¹⁶ Do you not discern and understand that you [the whole church at Corinth] are God’s temple (His sanctuary), and that God’s Spirit has His permanent dwelling in you [to be at home in you, ^[a]collectively as a church and also individually]?

¹⁷ If anyone ^[b]does hurt to God’s temple or corrupts it [^[c]with false doctrines] or destroys it, God will ^[d]do hurt to him and bring him to the corruption of death and destroy him. For the temple of God is holy (sacred to Him) and that [temple] you [^[e]the believing church and its individual believers] are.

¹⁴ Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers [do not make mismated alliances with them or come under a different yoke with them, inconsistent with your faith]. For what partnership have right living and right standing with God with iniquity and lawlessness? Or how can light have fellowship with darkness?

¹⁵ What harmony can there be between Christ and Belial [the devil]? Or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever?

¹⁶ What agreement [can there be between] a temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God; even as God said, I will dwell in and with and among them and will walk in and with and among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.^(A)

⁸ But you shall receive power (ability, efficiency, and might) when the Holy Spirit has come upon you, and you shall be My witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea and Samaria and to the ends (the very bounds) of the earth.