Be ye not unequally yoked:

"Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath
righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with
darkness? And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that
believeth with an infidel? And what agreement hath the temple of God with
idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them,
and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. Wherefore
come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the
unclean thing; and I will receive you". 2 Corinthians 6:14-17, KJV.

“Neither shalt thou make marriages with them; thy daughter thou shalt not give unto
his son, nor his daughter shalt thou take unto thy son. For they will turn away thy son
from following Me, that they may serve other gods: so will the anger of the LORD be
kindled against you, and destroy thee suddenly.” Deuteronomy 7:3-4, KJV.

Unmarried Christians beginning to get romantically involved with a non-Christian

often say, “If it feels so right. How can it be wrong?” Some temptations common to
many singles are shaped in such a way that the Christian knows they’re wrong. But the
temptation to get romantically involved with a non-Christian tends to be framed
differently. People tend not to hide it, but instead attempt to justify it—first to
themselves and then to other Christians who are trying to warn them of the path
they’re taking. If it feels right, then they go back to look at the Bible to try
to prove that it’s right.

Many blithely optimistic single Christian men and women who are convinced that
their passion and commitment will overcome all obstacles are desperately trying to
find a loophole that would allow them to marry someone who does not share their
faith, even the obstacle of bald disobedience to God's Word. They willfully and
conveniently skip all the Bible passages that urge Christians only to “marry in the
Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:39, KJV) and “not to be unequally yoked with unbelievers” (2
Corinthians 6:14, KJV) and the Old Testament proscriptions against marrying the
foreigner, a worshiper of a god other than the God of Israel (Deuteronomy 7:3-4,
KJV). You can find those passages in abundance, but when someone has already
allowed his or her heart to become engaged with a person outside the faith, I find that
the Bible has already been devalued as the non-negotiable rule of faith and practice.
Instead, variants of the serpent's question to Eve—“Did God really say?” are floated,
as if somehow this case might be eligible for an exemption, considering how much
they love each other, how the unbeliever "supports and understands" the Christian's
faith, how they are "soul-mates" despite the absence of a shared soul-faith. They
justify their disobedience to God's Word by various methods, because in their mind,
their feelings are much more important to them than God's Word. But the fact is, it
won't work, not in the long run. Marriage is hard enough when you have two
believers who are completely in harmony spiritually. But when a marriage is between
a believer and an unbeliever, it will never work unless the believer in Christ decides to
compromise his/her faith in Christ to keep the 'peace' at home. In so doing, the
believer is putting the unbelieving spouse above Christ! So now instead of Christ
sitting on the throne of your heart, it is the unbelieving spouse sitting there, by
usurping God’s place in your life.

The “follow your heart” creed certainly isn’t found in the Bible. But God gives us
completely different directions when it comes to our heart and emotions. The Word
of God warns us again and again that the human heart is wicked and those who
follow the desires of their heart are fools. “The heart is deceitful above all things, and
desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9, KJV). "But those things which
proceed out of the mouth come forth from the heart; and they defile the man. For out
of the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false
witness, blasphemies: These are the things which defile a man:" Matthew 15:18-20,
KJV. “He that trusteth in his own heart is a fool:” Proverbs 28:26a, KJV. Our own
hearts deceive us and try to lead us away from God due to our inherent sin nature.
God speaks to us and reveals things in His Word through the logical processes of our
mind but emotions are devoid of logic and Satan often uses emotions as a back door
to sneak into a person's life, deceive them and establish his stronghold.

