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