United to Unbelievers
February 9, 2016 — 1 Corinthians 7:12–16
To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace. For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?
Marriage is a big deal. Even though we have a culture that is more and more content separating secular and religious institutions, there is still a really serious tone surrounding getting married. For whatever reason people take the fact that you are legally husband and wife as something that shouldn’t be rushed into, even if they sign off on living with and sleeping with each other.
As I have said before, a marriage doesn’t start when two people make a promise, or when the state proclaims it to be so, but rather in the joining of the two making them one. This is why we as Christians should take extra-marital sex seriously. It is the joining of the person with one who is not meant to be there. Jesus thought of marriage this way too. When talking to the woman at the well he said that she had several husbands. I’m guessing that she didn’t go through a religious or civil ceremony with all of them.
We should take Paul’s teaching seriously then when he says that the believing husband or wife shouldn’t leave the consenting unbelieving spouse. Unity should come before pragmatism or ease of living.
Our marriages continually proclaim to us the realities of what our union with Christ looks like, and at the same time, our union with Christ teaches us about the serious reality of our union with our spouse. Because marriage is a sacrament we ought not to be so quick to pull couples apart who have slept together, but aren’t “married.” I’m not saying get rid of conventional wisdom, but I am also saying don’t completely go based on it.
Our willingness to shun young people who had sex before the ceremony betrays our low view of what marriage really is. We have chalked up marriage to obedience to what the moral guide of our religion is, rather than living out a reality of oneness.
Some parts of being a Christian is supposed to be hard, and go against the wisdom of the temporal world. We should expand our definition of marriage to go beyond a ceremony or a signed piece of paper, and seriously support the young believers who knowingly or unknowingly united themselves to unbelievers. The ways of God are counter to what we think makes sense. We should live into those hard things affirming our unity with one another as the body of Christ.