In an Unequal marriages (and by unequal marriage I mean a marriage between

believer and unbeliever as well as those marriages that include genuine, warm
Christians who want to marry an in-name-only Christian, or someone very, very far
behind them in Christian experience and growth), most often, in order to be more in
sync with the unbelieving spouse, the Christian will have to push Christ to the
margins of his or her life. This may involve out rightly rejecting Christ or it may
involve some sort of an unholy compromise in faith issues such as devotional life,
hospitality to believers, missionary support, tithing, raising children in the faith,
fellowship with other believers—those things will have to be minimized or avoided in
order to preserve peace in the home.
Does this sound like the kind of marriage you want? One that strangles your growth
in Christ or strangles your growth as a couple, or does both? Think back to that off-
cited passage in 2 Corinthians 6:14, KJV about being “unequally yoked.” Most of us
no longer live in an agrarian culture, but try to visualize what would happen if a
farmer yoked together, say, an ox and a donkey. The heavy wooden yoke, designed to
harness the strength of the team, would be askew, as the animals are of different
heights, weights, walk at different speeds and with different gaits. The yoke, instead of
harnessing the power of the team to complete the task, would rub and chafe BOTH
animals, since the load would be distributed unequally. An unequal marriage is not just
unwise for the Christian but is also spiritually dangerous for the person and his
children.
Spiritually vibrant young people throw their lives away by marrying unbelievers. When
you ask why they are doing this, you hear rationalizations, such as: “I love him/her,
and love is what matters the most.” “He/she promises to go to church with me and
the children.” “If I break up with him/her, he/she won’t have anyone to lead
him/her to Christ. Besides, I’m sure that he/she’s going to become a Christian.” “I’ve
prayed about it and feel a peace that this is God’s Will.”
It is never God’s Will for a Christian to marry a non-Christian! There are No
exceptions!! You should no more pray about marrying a non-Christian than you
should pray about whether it is God’s Will for you to commit adultery or theft or
murder. God has made it abundantly plain that it is sin for His children to marry an
unbeliever. It is never God’s Will for you to sin! For a believer to marry an unbeliever
is to sin grievously against God and God’s people because along with the unbeliever
also come false gods into a Christian home or a Christian community and a Church;
false gods and a different faith that tries to corrupt the Gospel of Christ. Besides
when a believer marries an unbeliever, he/she becomes a stumbling stone of
temptation for other believers. Other believers may be tempted to follow the same
path that leads people away from God.
The man who marries outside the faith is, in effect, thumbing his nose at God and
God’s covenant people. We never sin in private. Our actions are interwoven with the
fabric of society. If we defile our part of the fabric, the whole fabric is affected.
Malachi states that God’s people are one (Malachi 2:10, KJV). To sin against God by
marrying an unbeliever is to sin against our brothers and sisters in God’s family. It’s as
if we’re all in the same boat and you think that you have a right to bore a hole in your
part of the boat. “What’s it matter to you how I live in my part of the boat?” you ask.
It matters a great deal, of course! If a believer marries an unbeliever and there are no
immediate consequences then lonely believers in the church will think, “He/she
seems to be happy, but I’m still lonely. No Christian guys/girls are available. Maybe
I’ll date some non-Christians like he/she did.” As the Scripture warns: "A little leaven
leaveneth the whole lump". Galatians 5:9, KJV.

