The Biblical Idea

Amos, a prophet to Israel, wrote, “Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” (3:3). “Walk” in the text refers to companionship. When two walk together they walk upon the same path with the same destination in mind. They are of one mind. The two are able to converse, to speak with one another, and to enjoy each other’s company. The basis for unity is agreement. Though the text is rhetorical and demands a negative answer, the positive truth is that mutual harmony and fellowship consist in agreement. Where the truth is agreed upon, there is friendship.

The concept of walking is a prevalent theme in scripture. The Bible uses this image to picture to God’s people how we commune with God in his covenant and also how we live in the world. What is God’s covenant? The covenant is established by God’s oath, whereby he promises to be a God unto his people and their children. This promise is based solely upon the faithfulness of God, since its eternal conception is found within the Godhead. God lives within himself in the communion of three persons: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. The Lord brings his elect into his own fellowship and causes them to taste and see that he is good.

In that covenant the believer walks with God in the midst of the world. Walking with God necessarily means walking against the world. All that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. The man who fears the Lord deliberately, emphatically, and antithetically opposes that which God himself opposes in his word. The Lord God formed this separation in paradise after Adam forsook the friendship of God for the friendship of the devil. Establishing the antithesis, God spoke, “I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed” (Gen. 3:15).

What does antithesis mean? The noun refers to enmity and division. Enmity is opposition, hostility, hatred. The Lord God made a sharp demarcation line between two distinct spiritual families. This antithesis is characterized by the strongest, most powerful and deep-rooted hatred that God has for the serpent (the devil) and his seed (the reprobate wicked). Yet his love is upon the seed of the woman (the Christ) and Christ’s seed (the elect righteous). There is absolutely no harmony between these two spiritual races. While by nature the righteous and the wicked have everything in common, the distinction of persons lies in the eternal mercy of God. Grace separates. The Lord has mercy upon some, and he hardens others.

Having considered enmity, we do well to consider its counterpart, namely friendship. When God said he would put enmity between the devil and the woman, between his seed and her seed, he also was saying that he would be the friend of the seed of the woman. The seed of the woman is the church of all ages, chosen of God in Christ before the foundation of the world. The friendship God establishes with believers and their seed is his covenant. The psalmist David wrote, “The secret [friendship] of the Lord is with them that fear him; and he will shew them his covenant” (Ps. 25:14). According to Hebrew parallelism, the terms friendship and covenant are synonymously identified with each other. This indicates that the essence of God’s covenant is friendship and fellowship.

What does friendship involve? Friendship or companionship refers to close communion, such that one may even share his deepest secrets with, open his heart to, and disclose all of the intents of his heart to his friend. This is what God does with his people, his friends in Christ. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the persons of the Trinity, share this covenant life among themselves in perfect harmony and love. Those who fear God belong to his covenant because he “shews” it to them. This means that God makes himself known to them and welcomes them into his own family life and causes them to taste and see that he is good and the overflowing fountain of all good!

Out of this friendship with Jehovah, the believer cannot possibly live in harmony with sin, Satan, and the world. Can God oppose the wicked while the believer lives as a friend of the wicked? If God opposes the wicked, the believer must also. The believer belongs to the party of God. The serpent has no part in God’s covenant. Men who believe Satan’s lie do not partake in the blessings of God’s covenant either. There is hostility between the two, a brutal war wherein the Lord “hatest all workers of iniquity” (Ps. 5:5) but “loveth the righteous” (146:8). This antithesis between love and hatred determines all of God’s dealings with men in the world and forms the basis for the Christian in his walk with the Lord.

A Calling to Walk

How does God’s word illustrate the antithesis? By two visible things we experience every day, light and darkness. “The light shineth in darkness; and the darkness comprehended it not” (John 1:5). Christ came into the world! Not into a world full of light but of darkness. Did men receive the light? Did Christ approve and live in harmony with darkness? The apostle John answers, “This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil” (3:19). What happens when a child is sleeping and his mother comes and wakes him up for school by turning on the lights? The child immediately pulls the blankets over his face to remain in the darkness—he does not want the light. Christ comes into the dark world and turns on the light (condemns it), and men hate that light because their deeds are evil.

What is scripture’s counsel to the believer who is surrounded by darkness? Do the scriptures teach that the believer is to spend as much time around darkness as possible in order to try to make it light? In answer to this the Spirit wrote in Ephesians 5,

7. Be not ye therefore partakers with them.

8. For ye were sometimes darkness, but now are ye light in the Lord: walk as children of light: 

9. (For the fruit of the Spirit is in all goodness and righteousness and truth;) 

10. Proving what is acceptable unto the Lord. 

11. And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.

To the believer the Spirit says, “Be not…partakers” and “have no fellowship.” Positively, the Spirit also says, “Walk as children of light” and “reprove the unfruitful works of darkness.” The believer is “light in the Lord.” In all goodness and righteousness and truth, the believer proves what is acceptable to the Lord by his conduct in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation. Proving what is pleasing to God, the Christian reproves the unfruitful works of darkness. Those who belong to darkness, who may even claim to be Christians, deny Jesus by their works and false doctrine. The apostle says in this connection, “If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth” (1 John 1:6). Again, “He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked” (2:6). Not only is the believer to oppose and reprove his own sin in his daily life, but he is also to oppose the unfruitful works of darkness of others who do not the truth.

