Would you…?
You are happily married to a woman you love dearly. And before long, she gives birth to a lovely baby daughter.
Then, tragedy strikes: your baby girl is barely a year old, and your wife dies. Suddenly you and she are alone.
You love your daughter even more dearly now: not only is she your only child, but it is now you and she alone in the world.
Then, after some years you meet someone. Friendship grows between you; love begins to blossom. You love her; she loves you. Your daughter is now about to embark on her teenage years. And you want to marry again.
But there is a slight problem. This woman you have grown to love has a condition for marriage: “I love you,” she says. “I love you very much and want to marry you. But I don’t love your daughter. I don’t mind that you do, but that is not for me. She can stay, as long as it is not in our end of the house because I don’t want to have anything to do with her if I can help it.”
What would you do?
Would you go ahead and marry the woman that you thought you loved so much if she couldn’t share your love for this other one?
What about…?
Suppose though the other One wasn’t a daughter.
What if that One, you loved even more than a daughter (Matt 10:37)? What if it was One that you were to love “with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength” (Deut 6:5)?
What if that One were the Lord?
But the woman you loved and wanted to marry said: “I love you very much. But I don’t love this other One you love so much. I don’t mind that you do, but that is not for me. As long as that other One doesn’t intrude on my life I am fine, but I don’t want to have anything to do with that One if I can help it.”
What would you do?
Would you go ahead and marry the woman that you thought you loved so much?
What does the Bible say?
In the Old Testament God’s people were explicitly warned against intermarriage with those outside of covenant relationship with God. “You shall not make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son.” (Deut 7:3, cf Exod 34:11-16).
Disobedience to this command led to disastrous consequences. Balaam knew this, and deliberately used it to try and destroy Israel by introducing pagan women into the nation. (Num 25:1-3, 31:16, Rev 2:14)
Later, in the days of Ezra, when he heard about how this commandment of the Lord had been flagrantly ignored, he says: “I tore my garment and my robe, and plucked out some of the hair of my head and beard, and sat down astonished. Then everyone who trembled at the words of the God of Israel assembled to me, because of the transgression of those who had been carried away captive.” (Ezra 9:3-4).
Subsequently, this called for radical action – see ch 10.
Nor was this just for believers back then. In the New Testament, believers are warned: “Do not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers. For what fellowship has righteousness with lawlessness? And what communion has light with darkness? And what accord has Christ with Belial? Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever?” (2 Cor 6:14-15)
In a recent article in Evangelical Times Jeremy Walker, cites a comment by Charles Spurgeon on this:
“How careful ought young people to be in the choosing of their partners in life! When two horses pull together how smoothly the chariot runs; but if one horse draws one way and the other pulls in the opposite direction, what trouble there is sure to be.”
Excuses
Jeremy Walker lists the excuses different ones make to get around what God tells us in His Word:
“I have seen many follow this route, using various reasons and excuses. For some, it was simply carnal desire, a wish to be with someone. Sometimes they relied on the ‘testimony’ of another Christian who pursued someone who was subsequently converted. Sometimes they say that their friend is interested in religion or willing to come to church.
“In some circles, church or family connections are more important than a credible profession of faith. Sometimes people take refuge in a twisted sense of ‘providence’. I am not saying that God has never had mercy on a couple that started off ‘unequally yoked’, but in almost every case there was a manifest weakening of testimony, holding back of progress, and often a lasting imbalance in the relationship.”
This is true. More often than not the unbeliever turns the believer, rather than the other way round. One only has to remember what happened to Samson with Delilah (Judg 16); or Solomon who “loved many foreign women from the nations of whom the Lord had said to the children of Israel, ‘You shall not intermarry with them, nor they with you. Surely they will turn away your hearts after their gods.’” (1 Kings 11). In neither of these cases did their romantic partner/s turn to the Lord; instead their partner/s turned them from the Lord.
When I began in the ministry, 50 years ago this year, I knew what the Bible taught on this. But I knew it and taught it in a vacuum; I had no firsthand experience of the trouble that such an “unequal yoke” brings upon the believer.
But since then I have witnessed firsthand that, even though a believer may maintain his, or her, faith in the Lord, the grief that comes from not being able to share with their marriage partner what is most important in their lives creates incredible tension and leaves an aching void.
“But I was already married when I became a Christian”
It is truly a cause to rejoice when one partner in an unbelieving marriage is converted, even if the other isn’t. In this case, where there was no obvious sin involved in them getting married in the first place, they need all the support from fellow believers they can get.
Of course, even in the case of a believer who has deliberately married an unbeliever, once they see they were wrong and repent, they too very much need the support of fellow Christians. But the unbeliever who is converted in an unbelieving union especially deserves our sympathy and support.
In either case, Paul addresses how to handle the situation in 1 Corinthians 7:12-16,
“If any brother has a wife who does not believe, and she is willing to live with him, let him not divorce her. And a woman who has a husband who does not believe, if he is willing to live with her, let her not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband; otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy.
“But if the unbeliever departs, let him depart; a brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases. But God has called us to peace. For how do you know, O wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, O husband, whether you will save your wife?”
Let me close with this further quote from Spurgeon that Jeremy Walker refers to:
“Some who profess to be Christians – God knows whether they ever were or not – have put altogether out of court the command of our Lord not to be unequally yoked together with unbelievers, and have followed the dictates of the flesh by joining in marriage with the ungodly. It is a dreadful thing to be married to one from whom you know you must be soon separated for ever, one who loves not God, and therefore can never be your companion in heaven. If that is your case already, your prayers should day and night go up to heaven for the partner of your bosom, that he or she may be brought to Christ; but for any young person wilfully to form such a tie is to set up an idol in the place of God. Weeping and wailing will come of it ere long.”
“A wife is bound by law as long as her husband lives; but if her husband dies, she is at liberty to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord.” (1 Cor 7:39)