I remember attending youth Bible Study during my teen years that there was always discussions on dating where the number one rule was not to a date a non-Christian. These days our culture is telling people they should date whoever they want and marry whoever you want. While that maybe a nice gesture to say to everyone, for believers in Jesus that is not the case especially in the area of marriage.
The question we are asking is whether or not a Christian should marry a non-Christian. Does the Bible really have anything to say about this issue? 2 Corinthians 6:14 has been used to show that Christians and non-Christians should not be in any dating or marriage relationship, but is that what the verse implies? How can we answer this question biblical?
Mike Gilbart-Smith wrote about this very same thing and has given us 7 things to look at as we consider Christian/Non-Christian marriages:
1) Genesis 1: Marriage is to display God’s image by obeying God’s commands for fruitfulness and dominion.
In Genesis 1:26–28, God designs marriage to be a partnership in ruling creation under his rule. If we don’t acknowledge that we’re ruling under God’s rule, then we’re ruling under the rule of an idol, or a combination of a whole series of idols.
Practically speaking, this impinges on every single decision you have to make as a married couple. For example, how do you decide what you should do at any point in your life? Should you:
1) do what pleases the Lord?
2) do what pleases yourself?
3) do what pleases others?
For the Christian, number 1 trumps number 2 and 3. For the non-Christian, there is only 2 and 3.
2) Genesis 2: Marriage is a partnership in doing God’s work.
Genesis 2 fleshes this out more. Genesis 2:15–17 shows how Adam is prophet/priest/king in the garden kingdom where God has put him to rule within the constraints of God’s ultimate kingship (symbolized by the two trees: blessing and life for living under his rule; curse and death for refusing his rule). The rest of the chapter details how Adam is incapable of fulfilling his calling to be prophet/priest/king alone. He needs a suitable helper in order to do that, so Eve is provided so that together they will fulfill God’s calling to bring glory to his name under his rule.
Therefore, marriage is a partnership. “It is not good for man to be alone” isn’t true primarily because man is lonely: it’s true because he’s incompetent, even before the Fall.
God did not create man alone to be competent to fulfill his calling to image God. He created man and woman in relationship to do that. Single men and women can do that also, particularly in relationship to the church under the love of Christ, the fulfillment of marriage.
So, in a Christian marriage, marriage is a partnership in the gospel. Conversely, marrying a non-Christian necessarily makes marriage a partnership in something else.
Why would a Christian choose to enter such a partnership?
3) Genesis 3: Marriage is harmed by sin.
Genesis 3 shows how us how marriage gets messed up by sin. Adam and Eve go from naked and unashamed to hiding from one another.
In the curse, God pronounces how marriage post-Fall is a battle of one sinful will against another:
Your desire will be for your husband,
and he will rule over you. (Gen. 3:16)
This means all marriages are hard. But in a Christian marriage, spouses have the opportunity to call one another to submit one’s sinful wills to God’s perfect will. When marrying a non-Christian, you lose out on the blessing of having a spouse who calls you to submit your will to Christ, and instead have a spouse who has no interest in being called to submit their own will to Christ.
4) The Old Testament warns against marrying unbelievers.
In the rest of Genesis, we see a huge effort made to ensure the people of God would only marry those who trust the Lord.
In Genesis 24, we see the great lengths Abraham goes to—combined with God’s amazing answer to prayer—to ensure that his son Isaac marries believing Rebekah.
In Genesis 27:46–28:9, we see Rebekah and Isaac’s disgust at the marriage of her son to Canaanite/Hittite women. This isn’t racism: it’s religious.
In Genesis 34:8–9, Hamor invites the sons of Jacob to intermarry with the daughters of Shechem (a town that has just proved its character in the mistreatment of Dinah). To intermarry with this town rather than distance themselves from such defilement would have been the ultimate compromise; it would have destroyed the people of God in the first generation.
In the conquest of Canaan, the Lord gives strict prohibitions against intermarriage:
Do not intermarry with them. Do not give your daughters to their sons or take their daughters for your sons, for they will turn your children away from following me to serve other gods, and the Lord’s anger will burn against you and will quickly destroy you. (Deut. 7:3–4)
This prohibition is repeated in Joshua 23:12, and the trajectory of intermarriage never assumes or expects the Canaanites would end up being converted.
