Dionysus on a Bike

2 Corinthians 6:14-7:2 – 6/8/2026

When reading Scripture, if you encounter a passage or verse that gives you pause and makes you think, “That doesn’t seem quite right” or “That doesn’t sit well with me,” I recommend going to the original language, Hebrew, or for the New Testament in this case, Ancient Koine Greek. Today’s New Testament Lectionary reading is about maintaining cleanliness and purity, concerns that Paul received from his following of the law of Torah and which he updates for a gentile context for the church of Corinth. The sentence of first verse of that reading is translated in the NRSVue as “Do not be mismatched with unbelievers.” This translation makes it seem like Christians, those who believe in the message of the Gospel, should avoid certain kinds of relationships and connections with those who do not believe the message of the Gospel. In fact, this verse and others like it have been used to justify exclusion, avoidance, excommunication, and isolation across Christian history.

Taking a closer look at the Greek, this translation, with “unbelievers” used to translate the Greek “ἀπίστοις” (apistois), makes it seem like Paul is referring to people by what truths they do not believe. In fact, the root word pistois, primarily refers not to beliefs but to life orientations, to ways of being directed toward and guided by particular principles. Apistois is better translated as “the faithless” or “the unfaithful” rather than “unbeliever.” This focus on commitment and life direction is supported by the context of the following sentence, a question. “What do righteousness and lawlessness have in common?” That question makes clear that the opposition is not between those who hold particular beliefs and those who do not hold them, but between those who are oriented toward the values of the gospel (righteousness) and those who are “lawless,” a category that has little to do with what one believes and everything to do with how one lives one’s life and the values one is oriented toward.

Far from a verse about excluding and isolating from non-Christians, especially in intimate and co-equal relationships, this verse and the rest of the lectionary reading for today ask us to consider how we connect with people who are oriented toward things other than “the law.” The law for the Christian is love, so the word translated as unfaithful could be understood to refer to those who are unloving. That is lawlessness and unfaithfulness for the Christian, the failure to love. Being “faithful” (πίστοις) means being loving, being oriented by and toward love.

It is true that one could still read this verse as meaning to exclude or detach from non-Christians, literal nonbelievers, in some way. Going back to the Greek shows us that this is not the most plausible way and certainly not the only way to read this instruction from Paul to the Corinthians. Though I do not touch on it here, the particular context to the church in Corinth is also important. In this letter, Paul stresses cleanliness and purity. Elsewhere, writing to people in other contexts, he emphasizes that nothing is unclean for the follower of Jesus (see for example Romans 14). Paul’s letters can edify and point toward important truths, but the particularity of their contexts means that they cannot be treated as textbooks of doctrine. What’s important in today’s lectionary is that we need to be careful in how we connect with people so that we are not misdirected and corrupted away from the law of love.

Reflections of a Dionysian Lutheran, comments on the daily readings of the Revised Common Lectionary.