He calls pagans “lawlessness” because sin reigns in paganism. As they are born in sin, so they live in it.
Self-pleasing directs their whole life. Even the best persons among them cannot free themselves from its bonds.
They do not even have the thought that this ought to be done. And if they did understand, what could they do?
One must be born from above, and this they lack. Therefore they are in lawlessness, which is like the spirit of their life.
That is, to sacrifice everything for themselves, or to turn everything into a means for their personal aims.
“Or what communion has light with darkness?” This, secondly, is a comparison from the intellectual side.
As light is opposed to darkness, so you are opposed to the pagans.
As light has no communion with darkness, so you should have no communion with the pagans in anything pagan.
Believers are light because of the brightness of their knowledge, which embraces all that exists and comes to pass.
It embraces the beginningless and the endless, time and eternity, and determines all with the possible precision and clarity now available.
They know where they are from, why they are on earth, what awaits them beyond the grave, and how to make their dwelling there blessed.
They know God, the Creator and Provider, the Savior and Comforter.
They know how to enter into communion with Him and abide always in Him, in which lies the final goal of rational creatures.
Knowing all this, they live as those who walk in the day.
The pagans, on the contrary, know nothing of this. The most essential questions remain unresolved for them.
They live however life happens, dragging themselves along the common track, unable to give account to themselves where they are going and how their path will end.
The dense darkness of ignorance covers them. Such is what they are.
Why then, says the Apostle, should you place yourselves in one yoke with them?
“What concord has Christ with Belial?” This, thirdly, is a comparison according to the leaders.
You belong to Christ, they to Belial. As concord between Christ and Belial is impossible, so there should be none between you and the pagans.
Christ the Lord is the Head of Christians. They put Him on in Baptism and, having received grace, are then transformed into His image by the labors of their whole life.
Thus, having become one with Him here, they are made worthy in the other life to be where He is, in ineffably blessed glory.
Belial is Satan. He first entered into warfare against God through the spirit of pride.
Then he taught the first ancestors not to obey God, promising them mountains and depriving them of everything.
After that he deceives all men, drawing them into works of self-pleasing, contrary to conscience and to God.
He has authority over no one and nothing, yet falsely magnifies himself as king.
Men, deceived by his phantoms, rush into self-pleasing and through it serve him.
The aim of his efforts is to make as many as possible perish. In fact, this brings him no profit, for the same fire is prepared for him too.
He labors only so as not to be tormented eternally alone with his accomplices.
So you see, the Apostle seems to say, what opposites these are.
Christ the Lord is essentially the Savior and the undoubted Giver of salvation.
Belial is ruin, a cunning deceiver who, out of malice, lures all into ruin by the bait of self-pleasing pleasures.
Is it fitting for you, who have become partakers of Christ’s salvation, to be with those who are tossed about in destructive delusion?
“Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever?” This, fourthly, is a comparison by the beginning of life and its end.
The believer heard the word of salvation and received it with faith. Through faith he willingly submitted to the conditions of salvation and remains faithful to them.
Because of this faithfulness he nourishes the assurance that Christ the Savior will crown his course with a good end, granting him unending blessedness in His kingdom.
Such is the portion of the believer. It is undoubted, for it is founded on God’s faithfulness.
The unbeliever walks in uncertainty and can promise himself nothing sure in this life, still less in the life to come.
His conscience, always offended, lets him foresee a dark picture of his lot.
Since the door to it is opened by death, that moment always strikes him with maddening fear.
Do you see what the lot of the unbeliever is? Why then should you stand paired with him?
THEOSIS