Can the believer have friendship with his friends or family members who live as enemies of God? The believer confesses that he is God’s friend. By this confession he also says that he is the enemy of sin, Satan, and the world. To befriend God’s enemies is spiritual adultery. “Ye adulterers and adulteresses, know ye not that the friendship of the world is enmity with God? whosoever therefore will be a friend of the world is the enemy of God” (James 4:4). Adultery is a gross act of sin whereby a man violates the bond of marriage and brings a third party into it. As ruinous and destructive as adultery is in marriage, so it is in one’s relationship to God. The Lord will not company with an adulterer. In his law he forbids it. And cursed are those who walk in such sins and do not repent.

How does the believer tell if someone is God’s enemy? Surely there are many people in the world who do “good” things: they feed the homeless, visit the sick, help the needy, generously give of their possessions, and the like. We would not say that these people are God’s enemies, would we? A lesson of Jesus about false prophets is helpful to answer this question. Jesus says, “Beware of false prophets” (Matt. 7:15). A false prophet in principle is someone who says he believes in Christ but either by his doctrine or life or both actually denies Christ. Outwardly, these false professors look like sheep; that is, they look like God’s friends or Christians. How do we tell the difference? “By their fruits,” said Jesus (v. 16). He said,

17. Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. 

18. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.

19. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire.

20. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. 

Fruit refers to what they produce, based on the root. Harmony between what one believes and how one lives indicates whether he belongs to God as his friend or whether he is God’s enemy.

Therefore, the Christian examines the fruit of one’s profession and judges accordingly. In stark opposition to the fruits of the Spirit, the works of the flesh are

19. Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, 

20. Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies,

21. Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. (Gal. 5)

Many are the fruits of the flesh. The one who claims to be a Christian and yet lives as divorced and remarried (adultery, uncleanness), or the one who believes that God loves all and desires to save all (idolatry, heresies), may not have assurance of belonging to the kingdom of God. Those who depart from the truth of scripture, forsake the true church, corrupt the gospel, and abuse the sacraments and discipline necessarily manifest that they do not belong to Christ. The Christian who walks by the Spirit discerns this and points out these deeds to his neighbor and declares to him with the apostle that “they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” Although the world perceives this warning by the believer to be an act of hatred, love is at work in seeking the spiritual advantage of the neighbor by showing him the error in order that he might repent and confess the truth for God’s glory. Love seeks the neighbor’s eternal welfare and works to turn him from evil. Hate ignores the neighbor’s sins and allows him to continue in wickedness on the path to destruction.

Did Jesus have anything to say about the antithesis? When it came down to walking with Jesus or walking with those who did not care to walk with Jesus, the Lord was always insistent that “he that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me: and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Matt. 10:37). The Lord Jesus brings the antithesis between families by his word: “I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter in law against her mother in law. And a man’s foes shall be they of his own household” (vv. 35–36). Exactly where Christ is denied in the family, the sword is drawn. This sword is the division that is brought about not by the confessing Christian, but by Christ himself. The believer should take comfort in this reality that it is not he who has brought separation but his Lord, and therefore it is a righteous separation that cannot be gainsaid.

Let it be understood that this separation is primarily spiritual, not physical or personal. By spiritual is meant that the division is not over physical things, such as a disagreement about anything earthly, but rather relates to religious or heavenly convictions that are confessed and practiced. Therefore, when Jesus spoke of the antithesis he spoke of a spiritual reality that he forms in the heart of the believer, which works itself out in his life in the activity of loving Christ and hating anything contrary.

This calling works out practically in the life of the believer not by the believer’s isolating himself or obnoxiously pointing out everyone’s sins all the time, but rather by his living in the midst of the world in such a way that he bears witness by his conduct and words to what he believes, that others may be gained to Christ. The heart of the believer desires others to be gained to Christ. However, this does not require that he company with or even maintain a relationship with them. As the apostle says, “What fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness?” (2 Cor. 6:14). There is no harmony between that which is righteous and that which is unrighteous. To pretend as though there is mutual company and harmony in the truth is false unity and contrary to the sword of Christ.

But did not Jesus himself company with tax collectors and sinners (Matt. 9:10; Mark 2:15)? In contrast to the religiously pious, Christ called those sinners to repentance. And because of that powerful word proclaimed to them by Christ, they repented. Those tax collectors and sinners did not remain in their sins but were joined to the party of God and forsook their evil deeds. Christ never calls the believer to cast his pearls before swine or give that which is holy to the dogs. Where his testimony is not received, the believer responds by shaking the dust off his feet to bring his peace to others.

But how can we expect others to be gained to Christ if we do not have any relationship with them? A would-be disciple once said to Jesus, “Lord, I will follow thee; but let me first go and bid them farewell, which are at home at my house” (Luke 9:61). Many today would expect Jesus to say something to the effect of, “Yes, that is a good idea; in fact, stay there for a while and be a light to them so that you can try to win them to my cause.” Contrary to this folly, the Lord in perfect wisdom responded thus: “No man, having put his hand to the plough, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God” (v. 62). Not a farewell, not an extended stay, not a misapplied requirement to “be all things to all men,” so to speak, but a complete, radical, emphatic forsaking of all with eyes fixed solely upon Jesus Christ and his church (the kingdom of God).

In God’s covenant the believer is glad to be in the friendship of the Lord. As God’s friend he takes no delight in company with evil men, but his pleasure is in God’s law and with those who fear him. Over against houses, brothers, sisters, dads, moms, wives, children, or geographical locations, the gospel is the treasure of the believer, for which cause he leaves all behind that he may enjoy the bliss of everlasting life (Matt. 19:29). This is the standing confession of the church that exhorts us all in a God-glorifying, antithetical life: “Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty” (2 Cor. 6:17–18).