How should Christians balance living in the world without becoming cloistered and Amish-like?
A helpful place to start is Paul’s advice to the Corinthians ‘not to keep company with sexually immoral people’. He did not mean with the sexually immoral people of this world, or with the covetous, or extortioners, or idolaters, since then we would need to go out of the world. ‘I have written to you not to keep company with anyone named a brother, who is sexually immoral, or covetous, or an idolater, or a reviler, or a drunkard, or an extortioner – not even to eat with such a person’ (1 Corinthians 5:9-11).
Paul makes important distinctions. Christians emphasise that we are to be in the world but not of the world. The Christian church is a holy community, called out of the world by God, to God, and for God. As such, the typical wickedness of the world has no place in the church of Christ. A faithful church must deal with anyone in membership – anyone ‘named a brother’ – who does not believe or behave in accordance with Christian teaching. We are not of the world.
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