Decision Making: Can I Be Unequally Yoked to a Believer?

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Christ therefore forfeit any hope of salvation, any hope of heaven.

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Welcome to Bible Bash, where we aim to equip the saints for the works of ministry by answering the questions you're not allowed to ask.

Listen and enjoy this installment of Iron Sharpening Iron, as Pastor Tim answers your sincere questions.

Here's Pastor Tim. On this episode of Bible Bash, we will be answering the question, Can I be unequally yoked to a believer?

Now, as you read through the Bible, one of the things you're going to realize is that God gives Christians, in his words, substantial freedom in picking a marriage partner, with one basic constraint.

So Christians are told to marry whom they will, only marry in the Lord. And yet, there's been plenty of situations where an individual thinks they're married to a

Christian, only to find that there is this fundamental incompatibility that's present within their marriage, and they're wondering, well, what do

I do with that? Is it possible to be unequally yoked to a believer? I thought I married a believer, but then the marriage isn't going the way

I thought it would go. With picking a believing spouse, and so what do we do with that?

Did I pick the wrong person? Should we listen to the psychologists who tell us that the essentials to having a happy marriage are compatible personality, shared interest, and shared values?

Is there more to picking a good marriage partner than just marrying whom you will and marrying in the

Lord? What are we to make of these things? Now, as we think about a question like that, one of the things to think about is that in 2

Corinthians 6 .14, when Paul is instructing Christians, the church at Corinth, to not be unequally yoked together with unbelievers, there is some discussion that's being had there as it relates to the interpretation of this passage.

Is this passage talking about mixed marriages, or is this passage talking about the church at Corinth joining themselves to the unbelieving super apostles?

Regardless of where you come down on that kind of interpretation, one of the things to realize is that mixed marriages certainly are an example of unequal yoking, and even if you're not persuaded that that's the direct interpretation of 2

Corinthians 6 .14, certainly we can all agree that the rest of the Bible teaches that it's out of bounds for a

Christian to marry an unbeliever. So Paul tells Christians that to marry whom they will, only marry in the

Lord, and Paul says that he has the right to take a believing spouse, just like the rest of the apostles, even though he chose not to exercise that right.

So the consistent teaching of Scripture is that Christians have freedom to marry who they want to marry, but then they need to marry a believer, and the reasons for that are obvious.

First, God commands it, and second, because it's stupid not to. There is a fundamental disharmony that is introduced into any intimate sort of relationship along those lines if the two individuals are serving two masters.

So what accord does Christ have with Belial? What fellowship does light have with darkness? If a person wants to reject this command that the

Bible gives, that type of individual is calling into question their basic commitment to the lordship of Christ, but regardless of all of that, they're setting themselves up for a lot of headache and a lot of pain and a lot of frustration, because any impulse they have to try to follow the

Lord is going to fundamentally be stamped out by this other individual who doesn't share that same basic allegiance.

This imperative to marry whom you will, only marry in the Lord, is fundamentally seeking to reorient the

Christian's mind to the basic and primary source of hope that two Christians have in marriage itself.

It is this shared commitment to pursue the purposes of Christ that is going to be the fundamental source of unity for a

Christian marriage. Unity for the Christian marriage is not going to be found in the pursuit of common interest or the pursuit of shared values or the pursuit of someone with some sort of compatible personality.

The ultimate source of unity that two Christians are going to have is going to be found in this fundamental and shared commitment to following the lordship of Christ, and this fundamental commitment is going to be the commitment that keeps two individuals married and gives them hope for a better marriage and gets them through the difficulties that arise in the course of any normal marriage.

Now, leaving these things aside, is it possible to be unequally yoked to a believer? Well, in the technical sense, no, meaning this passage is talking about being unequally yoked together with unbelievers.

There's a command there to not join yourself in an intimate way with an unbeliever, and you wouldn't want to extend that command out to also include there's a command to not pursue a marriage with a fellow

Christian that is fundamentally incompatible in other ways. And so what you don't want to do is extend this command broader than what it's given.

But at the same time, I think that many people can acknowledge that just because two believers get married and technically that's permissible, that doesn't make it necessarily a wise idea.

