I am engaged to and living with an unbeliever. I am convicted about this. What should I do?

"M. A. C." 2 Corinthians 6:14 is perfectly conclusive as to your case. We believe it to be a grievous sin for a Christian to marry an unconverted person; and we have known cases where persons having acted in wilful disobedience in this solemn matter were called to reap the most bitter fruit during the whole of their after life. We recently heard of an instance of a Christian girl, who, in the face of earnest advice and remonstrance persisted in marrying an unconverted man. What followed? They had not been long married when her husband reproached her for her inconsistency. Nor was this all. They had two children, who proved to be idiots, and kept up in the poor mother's ear the constant heartbreaking wail of idiocy. In short, her married life was one of untold anguish and misery. We believe her soul was restored, but she was made to feel the solemn force of those words, "Whatsoever a man sows, that shall he also reap." Oh! dear friend, let nothing induce you to enter the marriage yoke with an unconverted person. Let not the devil cast dust in your eyes, and let not your own heart deceive you by the vain hope of doing your partner good. It is a deadly delusion. You will do him no good; but you will do yourself incalculable mischief; and, what is much worse, you will disobey and dishonour your Lord. How can you possibly expect to be the means of leading a soul into the way of truth, that very way which you yourself have deliberately abandoned in order to gain your own end, and gratify your natural affections? We feel bound, in faithfulness to the Lord and to you, to warn you, in the most solemn manner, not to proceed further in this matter, but, in the fear of God, break off this connection altogether. May God give you grace so to do.

The Scripture does not say much about engagement but it does refer in several places to betrothal or espousal. This is shown in the case of Mary and Joseph and mentioned in the Song of Soloman. Engagement is a time when a man and woman are preparing for a marriage to which they have committed themselves.

As we have already seen Scripture clearly speaks about the relationship between one man and one woman. Engagement should therefore be seen as a serious step of firm commitment to marry (having received clear guidance from the Lord in the decision) and not as a trial period. I would hasten to say that should a mistake be realised before one is married it would be far better to admit it and end the relationship, than to continue in a path which is not the Lord's will.

Engagement is a time to prepare yourselves for a new life and attend to the many practical matters that need to be sorted out: a wedding to prepare; a new home to find; and studies to complete for example.

(Vv. 12-17). The Apostle then takes up the difficult position of a brother with an unbelieving wife, or the woman with an unbelieving husband. Here he gives his advice. This does not contemplate for a moment the case of a believer marrying an unbeliever, which is clearly contrary to the mind of the Lord (2 Cor. 6:14). Here it is the case of mixed marriages, where one of the parties has been converted after the marriage. In this case the believer is not defiled by union with the unbeliever. On the contrary the unbeliever is sanctified and the children holy. Here the sanctification and the holiness do not signify a spiritual condition that puts them in relationship with God, but rather that through the believer the relationship is clean and owned of God, so that the believer can continue in it. If, however, the unbeliever departs, the believer is released from the bondage of being tied to an unbeliever and is not to raise any dispute with the one that has departed, for we are called to peace. This does not give the believer any licence to break the tie by departing from the unbeliever, nor does it grant the abandoned believer permission to remarry. So far from the believer separating from the unbeliever, the brother or sister is to remain at all cost in the relationship, counting upon God for the salvation of the unbeliever. There will thus be submission to what the Lord has allowed, and a walk in accord with His will. This, too, we are reminded, is the order for all the assemblies; thus ecclesiastical independency is shut out. The assemblies are not independent companies, each left free to adopt its own practices. The word of God is still our only guide, and assemblies walking in the light of the word will be united in submitting to its instructions.

Above all, in the companionship of husband and wife, a Christian man or woman should always choose a Christian partner, and on no account marry an unbeliever. Scripture speaks of marriage as being at our will, but adds for the Christian, “only in the Lord,” and 2 Corinthians 6:14 warns us against the unequal yoke. Samson’s case with Delilah is a warning indeed.

If the Lord Jesus on earth was separate from sinners, He desires His disciples to follow in His steps. Therefore we are commanded by the Lord not to be “unequally yoked together with unbelievers” (2 Cor. 6:14). It is altogether wrong for a believer to be in any association whatsoever with unbelievers. We have however to notice that the Lord Jesus has given special instructions in His word for the position of a believing brother or sister who entered a marriage association before becoming a Christian. Moreover, if in ignorance, the believer has married an unbeliever, the instructions relating to husband and wife are still binding. These instructions are still binding if a believer, spite of the Lord’s commandment, enters wilfully in to an unequal marriage yoke. The wilful Christian has usually to suffer grievously for entering such an association.

