we get a steady stream of really tough pastoral questions for pastor john in our inbox thank you
for sending them in to us and thank you for your patience as we try to work through as many of them
as possible here's one of those questions it's from a listener named eric who's a pastor hello
pastor john i'm a pastor wondering what should be a corrective course of action when a christian
knowingly marries an unbeliever the believer was forewarned and went ahead with the union
anyway now the marriage has been formalized how should we the church now respond to answer this
let's clarify how many layers of sinfulness there are when a professing believer rejects the counsel
of the church elders and marries an unbeliever i'll just mention three layers there are others
but this will help us feel the seriousness of it first the professing believer is defying and
rebelling against an explicit command of the new testament of god paul says in first 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 whomever she wishes only in the lord only in the lord means only to
a person who is in the lord a believer a follower of jesus so if this teaching is made
clear to the believer and the believer rejects obedience to this command she or he
is acting in open defiance of the teaching of the apostles and of god second probably even
more important because it gets to the heart of the matter a believer who chooses to marry
an unbeliever shows how deeply compromised the believers love for christ is jesus said unless
you love me more than you love your closest human loved one you're not worthy of me matthew 10 37
that's an amazing claim that jesus lays on our hearts but if the believer enjoys the
presence and the friendship and the intimacy of a christ-rejecting person boyfriend girlfriend
more than the presence and the fellowship of christ their very faith and love for jesus is
in question by jesus not me by jesus that's the deepest issue how can the heart of a believer
embrace jesus as its supreme treasure and satisfaction and reject the words of jesus
in order to be in the arms of one who has no faith and no true affection for the believer's
most treasured possession inconceivable to me i've always found that incomprehensible something is
deeply deeply wrong with the heart's affection for christ it's the second layer of sinfulness
and the third if faithful leaders in the church have lovingly explained god's will based on god's
word to the believer and have told the believer not to move forward with this illicit marriage
out of obedience to christ then the marriage is not only rebellion against the explicit biblical
command and not only a revelation of an idolater's heart that puts a human above christ in the
affections but also a spurning of the authority of the elders which god gave to protect the sheep
from sin now that's the situation and i start there so that the rest of what i have to say will
sound appropriately serious my answer is that the elders plead they pray they teach and then if all
of that is rejected you remove the believer from membership in the church for moving ahead with
the marriage the aim of this removal is to sober the disobedient believer wake them up and win them
to a repentant and obedient heart and restoration many people do not take the bible seriously
they are baffled and angry by churches who take the bible as seriously as i'm saying many
professing christians today would regard such excommunication as more hurtful than helpful
they'd call it intolerant they'd even call it hateful but that's because they elevate their
own wisdom above god's wisdom they used the same reasoning for why we should not remove a person
from membership that the disobedient person used to marry the unbeliever in the first place namely
well maybe the unbeliever will be one to christ in this marriage maybe if you keep them as members or
keep one of them as members the other will be one and the parents oh my of the excommunicated person
or friends if they're not seriously biblical will argue that you won't be able to win them to christ
by putting them out of the church they're going to get angry the unbeliever will call you intolerant
and hateful it won't be redemptive it will be alienating that's what they're going to say
that's what elders have to be prepared to hear that's emphatically not what the bible teaches
in 2 thessalonians 3 14 and 15 and in first corinthians 5 4 and 5 paul holds out the
possibility and the desire that by means of such holy ostracism people will in fact be
saved and restored in fact i have seen church discipline have that very effect in my ministry
church leaders have to be prepared to be vilified by people who think they know better
than the apostles how to love people one other question to answer is is this that's
very important what does repentance and restoration look like in such a situation
it does not mean that the marriage is nullified it really is a marriage a marriage that should not
have been entered into but now having been entered into should not be broken it should be sanctified
and paul is just as clear about the fact that a believer should not divorce an
unbeliever first corinthians 7 12 as he is that they shouldn't marry one so repentance of sin in
marrying an unbeliever does not include divorcing the unbeliever what it includes is a heart change
not a marriage change there should be an authentic remorse and regret for disobedience
to first corinthians 7 39 there should be an acknowledgement and repentance that the heart
was not right in putting man above christ in the affections there should be an apology and sorrow
for spurning the counsel of god's leaders in the church and all of these changes are possible
while the marriage stays intact indeed i would say in maybe the last thing i would say is that
a man or a woman who stays in such a marriage can say to an unbelieving spouse these words
my reawakened love for jesus and my treasuring christ above you
as my lord and savior and my desire to be a part of christ's people again
and my regret over my sin in marrying an unbeliever does not mean i stop loving you
or that i want to leave you we have a covenant till death do us part i intend to keep it
in fact my restored faith means that i now know how to love you better i would like to show it
i hope you will have me whether the unbelieving spouse will receive that
we don't know but it is possible and that's the goal of the discipline that's our prayer
thank you for walking us through this pastorally sensitive scenario pastor john and thank you for
listening if you want new episodes of this podcast delivered to you subscribe to us pastor john and
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and to find other episodes in our archive or to submit a great pastoral question to us like this
one from eric do that online at desiringguy.org forward slash ask pastor john we're going to stay
on this theme of non-christians because next time we have two questions in the inbox about
what happens to non-christians who participate in the lord's supper a great question i'm your host
tony reinke we will see you on monday for that with pastor john in studio we'll see you then