“Don’t team up with those who are unbelievers. How can righteousness be a partner with wickedness? How can light live with darkness? What harmony can there be between Christ and the devil? How can a believer be a partner with an unbeliever? And what union can there be between God’s temple and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. (2 Corinthians 6:14-16a NLT)
Have you ever agreed to something, then, almost immediately you knew you shouldn’t have? Yet, at that point you felt obligated not to back out. What did you do? What did you learn? It’s tempting, based on a negative experience, never to agree to anything, but that isn’t right either.
The verses above have reference to not aligning ourselves with those who are unbelievers in key relationships like marriage but can also be applicable to other relationships. Paul touches on another aspect of this in Romans 12:18 when he writes: “Do all that you can to live in peace with everyone.” On some levels these are like two extremes of the same issue of agreement.
As Jesus followers were called to be agreeable, but sometimes there’s a thin line that we dare not cross. It’s like our obligation to love the sinner but hate their sin. That’s easier, because it’s the same battle we fight each day within ourselves. We’re commanded to love ourselves, but we certainly need to form a healthy hatred toward our own sin; otherwise, we’ll not feel any inclination to be rid of it, as Paul writes in Romans 8 we certainly should.
We’re also commanded to love our neighbor as we love ourselves (Matthew 19:19) without regard to whether or not our neighbor is saved. Implicit in that loving is some measure of agreement; otherwise, we’ll be in constant friction with them. That speaks to something Russell Moore wrote: “I’ve never been humiliated into agreement. I have, however, been loved, served, and patiently convinced into agreement.”
What’s my point? Regardless of where we live, work, or serve, we’re called to be agreeable. To be a servant of the Lord and be cantankerous, argumentative, and uninviting in our outlook and demeanor towards others is an insult to the Savior we love and serve. Jesus loved the men who nailed Him to the Cross, and it was that love that prompted the words of the Centurion in Mark 15:39: “This man truly was the Son of God!”
Our loving kindness, cooperative spirit, accepting demeanor will open doors our trying to cram Scripture down someone’s throat never will. Is that to say there’s never a time or place to use Scripture? Of course not. The use of Scripture is crucial in helping someone come to the Lord, but how and when we use it must be guided by the Holy Spirit and flow from a heart of love and desire to see someone come to the Lord to meet their need, not ours.
But here’s the truth. There is no agreement between light and dark; right and wrong; good and evil. There are certainly opportunities for compromise, but not on core issues. I understand if someone continues to struggle with a sin or sins with which they wrestled when they first came to the Lord. But to still be “wrestling” with the same sin after 10 or more years is another story.
Our goal as a Jesus follower is to walk in the light of our new life and to lovingly seek to win the lost to the Lord Jesus and His holy way. My personal goal when I speak with someone about the Lord, if they aren’t open to beginning a relationship with the Lord in that moment, is to keep the door open so the next person with whom they speak will, hopefully, be able to lead them home. Or perhaps they’ll be more open in our next conversation.
But if I’m ugly, in their face, and turn them off to anything about the Christian life, I could ruin mine or someone else’s opportunity to ever help them see Jesus in a different light. We must be agreeable, even in our disagreement.
Food for thought.
Blessings, Ed 😊
Walking With Jesus 
In the early days of my new Christian life—after being married for the 1st six years of my 46 years of marriage—I found myself on fire for Jesus, and was witnessing and talking to others about Jesus and the Bible without an understanding of how it would affect unbelievers who were unwilling to listen. Unfortunately one of those was my unsaved, Jack-Catholic wife, who married me knowing that I was an unbeliever at that time. After a few years she finally spoke out and told me she did not want to talk about the Bible or for me to witness to her anymore, and she was very adamant about it. So for the last 40 years of her going to Church with me nearly every week as an unbeliever, while I have stepped back from talking to her about her salvation, instead I have resorted to praying for her salvation every single day. But, anytime that my wife and I are together with someone or someone’s that knows I’m a Christian, who is asking me questions about Jesus, the Bible, or salvation, etc., I purposely go out of my way to answer their questions while my wife is listening to the conversation, especially on a road trip with others in the car, or at a restaurant together, when she has no choice but to listen the conversations (though a few times she’s gotten up to go to the restroom). Over the years my wife has heard & listened to me speaking to others about God & the Bible dozens, if not a hundred or more times. Now, after all these years, in her 70th year of age, she is finally on the edge of becoming a true believer in Christ Jesus, all while I was keeping my promise by not directly talking to her about Jesus or the Bible anymore. Now she’s attended church retreats, women’s events at church, and now she’s joined a Tuesday night women’s group with about a dozen other women of Christ, and this May she will be attending the 3 day women’s conference at our church with over 150 women attending with her. Praising God that she is finally becoming my Sister in Christ, and I’m continuing to pray that she takes that final leap of faith in the very near future.
Steve Boyle
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