Unequally Yoked?

Paul Lewis

In this column, I’d like to address the question of whether it is a sin to

marry an unbeliever.
My answer is one that you may associate more with liberal or ”cafete-
ria” Christians, but I believe it wholeheartedly. No, it is not a sin to marry
an unbeliever. Not only is it not a sin, the New Testament specifically au-
thorizes marriage to unbelievers. The idea that Christians must not marry
unbelievers, though well intentioned, is fundamentally the product of human
minds thinking of rules that seem to make sense to us, rather than taking
God’s word on its own terms. Many believers’ attitudes about this topic
unfortunately smack of legalism.
Broadly speaking, people typically make two different scripture-based ar-
guments that it is forbidden to marry unbelievers. The first argument is to
refer to one of many Old Testament verses forbidding the Israelites to marry
from other nations. Of course, we know that we as Christians are under a
new covenant, and attempting to apply Old Testament rules to our situation
in this way just doesn’t work.
The other argument is an appeal to 2 Cor 6:14. ”Do not be unequally
yoked with unbelievers.” This verse simply is not about marriage. You may
be so accustomed to seeing the verse in that interpretation that this statement
sounds strange to you. But I encourage you to read this verse in context. The
topic at hand is the Corinthians’ blending of pagan and Christian religious
practice.
Paul does not write in riddles. If he wanted to tell his readers not to
marry unbelievers, he would not have done so by inserting a single enigmatic
sentence in the middle of a discussion about other topics. He would simply
have said so directly.
What does Paul actually have to say about marriage to unbelievers? For
this we turn to 1 Cor 7:12-16. Paul is here addressing married Christians and
the topic of divorce. Presumably some Corinthians worried that they were

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being defiled through their marriages to unbelievers. Paul’s response is that,
to the contrary, the unbelieving spouse is sanctified through the marriage to
a Christian.
We also see in 1 Pet 3:1-2 that Peter mentions marriages to unbeliev-
ers. Notable here is that he instructs wives to submit to their unbelieving
husbands, indicating that marriages to an unbeliever should follow a similar
pattern to marriages between believers.
It does happen to be the case that both of these passages addressing the
topic of marriage to unbelievers do not specifically address new marriages –
they only address people who are already married. However, to attempt to
conclude based on this that new marriages are forbidden is stretching the
plain meaning of the text beyond the breaking point in an attempt to find
something that’s just not there. Isn’t it exactly this kind of legalism we are
supposed to be free of?
None of this means that marrying an unbeliever is easy or something
you specifically should seek out. But I have seen truly tragic situations
where a young man or woman was essentially commanded to leave his or her
betrothed, and it’s unnecessary and contrary to scripture. I have also seen
multiple times people saved through the influence of a spouse - although I
must be clear that you cannot count on this happening.
It may surprise you to learn that the early Christians had no religious
ceremony for marriage. This is because marriage was not considered a specif-
ically religious institution. Of course, it was religious in that it was created
by God and reflected the relationship of Christ with His church. But this
was true also of marriages between unbelievers. For Christians who think a
marriage is not valid unless performed by a pastor or other clergy, simply
look at some of the scripture discussed above to see that, in fact, marriages
are perfectly valid even when none of the participants are believers! Until
the 1500s in Europe, the church considered a simple declaration between a
couple to be enough to initiate a marriage, even if no witnesses were pressent.
The church only gradually asserted control over marriage, exactly as it only
gradually began to engage in many other practices contrary to scripture.
The idea that we are forbidden to marry unbelievers is reasonable, natu-
ral, and completely wrong. I encourage you to consider what I have written
and read scripture with an open mind and the guidance of the Spirit.