Intermarriage is also the downfall of kings: even the super-wise Solomon (1 Kings 11) and most obviously Ahab (1 Kings 16–19). More positively, a sign of repentance for God’s people was their repentance of intermarriage in Ezra 9–10. On the other hand, if a foreigner was already converted, then there was absolutely no prohibition against marrying them. In fact, this is seen as a positive (Zipporah, Rahab, Ruth).
All this biblical evidence makes me think that “I’ll keep following Jesus even with an unbelieving spouse” is a very proud statement that underestimates our own weakness, and presumes upon God’s grace.
5. Old Testament positively pictures believing marriages.
Positively, Proverbs 31 calls the young man to look out for a woman of noble character. The climax of the poem, and the source of everything noble about her, is reached in verse 30:
Charm is deceptive, and beauty is fleeting;
but a woman who fears the Lord is to be praised.
What is it that would most attract you to a potential spouse: charm, beauty, or fear of the Lord? With a non-Christian, there can only be there first two: deceptive charm or fleeting beauty.
Ruth and Boaz is among the most beautiful pictures of believers marrying. He provides and protects; she trusts and takes godly initiative. It’s a wonderful love story of how a woman who has come under the wings of the Lord comes within the love of a godly man.
6. New Testament texts imply the prohibition to marry unbelievers remains.
In the New Testament, there are a number of asides that make it clear this Old Testament prohibition still stands.
A woman is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to marry anyone she wishes, but he must belong to the Lord. (1 Corinthians 7:39)
Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? (2 Corinthians 6:14)
Though this second verse isn’t explicitly about marriage and offers a more general principle that the church should keep itself disentangled from fellowship with pagans, what closer fellowship would one desire than the fellowship with one’s spouse? Does one want a marriage that’s not a fellowship? In reality, it will end up being a “fellowship” or “partnership” in something but it will not be a partnership in the gospel, and therefore it will tend to entangle the believer in precisely the way 2 Corinthians 6:14 warns against.
1 Corinthians 9:5 – Don’t we have the right to take a believing wife along with us, as do the other apostles and the Lord’s brothers and Cephas?
This suggests that having an unbelieving wife would at least disqualify from ministry. If you ever aspired to be an elder in a church, then this would disqualify you.
Those who demand New Testament evidence for the prohibition of intermarriage with unbelievers will find these texts. Simultaneously, they will not find a single verse even suggesting that the Old Testament prohibition of such intermarriage is lifted for the New Testament believer.
7. A clearer positive vision for marriage revealed in the New Testament.
The New Testament then gives a clearer revelation of marriage: it’s a partnership that pictures the redeeming love of Christ for his church. The whole point of marriage is to picture the gospel (Eph. 5:21–33; Rev. 21:9–27). Beyond that, it pictures the very relationship between the Father and the Son (1 Cor. 11:3).
To marry a non-believer is like two artists trying to paint two different pictures on the same canvas. You’re trying to paint a picture of Jesus and the church, but your spouse is trying to paint something entirely different.
Or, to take a musical analogy, it would be a partnership where one person is trying to sing one song, and the other is trying to sing an entirely different one. You sing: “I want this song to be about Jesus,” while your spouse sings, “It’s just you and me.” There can be no ultimate harmony.
When a believer is married to a non-Christian—either through former disobedience, their own conversion, or their spouse’s apostasy after marriage—that’s the painful, discordant, but ultimately God-glorifying song that must be sung. But it isn’t the song marriage was designed for, and not one a Christian should deliberately seek to write.
What’s the purpose of the life of a believer? Jesus tells us in John 17: “Now this is eternal life: that they know you, the only true God, and Jesus Christ, whom you have sent.”
The believer lives to know—and in knowing, to love, honor, worship, and follow—God through his Son Jesus Christ.
It’s far better to live without a spouse and within the company of the church, than with someone who is living for a life that’s not eternal.
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