Christian Marries Non-Christian — How Does a Church Respond?

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.580 | We get a steady stream of really tough pastoral questions

00:00:07.400 | for Pastor John in our inbox.

00:00:09.480 | Thank you for sending them into us

00:00:10.700 | and thank you for your patience

00:00:11.960 | as we try to work through as many of them as possible.

00:00:14.320 | Here's one of those questions.

00:00:15.640 | It's from a listener named Eric, who's a pastor.

00:00:17.880 | Hello, Pastor John.

00:00:18.800 | I'm a pastor wondering what should be

00:00:20.600 | a corrective course of action

00:00:22.360 | when a Christian knowingly marries an unbeliever?

00:00:26.280 | The believer was forewarned

00:00:27.680 | and went ahead with the union anyway.

00:00:30.360 | Now the marriage has been formalized.

00:00:32.320 | How should we, the church, now respond?

00:00:35.920 | To answer this, let's clarify

00:00:39.280 | how many layers of sinfulness there are

00:00:44.280 | when a professing believer

00:00:48.240 | rejects the counsel of the church elders

00:00:50.800 | and marries an unbeliever.

00:00:52.780 | I'll just mention three layers.

00:00:54.240 | There are others,

00:00:55.400 | but this will help us feel the seriousness of it.

00:00:58.320 | First, the professing believer

00:01:02.320 | is defying and rebelling against

00:01:06.240 | an explicit command of the New Testament, of God.

00:01:10.480 | Paul says in 1 Corinthians 7:39,

00:01:14.000 | a wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives,

00:01:17.420 | but if her husband dies, she's free to be married

00:01:22.560 | to whomever she wishes, only in the Lord.

00:01:27.560 | Only in the Lord means only to a person

00:01:32.280 | who is in the Lord, a believer, a follower of Jesus.

00:01:37.280 | So if this teaching is made clear to the believer

00:01:42.480 | and the believer rejects obedience to this command,

00:01:49.160 | she or he is acting in open defiance

00:01:54.160 | of the teaching of the apostles and of God.

00:01:57.440 | Second, probably even more important,

00:01:59.880 | because it gets to the heart of the matter,

00:02:02.280 | a believer who chooses to marry an unbeliever

00:02:04.520 | shows how deeply compromised

00:02:07.120 | the believer's love for Christ is.

00:02:11.660 | Jesus said, "Unless you love me

00:02:14.520 | "more than you love your closest human loved one,

00:02:18.300 | "you're not worthy of me," Matthew 10:37.

00:02:21.800 | That's an amazing claim that Jesus lays on our hearts.

00:02:25.920 | But if the believer enjoys the presence

00:02:29.360 | and the friendship and the intimacy

00:02:31.840 | of a Christ-rejecting person, boyfriend, girlfriend,

00:02:36.280 | more than the presence and the fellowship of Christ,

00:02:41.100 | their very faith and love for Jesus is in question.

00:02:46.800 | By Jesus, not me, by Jesus, that's the deepest issue.

00:02:50.740 | How can the heart of a believer embrace Jesus

00:02:55.740 | as its supreme treasure and satisfaction

00:03:00.180 | and reject the words of Jesus

00:03:02.940 | in order to be in the arms of one who has no faith

00:03:07.940 | and no true affection

00:03:11.100 | for the believer's most treasured possession?

00:03:15.940 | Inconceivable to me.

00:03:17.280 | I've always found that incomprehensible.

00:03:19.780 | Something is deeply, deeply wrong

00:03:23.000 | with the heart's affection for Christ.

00:03:25.540 | It's the second layer of sinfulness.

00:03:28.980 | And the third, if faithful leaders in the church

00:03:33.060 | have lovingly explained God's will

00:03:36.880 | based on God's word to the believer

00:03:39.400 | and have told the believer not to move forward

00:03:43.000 | with this illicit marriage out of obedience to Christ,

00:03:47.800 | then the marriage is not only rebellion

00:03:50.600 | against the explicit biblical command

00:03:53.360 | and not only a revelation of an idolatrous heart

00:03:57.160 | that puts a human above Christ in the affections,

00:04:00.440 | but also a spurning of the authority of the elders,

00:04:04.480 | which God gave to protect the sheep from sin.

00:04:08.720 | Now that's the situation, and I start there

00:04:13.400 | so that the rest of what I have to say

00:04:15.300 | will sound appropriately serious.

00:04:18.720 | My answer is that the elders plead, they pray, they teach,

00:04:23.720 | then if all of that is rejected,

00:04:27.760 | you remove the believer from membership in the church

00:04:32.760 | for moving ahead with the marriage.

00:04:35.520 | The aim of this removal is to sober the disobedient believer,

00:04:40.520 | wake them up, and win them to a repentant

00:04:46.720 | and obedient heart and restoration.

00:04:50.720 | Many people do not take the Bible seriously.

00:04:55.580 | They are baffled and angry by churches

00:05:01.560 | who take the Bible as seriously as I'm saying.

00:05:05.620 | Many professing Christians today

00:05:08.600 | would regard such excommunication

00:05:11.020 | as more hurtful than helpful.

00:05:14.160 | They'd call it intolerant.

00:05:16.040 | They'd even call it hateful.

00:05:17.980 | But that's because they elevate their own wisdom

00:05:21.940 | above God's wisdom.

