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In my years of discipling college students and 20-somethings, I’ve received a consistent question: “Can I, a Christian, date a non-Christian?” Because I’m persuaded the reason Christians should date is to identify their spouse, I believe the fundamental question being asked is “Can I marry a non-Christian?”
The Bible presents a simple answer to this question: no. However, over the years I’ve found the simple answer is simply unsatisfactory for many. Whether you’re wrestling with this question yourself or discipling a loved one through it, we need to do the more difficult work necessary to understand why the Bible instructs Christians not to marry non-Christians. Along the way, we’ll discover a more beautiful, God-glorifying vision of marriage—a vision Christians seeking marriage can long for rather than begrudge.
Unity of the Union
As with most big questions in life, the answer to why Christians shouldn’t marry non-Christians has roots in the garden. When Jesus was asked a specific question about marriage in Mark 10:2 (“Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”), he began by recalling the past. The design of marriage in the beginning informed Jesus’s answer for how one ought to approach it in the present. And the same must be true for us.
In the beginning, the pinnacle of God’s creation is humanity (male and female), the only creatures made in his image (Gen. 1:27). A page-turn later, as Eve is described as taken from Adam, she’s also brought back to him as they’re knit tighter in a “one-flesh” union (2:22–24).
We should think of this one-flesh union less like glue and more like welding. When I’m in my shop building and I want a strong bond between two pieces of wood, I’ll apply glue at the joint. Glue acts as a powerful agent holding two things together, but ultimately, the two things are still two things. In metalwork, however, welding joins two pieces together by fusion. The metals being joined are melted and begin to flow together to truly make one new thing out of the two—and it creates a stronger bond than a simple adhesive. The metals give up their individuality to become something new and different than either was before.
Similarly, marriage isn’t simply a man and a woman stuck together through a contract made by man. They’re fused together to make something new through a covenant sustained by God. But of course, the fall of Genesis 3 changes marriage—along with everything else—forever.
Purpose of the Principle
As the redemptive story of the Bible unfolds in the aftermath of the fall, marriage takes on ugly aberrations in the hands of sinful humans.
Marriage isn’t simply a man and a woman stuck together by man. They’re fused together to make something new through a covenant sustained by God.
Moving past the failings of the patriarchs and into the wilderness with the people of Israel, God gives them laws around marriage. In Exodus, God commands his people not to marry the daughters of the land he’s giving them because these women will cause his people to run away from him and after other gods (Ex. 34:11–16). This is reiterated in Deuteronomy before the people enter the land (Deut. 7:3–4), and Nehemiah emphasizes this theme again in the covenant renewal ceremony described in chapter 10 when the exiles return from Babylon.
While this command may sound odd to our 21st-century, Western ears, God’s prohibitions against his people intermarrying with the nations aren’t racist but religious. God is concerned with the purity of his people’s worship, not the purity of their bloodline. The need for this prohibition is perhaps most vividly displayed in the life of King Solomon.
Solomon: A Case Study
Solomon pleased God by asking only for wisdom to lead God’s people (1 Kings 3:10). Therefore, God gave him wealth and wisdom the world has never known (4:29–34). People flocked from all over the known world to marvel at his wisdom and rule, and they blessed the Lord because of him (10:1–10). But tragically, Solomon married many foreign women who turned him away from the Lord, and “his heart was not wholly true to the LORD his God” (11:4).
Solomon, with the wealth of God’s wisdom at his disposal, was still turned away from the true worship of God by marrying those who didn’t love God. Why do so many of us think we’ll be the exception?
It’s anecdotal, but I’ve never met a Christian whose unbelieving spouse has helped her grow deeper in her faith and closer to the Lord. Because when a Christian marries a non-Christian, she’s welded into a union with the world. The Christian isn’t just attached but fused to the ways of ungodliness with a spouse who rejects the way of the kingdom of God.
‘But That’s Israel, What About the Church?’
As redemptive history progresses past the geopolitical entity of Israel defined by the old covenant through the cross and resurrection of Jesus and into the age of the church defined by the new covenant, the principle remains the same. Marriage hasn’t changed and neither has God. Though Christ’s kingdom isn’t defined by physical boundaries, instead extending to the ends of the earth, God’s people are still a “holy nation” and called to be holy as he is holy (1 Pet. 2:9, 15).
As Paul reiterates this marital ethic in his letters to the Corinthians, he concedes that when one becomes a Christian while already married to a non-Christian, she shouldn’t seek a divorce—showing that God honors true marriages generally (1 Cor. 7:12–17). However, he tells the unmarried that if they’re seeking marriage, they should marry “only in the Lord” (v. 39). Elsewhere, speaking more broadly about the church, Paul explains we shouldn’t be “unequally yoked with unbelievers” (2 Cor. 6:14) because it pollutes our worship by fundamentally rejecting our new nature in Christ.
Chief End of Marriage
Why do you desire to be married? Perhaps it’s companionship, or maybe you’re looking for a “good person” with whom you can settle down and start a family. These aren’t bad desires, but we must constantly seek to bring our desires under the revealed will of God and live in accordance with his purposes. We must ask, What’s the purpose of marriage?
God is concerned with the purity of his people’s worship, not the purity of their bloodline.
When a ship lifts its sails, it’ll be carried off with the wind, whether that’s the intention or not. It’s how the vessel is designed. And when an unbelieving man and woman commit to lifelong marriage, remain faithful to each other, and raise a family, they’ll be carried off with the wind. God loves the institution of marriage, and non-Christians can have good marriages and do much good in their unions. However, Christians aren’t only interested in sailing off with the wind but in bringing delight to the Creator of the ship.
Marriage, like the Christian life generally, is for the ultimate purpose of God’s glory, and when we live our lives for this purpose we find joy awaits. Paul famously tells us that as a husband continually dies to himself and a wife lovingly submits to her husband’s cruciform leadership, the gospel of Jesus Christ is displayed to the world (Eph. 5:21–33). In marriage, husbands and wives are meant to flourish as living demonstrations of Jesus’s love. How can we expect our marriages to fully reflect this profound mystery if we’re purposefully entering this covenant with someone who doesn’t believe Jesus is Lord?
Let’s keep the purpose of the union front and center. It’s the glory and fame of God and the Spirit-empowered desire to further his gospel that informs how we approach marriage. So we unite ourselves in marriage to someone who will help us run the race with endurance (Heb. 12:2), worship God as we ought, and proclaim his gospel to the world—for his glory and our good.