourselves from every brother that walketh disorderly, and not after the tradition which he received of us.”
Christian Writer 