00:05:23.520 | They use the same reasoning

00:05:25.600 | for why we should not remove a person from membership

00:05:30.480 | that the disobedient person used to marry the unbeliever

00:05:34.000 | in the first place, namely,

00:05:35.800 | well, maybe the unbeliever will be one to Christ

00:05:38.400 | in this marriage.

00:05:39.560 | Maybe if you keep them as members

00:05:42.660 | or keep one of them as members, the other will be one.

00:05:45.960 | And the parents, oh my, of the excommunicated person

00:05:49.760 | or friends, if they're not seriously biblical,

00:05:54.080 | will argue that you won't be able to win them to Christ

00:05:58.320 | by putting them out of the church.

00:06:00.560 | They're gonna get angry.

00:06:02.680 | The unbeliever will call you intolerant and hateful.

00:06:06.880 | It won't be redemptive.

00:06:08.460 | It will be alienating.

00:06:10.500 | That's what they're gonna say.

00:06:11.680 | That's what elders have to be prepared to hear.

00:06:14.760 | That's emphatically not what the Bible teaches.

00:06:18.120 | In 2 Thessalonians 3, 14 and 15,

00:06:21.180 | and in 1 Corinthians 5, 4 and 5,

00:06:24.160 | Paul holds out the possibility and the desire

00:06:28.280 | that by means of such holy ostracism,

00:06:32.440 | people will in fact be saved and restored.

00:06:36.760 | In fact, I have seen church discipline

00:06:40.400 | have that very effect in my ministry.

00:06:44.320 | Church leaders have to be prepared to be vilified

00:06:48.240 | by people who think they know better

00:06:51.360 | than the apostles how to love people.

00:06:54.420 | One other question to answer is this

00:06:56.840 | that's very important.

00:06:58.720 | What does repentance and restoration look like

00:07:01.920 | in such a situation?

00:07:03.540 | It does not mean that the marriage is nullified.

00:07:07.840 | It really is a marriage,

00:07:09.300 | a marriage that should not have been entered into,

00:07:12.560 | but now having been entered into, should not be broken.

00:07:17.560 | It should be sanctified.

00:07:20.040 | And Paul is just as clear about the fact

00:07:22.880 | that a believer should not divorce an unbeliever.

00:07:25.980 | 1 Corinthians 7, 12, as he is that they shouldn't marry one.

00:07:30.840 | So repentance of sin in marrying an unbeliever

00:07:35.840 | does not include divorcing the unbeliever.

00:07:39.320 | What it includes is a heart change, not a marriage change.

00:07:44.320 | There should be an authentic remorse and regret

00:07:48.720 | for disobedience to 1 Corinthians 7, 39.

00:07:52.320 | There should be an acknowledgement and repentance

00:07:55.980 | that the heart was not right

00:07:58.240 | in putting man above Christ in the affections.

00:08:02.460 | There should be an apology and sorrow

00:08:04.620 | for spurning the counsel of God's leaders in the church.

00:08:07.780 | And all of these changes are possible

00:08:10.860 | while the marriage stays intact.

00:08:13.480 | Indeed, I would say, and maybe the last thing I would say,

00:08:17.560 | is that a man or a woman who stays in such a marriage

00:08:22.560 | can say to an unbelieving spouse these words,

00:08:30.260 | my reawakened love for Jesus

00:08:33.940 | and my treasuring Christ above you as my Lord and Savior,

00:08:39.900 | and my desire to be a part of Christ's people again,

00:08:45.820 | and my regret over my sin in marrying an unbeliever

00:08:50.620 | does not mean I stop loving you

00:08:54.420 | or that I want to leave you.

00:08:57.560 | We have a covenant till death do us part.

00:09:01.760 | I intend to keep it.

00:09:03.300 | In fact, my restored faith

00:09:07.120 | means that I now know how to love you better.

00:09:12.120 | I would like to show it.

00:09:14.300 | I hope you will have me.

00:09:16.620 | Whether the unbelieving spouse will receive that,

00:09:20.360 | we don't know, but it is possible.

00:09:23.020 | And that's the goal of the discipline.

00:09:25.700 | That's our prayer.

00:09:27.420 | - Thank you for walking us through

00:09:28.380 | this pastorally sensitive scenario, Pastor John.

00:09:31.260 | And thank you for listening.

00:09:32.820 | If you want new episodes of this podcast delivered to you,

00:09:35.820 | subscribe to Ask Pastor John

00:09:37.020 | in your favorite podcast app in Spotify,

00:09:38.700 | or by subscribing to DG's YouTube channel.

00:09:40.920 | And to find other episodes in our archive

00:09:42.540 | or to submit a great pastoral question to us,

00:09:45.020 | like this one from Eric,

00:09:46.620 | do that online at DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn.

00:09:50.380 | We're gonna stay on this theme of non-Christians,

00:09:53.540 | because next time we have two questions in the inbox

00:09:55.580 | about what happens to non-Christians

00:09:57.420 | who participate in the Lord's Supper.

00:10:00.740 | A great question.

00:10:01.640 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:10:03.020 | We will see you on Monday for that

00:10:04.700 | with Pastor John in studio.

00:10:06.220 | We'll see you then.

00:10:07.180 | (upbeat music)

00:10:09.760 | (upbeat music)

00:10:12.340 | [BLANK_AUDIO]

Christian Marries Non-Christian — How Does a Church Respond?

Chapters