For the unbelieving husband is sanctified in the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified in the brother; since [otherwise] indeed your children are unclean, but now they are holy.
Paul writes to couples whose marriage began before one partner came to faith. His ruling reverses the old rule: the unbeliever does not defile the believer. Two words carry the weight — "made holy" (older translations: "sanctified") and "holy." How much do they promise for a spouse and children who have not believed?
Under Israel's law a mixed marriage worked one way only. Under grace it works the other way:
It is in contrast with the Jews. If a Jew had married a Gentile wife, he had to send her away, and her children too, or he profaned himself. If the Jew was to be holy, they all had to go. The Christian system is gracious, so the opposite happens. The unbeliever does not profane the Christian; the Christian sanctified him or her, and the children too. They are "sanctified" in the exact opposite sense to the way a Jew was profaned.
Paul keeps the vocabulary of clean and unclean, but uses it to bless what the law would have broken up.
God's grace in the gospel reverses the sentence of the law, making pure what had until then been unclean. Otherwise it might have seemed the duty of the believing husband to put away his unbelieving wife and their children, since mixing with Gentiles was hateful to the law.
The word does not describe the unbeliever's character. One writer had seen the opposite happen:
In 1 Corinthians 7:14 the word covers the unbelieving husband with the believing wife, and the unbelieving wife with the believing husband. The verse says the converted one sanctifies the unconverted. I have known cases where the unconverted husband grew far worse. He persecuted his wife and shut her out of the house. He behaved much worse than he did before his wife came to faith. The passage does not mean the unbeliever becomes morally pure. It means husband and wife may live together, unlike under the law.
So the word is about position, not character. The unbeliever belongs to a home where Christ is Lord:
The faith of the one sets the other apart in a very real way, because he is a member of a household where Christ is recognised as Lord. He is set apart despite himself, however ungodly his character may be.
That position is worth something, even though it saves no one by itself:
This holiness is only external, and it carries no saving power. It surely does not save, because salvation is always tied to personal faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Even so, it still gives the priceless privilege of being in the place of blessing, the sphere where the Holy Spirit dwells and acts.
With the children, the point is their standing, not their conversion:
It is now not a question of the practical state of the children themselves — whether they are saved or not saved. The passage simply says that their relationship with the believing parent sanctified the children, so no one need send them away. But some would build a monstrous error on such a passage: that the children of Christian parents are saved as such, without the life-giving grace of the Holy Spirit. That idea is too gross to deserve a moment's thought.
The verse settles a situation already in place; it does not open a door.
The passage does not consider for a moment a believer marrying an unbeliever. That is clearly against the Lord's mind. Here it is a case of mixed marriages, where one partner came to faith after the wedding… The sanctification and the holiness do not mean a spiritual condition that puts them in relationship with God. They mean that through the believer the relationship is clean and owned by God, so the believer can continue in it.
Writers do not agree on how this verse touches the baptism of children. One links the child's place to baptism:
The child has an acknowledged place as "holy" or "clean." Paul uses this to show that the marriage stands, since if the children were unclean, the marriage itself would be. Baptism gives this acknowledged place, a place in the kingdom of God, which runs through the ages in different forms.
Another replies that the verse itself says nothing about baptism:
The apostle means a sanctified, or holy, state, actually and always true of the husband and children of a believing wife… Not a hint is dropped in this verse of being converted or brought to baptism.
- Reversed. Under law the unclean partner defiled the believer. Under grace the believer's faith sets the partner apart.
- Set apart, not saved. "Sanctified" here does not mean pure or converted. An unbelieving spouse may grow harder, not softer.
- Place, not state. One believer's faith gives the household standing: a place near where the Holy Spirit works.
- So keep the family. Children of such a marriage are "holy," not unclean, so they stay. Yet no child is saved by having a believing parent.
- Stay put. The ruling covers a marriage already formed, never a believer's choice to enter one. The believer stays in a bond God owns as clean.
But if the unbeliever go away, let them go away; a brother or a sister is not bound in such [cases], but God has called us in peace.
Paul has been dealing with marriages where one partner believes and the other does not. Here he takes the case where the unbeliever walks out, and two questions follow: how far does the release go, and who may act on it?
Under grace, the believer never starts the separation. Everything turns on whether the unbeliever leaves for good. (Where the ESV reads "let it be so," the older wording quoted below is "let him depart.")
So the believer was not to send away his wife, and was not to leave an unbelieving husband. If the unbeliever left the believer for good, then the believer — man or woman — was free: "let him depart." The brother no longer had to treat the woman who had left him as his wife, nor the sister the man who had left her as her husband. But they were called to peace, and not to seek this separation. How could the believer know whether he might be the means of the unbeliever's conversion? For we are under grace.
Grace works the other way round from the law. The move must come from the other side, and the believer's part is to let go without a fight.
Under the law, when Israelites had married foreign wives, they were required to send those wives away; but grace is very different. It will not hold the unbeliever against his will. If he wants to go, the believer is told to "let him depart." When the unbeliever makes the first move, the believer is not under bondage in such cases. How much wiser to leave the matter with God, and not argue.
So what does that freedom cover? Much depends on who broke the tie.
So if the unbelieving partner cuts himself off from the other, the believer is released from bondage — whether it is the brother or the sister in the case. That act on the unbeliever's side does not give the abandoned believer permission to marry. It does leave the believer freer to serve the Lord, now that the other has gone. Such a marriage is likely to bring strife anyway, since the natural man hates the life of the Spirit. And none of this would justify the believer breaking the marriage tie: the case assumes that the unbeliever has broken it himself, or herself.
Release from the tie is not the same as divorce.
He or she no longer has to treat the relationship as still existing. Yet the apostle does not mean anything like divorce by this, or anything that would set the deserted one completely free. The Lord Himself has settled it in the clearest possible way in the Gospels: there is only one ground for divorce. We have no right to take the apostle's words here as declaring another ground, though many now do.
On whether the deserted believer may marry again, the writers do not agree. One says the release goes no further than the tie.
If, however, the unbeliever leaves, the believer is released from the bondage of being tied to an unbeliever. The believer is not to argue with the one who has gone, for we are called to peace. This does not give the believer any licence to break the tie by leaving the unbeliever. Nor does it give the abandoned believer permission to remarry.
Another writer reaches the opposite conclusion, with one condition attached.
According to 1 Corinthians 7, I cannot doubt that a Christian deserted on purpose by an unbelieving partner was free in every way — free, that is, to marry. But this assumes that the one who went away left on purpose. The Christian was never to be the one who leaves, and if forced to go, was to stay unmarried or return.
The last words of the verse cover the whole case. They rule out holding an unwilling partner, and they rule out inventing an escape when the partner wants to stay.
But freedom must never be taken away. Those who want to go may go. God's calling is in peace. If unbelief for now goes together with respect and natural affection, peace in the home will not be broken, even though the Lord may have divided soul from soul. If it is otherwise, the cross must be accepted and its burden carried — and no false relief sought by breaking the tie at will.
- Peace decides. God's call to peace rules every part of this verse. It forbids both clinging on and scheming to get out.
- Peace forbids force. Grace "will not hold the unbeliever against his will." If the unbeliever goes, the believer lets go without a fight.
- Peace releases. "Not enslaved" means the deserted believer need no longer treat the deserter as husband or wife. The believer is left "freer to serve the Lord."
- Peace has limits. The release is not divorce. The Lord settled the one ground for that in the Gospels, not here.
- Peace divides commentators. On remarriage after desertion they differ. Some rule it out. Others hold that a believer deserted on purpose is free to marry.