Today and Friday we field two different questions about premarital pregnancies, one involving a believer and an unbeliever, and another scenario involving two professing believers. First this one, "Does a premarital pregnancy nullify Paul's unequally yoked prohibition?" The question arrives from a listener named Patrick, a pastor himself. "Hello Pastor John, thank you for how this podcast serves me as a pastor." Love that.

"A young couple at my church is unmarried and they have a child together. They're now living in a state of chastity apart. The man is not a believer, she is. They plan to marry, though I have advised her not to marry him unless he becomes a believer." Based on Paul's words in 2 Corinthians 6, 14-18.

Categorically speaking, am I correct here, or does the bringing of a child together into the world override Paul's unequally yoked principle? Pastor John, what would you say about my pastoral instinct here? I think Patrick's interpretation and instincts are correct. And I would simply add a few passages of Scripture and draw out some practical implications.

Patrick refers to 2 Corinthians 6, 14, "Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers." Even more direct to this issue of marrying an unbeliever is Paul's instruction in 1 Corinthians 7, 39, "A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives, but if her husband dies she's free to be married to whom she wishes only in the Lord." So that's Paul's explicit statement, Christians only marry people in the Lord who are Christians.

And of course, behind these two commands for believers, "only to marry believers," is the wisdom that marriage ought to be built on the foundation of faith in Christ with all the challenges and goals of marriage shaped by the Lordship of Jesus Christ, which it can't be in a unity where one does not submit to the Lordship of Jesus Christ.

So I think these commands from the Apostles stand as the perpetual guide for marriage in the Christian church, and that the fact that a person has had sex before marriage or even given birth to a child before marriage does not change this instruction. Now in support of that conviction, I would point to 1 Corinthians 6, 15 following.

It goes like this, "Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ? Shall I then take the members of Christ and make them members of a prostitute? Never. Or do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For as it is written, 'The two shall become one flesh.'" That's a quote from Genesis 2, 24.

But "he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spirit with him." Flee from sexual immorality. Now it seems to me that we can infer from this warning against sex outside marriage that Paul does not believe that such a sexual union creates a covenant. And this is all the more striking, isn't it, because he says it does create a kind of one-flesh union even with a prostitute.

And to support that, well, this is verse 16. "Do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For," and then he quotes this amazing text that applies to marriage, "for the two will become one flesh." So if anywhere Paul is going to say that a person is bound to marry someone with whom they have had a one-flesh union, this would be it.

Say it, Paul. Don't you mean that? And he doesn't. He doesn't mean that. Sexual union is precious, unique, profound, and intended by God as the consummation of a marriage covenant, but by itself, isolated out there in some brothel or in some house at the beach as teenagers. That isolated sexual encounter does not create a covenant.

Isolated from the marriage covenant, it doesn't create a marriage covenant. And I think we can go one step further. If a one-flesh union does not create a marriage covenant, then the fruit of that one-flesh union, namely a precious child, does not create a covenant either. It doesn't create a marriage.

So it seems to me that the biblical instruction to only marry in the Lord stands, even though there has been a sexual union and even though there has been the fruit of that sexual union, a child. Now, of course, this raises enormously difficult issues. Now the couple that Patrick refers to have already evidently walked through some of these difficulties.

They've kept the baby alive and evidently are publicly known as having had sex together and produced this child, all of which, of course, must have been painful. And now there are legal issues, of course, as a moral and legal question of who will be the primary parent of this child if they don't marry.

What kind of financial responsibilities are there for the parent who's not immediately raising the child if they don't marry? What kind of access will both parents have to the child if they don't marry? But here's the greatest pastoral challenge, perhaps. Can you help this couple, especially the Christian woman, see 20 or 30 years into the future and what a 20 or 30-year marriage with an unbeliever will be like, or whether the marriage will even survive?

The present problems look much bigger to them right now than those distant problems. They're not. They're not. It is very difficult, probably, for this Christian young woman to imagine two or three years from now falling in love with a different man who's a Christian and having a 50-year marriage of unity and common faith with him.

But that is what she should dream about, or, if not, waiting prayerfully for the Lord to give new life to this child's father. There are no easy answers to the circumstances created by sin. So may God give you, Patrick, great wisdom as you counsel them, and may he give this Christian woman, especially, grace and courage and far-seeing vision to act wisely.

Very good, measured counsel for a principled question. Thank you, Pastor John. And Pastor Patrick really serves as a model of how to ask a question to us. We can't untangle the personal dimensions of all these questions, but we can address the biblical principles that could be in play in any given situation.

And of course, it's always great to hear that this podcast is serving pastors of local churches. That is just a phenomenal answer to prayer. Thanks to all the pastors who listen out there. Over at our online home, you can explore about 1,300 of our past episodes. You can scan a list of our most popular ones, read full transcripts, even send us a question of your own.

Go to DesiringGod.org/AskPastorJohn. Also, you can subscribe to Ask Pastor John in your favorite podcast app. Well, we have another premarital pregnancy question coming up, this time from two professing believers. We'll address that next time on Friday. I'm your host, Tony Reinke. We'll see you then.