Is It Sinful to Date a Non-Christian?
00:00:00.000 | A young man writes in to ask, "Pastor John, is it a sin for me to date a non-Christian
00:00:09.240 | woman?"
00:00:10.240 | What would you say?
00:00:11.240 | I want to ask, what does he believe sin is?
00:00:16.360 | In other words, if I were talking to him here before, I would say yes or no.
00:00:21.880 | I would say, "Tell me what you think sin is, and here's what I'd be listening for.
00:00:28.240 | In Romans 3.23, "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God."
00:00:35.160 | So sinning is falling short of the glory of God, it seems.
00:00:40.240 | What does that mean?
00:00:41.240 | What does fall short of the glory mean?
00:00:43.360 | And the word justereo means lack, so sinning is lacking the glory of God.
00:00:49.680 | Well, lacking in what sense?
00:00:51.520 | I'm not supposed to be as glorious as God is.
00:00:54.280 | Well, lacking in the sense of Romans 1.23, probably, where it says that sinners exchanged
00:01:01.600 | the glory of the immortal God for images.
00:01:04.280 | When they exchanged, they lacked it.
00:01:07.080 | In other words, they looked at the glory of God, they looked at images, maybe the one
00:01:12.620 | in the mirror, and they chose against God, and thus they lacked God.
00:01:19.320 | So sin, I would say, is a preferring of anything over God.
00:01:25.940 | And sins, plural, are the kinds of attitudes and desires and actions and words that come
00:01:33.240 | out of us when we prefer other things to God, when God is not our supreme desire, our supreme
00:01:40.920 | treasure.
00:01:42.920 | So that's what I'd be looking for.
00:01:45.000 | And then I would ask, so let's come to dating now.
00:01:50.040 | What is that?
00:01:51.920 | Is dating an expression of a desire that another person has become more precious to me than
00:02:00.840 | God?
00:02:01.880 | Is it?
00:02:02.880 | And if it is, I don't care if the person's a believer or an unbeliever, Christian or
00:02:07.000 | non-Christian.
00:02:08.160 | You can date a Christian and be sinning.
00:02:11.180 | You can date a non-Christian and be sinning because your affections or your love or your
00:02:16.560 | need for that person might reflect that God doesn't have a place in your life nearly as
00:02:24.360 | big and powerful and satisfying and beautiful as he ought to have in your life.
00:02:31.520 | If you have a felt need for companionship that is greater than your felt need for God,
00:02:37.600 | then you're sinning and doesn't matter who it is that you're taking out, you need to
00:02:42.320 | go back and find God to be your treasure.
00:02:47.320 | So that's more probably than what he was asking, but here's what he really, really wants to
00:02:53.600 | know probably.
00:02:55.400 | Okay, let's say I don't have that problem.
00:02:59.800 | I'm not craving another person more than I'm craving God.
00:03:04.120 | Is it a sin to date an unbeliever?
00:03:10.080 | And my answer to that is, what is dating for?
00:03:14.840 | What are you treating dating as?
00:03:18.640 | And you might say, "Well, I don't have any romantic interest at all, and I want to testify
00:03:24.400 | to the grace of God to this unbeliever over pizza in the hope of leading her to Christ."
00:03:29.960 | In other words, this is just pure evangelism and not romance.
00:03:33.880 | And I would say, "Okay, go for it."
00:03:36.440 | I think that's true, but be careful because anytime one man and one woman spend time together,
00:03:43.720 | more can happen than evangelism of a more personal, intimate, romantic kind, especially
00:03:50.480 | when you're talking about deep things.
00:03:52.480 | I've seen it happen, and I would caution it.
00:03:57.520 | But what if dating, what if he said, "Well, I really am attracted to this person, and
00:04:06.080 | dating for me is part of a cultivation of a romantic relationship that could lead to
00:04:11.280 | marriage."
00:04:12.280 | Then I would say, "If you're doing that, if you're pursuing an unbeliever with a view
00:04:18.480 | to awakening, quickening, and deepening a romantic relationship that could lead to marriage,
00:04:23.920 | you're compromising your love for Christ, and you're going against what the Bible says,
00:04:28.920 | and you're doing something wrong because 1 Corinthians 7:39 says that we are to marry
00:04:36.280 | only in the Lord.
00:04:39.020 | And if you're on a trajectory to fall in love with and marry a woman who is outside the
00:04:45.480 | Lord, you're on a trajectory to disobey this text.
00:04:48.960 | And to be on a trajectory to disobey a text is to disobey a text.
00:04:54.480 | And 2 Corinthians 6:14, "Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers," ties in with that
00:05:00.720 | as it relates to marriage.
00:05:02.840 | And I think the reason for that, Tony, is that marriage is a union of the deepest kind.
00:05:11.880 | It's meant to be a union of soul as well as a union of body.
00:05:17.000 | And there can't be any deep union of soul if two people have different supreme treasures,
00:05:24.600 | one Christ and another something in creation.
00:05:28.520 | There's a deep disunion from the outset.
00:05:33.080 | So to pursue a dating relationship, cultivating a relationship that would lead to a forbidden
00:05:38.720 | marriage is, I think, forbidden.
00:05:41.520 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for listening to this podcast.
00:05:45.320 | Email all your dating and marriage questions to us at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org.
00:05:50.800 | Visit us online at desiringgod.org to find thousands of books, articles, sermons, and
00:05:54.160 | other resources from John Piper, all for you, free of charge.
00:05:57.600 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:05:58.600 | Thanks for listening.
00:05:59.280 | [END]
00:05:59.780 | Desiring God.
00:06:00.780 | By John Piper.
00:06:01.780 | John Piper.
00:06:02.780 | Desiring God.
00:06:03.780 | By John Piper.