"T. A. S." The Christian wife to whom you refer would need peculiar grace and wisdom to enable her to deal rightly with her unbelieving husband. A tender, gracious carriage on her part might be greatly owned of God to win the heart of her husband. As to whether she ought to leave him and go to the Lord's Table, thus running the risk of his going to the public house, we do not deem ourselves warranted in laying down any rule. A Christian wife, under such painful circumstances, must be much in the divine presence in order to know how to act. "I will guide thee with mine eye" — not by rules and regulations

It is hardly needful to remark, here, that in cases where conversion takes place after marriage, the complexion of the matter is very materially altered. There will then be no smitings of conscience, for example; and the whole thing is modified in a variety of particulars. Still there will be difficulty, trial, and sorrow unquestionably. The only thing is that one can, far more happily, bring the trial and sorrow into the Lord's presence, when he has not deliberately and wilfully plunged himself thereinto; and, blessed be God, we know how ready He is to forgive, restore, and cleanse from all unrighteousness, the soul that makes full confession of its error and failure. This may comfort the heart of one who has been brought to the Lord after marriage. Moreover, to such an one the Spirit of God has given specific direction and blessed encouragement in the following passage: "If any brother have an unbelieving wife, and she think proper to dwell with him, let him not put her away: and if any woman have an unbelieving husband, and he think proper to dwell with her, let her not put him away (for the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband, else were your children unclean, but now are they holy) for what knowest thou, O wife, if thou shalt save thy husband? Or what knowest thou, O husband, if thou shalt save thy wife?" ( 1 Cor. 7:12-16.)

It is hardly needful to remark here, that in cases where conversion takes place after marriage, the complexion of the matter is very materially altered. There will then be no smitings of conscience, for example; and the whole thing is modified in a variety of particulars. Still there will be difficulty, trial, and sorrow, unquestionably. The only thing is, that one can far more happily bring the trial and sorrow into the Lord's presence when he has not deliberately and wilfully plunged himself thereinto; and, blessed be God, we know how ready He is to forgive, restore, and cleanse from all unrighteousness the soul that makes full confession of its error and failure. This may comfort the heart of one who has been brought to the Lord after marriage. Moreover, to such an one the Spirit of God has given specific direction and blessed encouragement in the following passage: "If any brother have an unbelieving wife, and she think proper to dwell with him, let him not put her away. And if any woman have an unbelieving husband, and he think proper to dwell with her, let her not put him away. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean; but now are they holy … For what knowest thou, O wife, if thou shalt save thy husband? or what knowest thou, O husband, if thou shalt save thy wife?" (1 Cor. 7:12-16.)

Next we have the apostle inspired to add light as to present difficulties, and this not at all a repetition of the principle for Israel, but in contrast with it. "But to the rest I say, not the Lord, If any brother have an unbelieving wife, and she consent to dwell with him, let him not leave [or put away] her; and a woman which has an unbelieving husband, and he consents to dwell with her, let her not leave [or put away] him. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified in the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified in the brother; since then your children are unclean, but now are they holy." (Vers. 12-14.) Here it was the grave question of mixed marriages, where one of the parties already united, and not the other, had been won to Christ by the gospel. In this the grace of Christianity is strikingly contra-distinguished from the rigour of Judaism. (Compare Ezra 9:10.) One of the ways in which Israel abode a holy people was in refusing to mix with the heathen in marriage. Those who thus intermarried, or took strange wives, were polluted, and their children were unclean; when they felt and judged the sin, they proved it by not only offering a ram for the trespass but putting both away. The holiness of the Christian is not only intrinsic, instead of being fleshly and external, but there is a far more gracious consideration, and a largeness, of which the law knew little or nothing. Thus, if husband or wife were a believer, he or she was not defiled by union with the unbeliever, but contrariwise the unbeliever is sanctified, and the children are holy.

