Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers, for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness, and what communion hath light with darkness? 2 Corinthians 6:14
I was reading recently that the average woman spends about three years of her life shopping. That estimate is based on an average of 399 hours a year on shopping for food and clothing. To a woman, that might sound like time well spent, but to most men, that does not sound like a good time at all. When we need something, we go to a store and buy it. We don’t need to spend extra hours browsing through the store, and the adjacent stores, and the mall across the street. Many men will do anything to avoid having to tag along with a shopping wife. There is very little fellowship when it comes to that subject; not much more fellowship than Christians have with unbelievers.
We can chuckle over the different attitudes of men and women when it comes to shopping. But there is nothing funny about the different attitudes of saints and sinners when it comes to almost any subject you can name. A godly saint might enjoy lovely hymns and be repulsed by the music of the world, but a sinner might find the hymns boring but be delighted with the blasphemy and suggestive lyrics of a popular song. An unsaved person might seek out literature that is ‘spiced’ with profanity and smut, the same things that would nauseate a godly Christian. While that same saint might search for opportunities to witness for his or her Saviour, the sinner might search for opportunities to dabble in the pleasures of sin. The mind of a believer doesn’t work the same as the mind of a sinner, and the likes and dislikes are nothing alike. That is, as long as the believer is living as the Lord desires.
Christians can’t really fellowship with unbelievers in most things. Our values are too different. Our attitudes about the things of the Lord are too different. Our life purposes are too different. There is only one way in which a Christian can have close fellowship with an unbeliever, and that is if the Christian adopts the attitudes and values of the unbeliever. There is no way that an unsaved person is capable of appreciating the things of God. So fellowship is possible only if the saint stoops to the sinner’s level.
Our Lord has purchased us to be His possession, to shine as lights for Him in a dark world, to testify for Him to a lost world, to live for Him in a dead world. But these things we cannot do if we fellowship with the world. -Jim MacIntosh