And so what do you do with that kind of thing? There's been many an individual who finds himself in a marriage with a person who claims to be a

Christian only to see that that marriage is filled with heartache and pain and frustration and difficulty.

And so you have to figure out what to do with that kind of arrangement. And is it possible that two believers are significantly incompatible in some fairly fundamental ways?

And that's a question that we need to answer. Now, part of the reason why this is a question that is asked is because I think that Christians should take this one command that we're given much more seriously than what we do.

Because of the influence of just the megachurch culture and the church shopper culture and the

Seekers Sensitive Movement and everything else, the idea of what you might describe as easy -believism within the church as well, the idea of being a believer has been an idea that's fundamentally been devoid of all and almost any content.

I mean, to be a Christian today in America is a very small thing. I mean, there are times within church history where if you say you follow

Christ, that meant something and you're going to be subject to intense kind of persecution. The original apostles, after Jesus died, they're hiding in a room because they understand that associating themselves with this

Messiah might mean that they die. And then when you go make a public profession of faith and baptism, you identify yourself with Christ, you might subject yourself to intense persecution that might lead to death.

And certainly in different parts of the world right now, making a claim to Christ means more than it does in America today.

Now, these things might be changing relatively quickly, but for many years it has been possible to say that you believe in God and have little to no expectations that are attached with that.

And there will be many on the last day who say, Lord, Lord, didn't we do all these wonderful things for you? And God will say, depart from me, you workers of lawlessness.

I didn't know you. And so one of the things to realize is that as you're thinking about this one basic command, the more that you know about what it actually means to be a

Christian, the better able you are to actually fulfill this command. There's been a great many people who have, you know, checked the box.

Hey, they say they're a believer, only to find that every time they try to encourage this individual in the course of their marriage to pursue faithfulness, fundamentally they're interacting with a heart of stone.

And then that leaves them to wonder, like, is this person actually legitimately a Christian? And maybe if they would on the front end of things actually have a more robust understanding of what it actually means to be a

Christian, they could have saved themselves a lot of heartache, and they would understand the wisdom of this one basic command.

But then once this command has basically been emptied of all meaning and being considered a

Christian in today's culture is essentially that, then that command loses its helpfulness or its usefulness.

Now, having said that, though, certainly there are individuals who are farther along in the

Christian life than others. And so if you have an individual who's been walking together with the Lord for 10 years, marrying someone who basically just made a profession of faith last week, one of the things that you might find is those two individuals, the one who is a lot further along than the other, might have a lot of conflict that happens as a result of being further along in their journey.

So while that may be permissible, it may not be wise. And certainly you can think of plenty of examples of situations where a

Christian might want to have higher standards as it relates to their marriage partner, related to whatever sort of profession they're entering in, and everything else.

And so you can imagine a politician at a secular level, a politician going into public service, might have a lot greater standards about who they're going to marry than someone else who's not going to be a figure in public life.

And so as you think through these things, one of the things to realize is that there is this one basic command.

And if we were to treat this one basic command with much more seriousness than what we do, it would actually be much more helpful to picking a marriage partner.

But then there's still this category of wisdom that we have to interact with as we're thinking about picking an appropriate marriage partner.

And if you want to pick a good marriage partner, you can pick the bare minimum requirements that you can technically call faithfulness.

But if you want to pick a wise marriage partner choice, one of the things that you're going to want to do is soak yourself in wisdom literature and then get a lot of advice from your family members and your friends.

And the wiser choice you make among all the permissible options, the easier your experience of marriage will be.

Although there is no such thing as a perfectly easy marriage choice. Men and women are fundamentally different, and the fall has introduced fundamental disharmony in all of marriages.

And so marriage is never going to be a cakewalk as far as that's concerned. But it can be easier or worse depending on the kind of marriage partner you pick and how you pursue marriage in general.

So while it's not technically possible to be unequally yoked together to a fellow believer, there can be a variety of situations that an individual can find themselves in where they are married to a believer, but then fundamentally one

Christian might be much further along in the journey than the other, and it might be much more difficult.

Or you can make a wiser marriage choice among permissible options or a poorer choice. And so while there's only one command that's given, there's also a lot of wisdom in picking a good marriage partner.

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