In this way does the Spirit of God comfort the believer whose wife or husband, as the case might be, still remained an unbeliever; for I presume it was as true of an Israelite as of a heathen. It was of course a grievous trial to be so united. If the believer were the wife, she might be suspected and thwarted at every turn by her unbelieving husband. He would naturally be vigilant that the children should be kept from Christian truth and privileges of every kind, and would himself show his contempt for that which his wife valued, resenting above all the calm confidence of faith that counted idols nothing and confessed the Lord Jesus before men. But she is here instructed and strengthened by the apostolic injunction. If her husband consented to dwell with her, spite of that confession, she was not called to quit or put away her unbelieving husband, for he was sanctified in her, as the children were holy. What a relief this must have been to godly but scrupulous souls, who had been brought to God by the gospel, after being married to Gentiles or Jews, with children brought up in Judaism or idolatry! Were they troubled when they read in the scriptures that of old the requirement was to abandon the ill-assorted wife and the children so born? The grace of the gospel, as the apostle shows, delivers from all uncertainty as to God's mind, and pronounces the unbeliever, whether husband or wife, to be sanctified in the believing correlative, and the children holy, not profane.

Verses 12-15. "But to the rest speak I, not the Lord," etc. Having thus ratified solemnly, as God's witness, the primitive ordinance of marriage, and asserted its unalterable validity, he turns now to contemplate sonic of the practical anomalies which the operation of the gospel could not fail occasionally to produce. Of a married pair, one might be taken, and the other left. Was the man, who had received the Lord while his wife remained in unbelief, to put her away? His first impulse might be to do so, and passages of Scripture might easily occur to him, when he turned to search into the oracles of life, which seemed to point out such a course as well-pleasing in His sight who will be sanctified in His people. But such an inference could only arise from a mistaken estimate of his calling; for gospel truth makes no compulsory external change. While Christ is hidden from the natural eye, God's kingdom is within His saints. By the power of the Spirit, truth operates upon the heart and conscience, and proves by its fruits that its mission is not to regulate the social life of this world, but to call men out of it to heaven. If, then, the woman who refused her heart to Christ clave still in natural affection to her husband, let him not put her away. Still less should he avail himself of this divinely wrought difference to claim emancipation from a possibly unwelcome yoke. Her pleasure, and not his, must be consulted. If she depart, he is a married man no longer.2 Neither brother nor sister is bound in such a case. But let both man and woman, whom the Lord has singly called, remain content in the now incongruous union which the Lord has thus disturbed. Let His hand be known and waited on by those who bear His name.

The Christian wife must not, and need not, forsake her unbelieving husband who would keep her still; for both wife and husband are mutually sanctified in such connections.3 There is a remarkable force and beauty in this declaration. God, who is holy, and who calls His children to be like Himself, puts thus an especial honour on the name of Christ, by extending its hallowing influence to things which are themselves unholy. The root of this, as of all other Christian privileges, is the Lord's victory in redemption. As He had already said, "All things are yours, and ye are Christ's."4 Thy wife then, O believing husband — thine husband, O believing wife, is still thine own, and may be owned and honoured without derogation of thine high and holy calling. The children also which may issue from this heterogeneous union are holy, for the believing father or mother's sake; or rather, through the sanctifying virtue of that Name on which either parent has believed. Let such, then, as be content to dwell with Christ, be suffered to remain; to become, peradventure, themselves partakers of like precious faith. But liberty must never be infringed. They who will may go. God's calling is in peace. If present unbelief is associated with respect and natural affection, there will be peace unbroken in the household, though the Lord may have divided soul from soul. If otherwise, the cross must be accepted, and its burden borne; and no false relief sought by an arbitrary disruption, on the believer's part at least, of this standing ordinance of God.

Verse 16. "For what knowest thou, O wife?" etc. A truly solemn question, here put by the apostle for the double purpose of encouraging true faith, and of discountenancing that species of natural importunity which sometimes takes its outward form. The common tendency, to do evil that good may come, might easily find room to operate in cases of this kind. A Christian wife, or husband, might reasonably wish to detain a reluctant partner, in the hope of winning such to Christ. But this wish must not be gratified at the expense of liberty. Faith has no need of such methods to attain its end. Its first and last principle is unqualified subjection to God. Its dearest interests are committed trustingly to Him, and to His will. Nor does it ever shine so brightly as when submitting willingly, at God's command, to such privations as appear to shut out natural hope. Subjection to the mighty hand of God is the leading idea in all these admonitory provisions for the well-being of His saints.