If you know Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord, you are not your own. You have been
bought with the Blood of Christ. You are only free to marry as the Lord directs in His
Word. He does not leave room for doubt. His Will is always that you marry a believer,
not an unbeliever. A believer cannot expect God to bless them after disobeying God's
Word. You may think that marrying an unbeliever is unwise, or perhaps a minor sin.
But God calls it an abomination. To underscore how grievous this sin is to the Lord,
I want to take you on a quick tour through the Biblical witness against it. The
principle runs throughout the Bible: God wants His people to be separate from
unbelievers in life’s important relationships. Throughout history Satan has used
marriage to unbelievers to turn the Lord’s people from devotion to Him. Esau
married two unbelieving wives. It is emphasized repeatedly (Genesis 26:34-35; 27:46;
28:8, KJV) that these women brought grief to Isaac and Rebekah. The Israelites
married people from other nations and faced God's wrath. If Israel had continued to
intermarry with the Canaanites, it would have sabotaged God’s plan to make a great
nation out of Abraham’s descendants and to bless all nations through them. So God
sovereignly had Joseph sold into slavery in Egypt, resulting in the whole family of
Jacob moving there, where they eventually became slaves for 400 years. This drastic
treatment solidified the people as a separate nation and prevented them from
intermarriage with the heathen. Later, through Moses, God warned the people not to
intermarry with the people of the land (Exodus 34:12-16, KJV; Deuteronomy 7:1-5,
KJV). One of the most formidable enemies that Moses had to face was Balaam, who
counseled Balak, king of Moab, against Israel. God prevented Balaam from cursing
Israel. But Balaam counseled Balak with an insidious plan: Corrupt the people whom
you cannot curse and they will willingly come under a curse themselves. Get them to
marry your Moabite women. The plan inflicted much damage, until Phinehas took
bold action to stop the plague on Israel (Numbers 25:1-9, KJV). "Behold, these
caused the children of Israel, through the counsel of Balaam, to commit trespass
against the LORD in the matter of Peor, and there was a plague among the
congregation of the LORD. " Numbers 31:16, KJV. Samson fell in love with Delilah
who betrayed him to the Philistines (Judges 16, KJV). Solomon’s idolatrous foreign
wives turned his heart away from the Lord (1 Kings 11:1-8, KJV). The wicked Jezebel,
a foreign idolater, established Baal worship during the reign of her weak Jewish
husband, Ahab (1 Kings 16:29-22:40, KJV). Jehoshaphat, who was otherwise a godly
king, nearly ruined the nation by joining his son in marriage to Athaliah, daughter of
Ahab and Jezebel (1 Chronicles 18:1, KJV). The terrible effects of this sin did not
come to the surface during Jehoshaphat’s lifetime. His son, Jehoram, who married
Athaliah, slaughtered all of his brothers and turned the nation to idolatry. God struck
him with disease and he died after eight years in office. His son Ahaziah became king
and lasted one year before being murdered. Then the wicked Athaliah made her
move. She slaughtered all her own grandsons (except one, who was hidden) and ruled
in wickedness for six years. The Davidic line, from which Christ would be born, came
within a hair’s breadth, humanly speaking, of being annihilated because of
Jehoshaphat’s sin of marrying his son to an unbelieving woman (1 Chronicles 17:1-
23:15, KJV)! So you see, it’s no small matter to marry an unbeliever. You are in danger
of losing your faith in Christ!
The New Testament mandate is equally clear: “Be ye not unequally yoked with
unbelievers;" Considering that God warned His people throughout the Old
Testament not to marry unbelievers, to say that today God is Ok with Christians
marrying non-Christians is calling God a liar. If God changes His Own Word then He
is a liar. But God’s Word is eternal and never changes with people, time or
circumstances. If people say that God’s Word changes then either they are genuinely
deceived or they are liars. People today justify their own disobedience to God by
twisting His Word to suit their own purposes as Satan whispers in their ears as he
whispered into Eve's: " Yea, hath God said...". Satan makes people to doubt God’s
Word. There is a principle that runs throughout the Bible: God wants His people to
be set apart unto Him. This especially applies to the major life decision of whom you
marry. It never is His Will for His people to join in marriage to unbelievers. Thus for
a believer to marry an unbeliever is to sin grievously against the God Who made His
people, who calls them to be holy. Satan always tempts you with the promise of
immediate gratification and the lie that God really doesn’t love you or He wouldn’t
keep you from all this worldly pleasure. Here’s how this works: You know that God
doesn’t want you to marry an unbeliever, but then either by being attracted to an
unbeliever or tired of waiting on God to provide you with a spouse, you decide to go
out with an unbelieving person. You hesitate at first, but then rationalize, “What can
one date hurt? Besides, there are no good Christians I can go out with". You may be
surprised that the unbeliever is a decent, sensible person. So you go out again and
again despite your conscience bothering you. Your feelings for the unbeliever begins
to grow stronger and you realize you are in love and you start a relationship with the
unbeliever and decide to marry thinking that he/she is going to become a Christian
and it will all work out. You plan to witness to him/her, but the opportunity just
doesn’t come up and even if it comes up the unbeliever resists the Truth. Then
probably for a couple of years it will be good. You believe your own thing and the
unbeliever follows his/her own faith and for a while religion doesn't seems to matter.
Then comes trials and hardships of life and you being a believer turn to Jesus Christ
but the unbeliever turns to his/her own gods, gods that you never knew. Because
when hardship hits a person's life he/she always go back to their roots. If you are a
true Christian, you will turn to your Christian roots and an unbeliever will return to
their own pagan roots of worshiping false gods who are in fact demons. The next
thing you know, your home is full of idols and false doctrines. And your own home
will turn into a battle field, for a war wages for the control of your home and all hell
breaks loose because the devil and his forces are trying to take over your home and
your life. Because light and darkness, Christ and Belial cannot exist together, a
contention for the territory begins. A war wages between the forces of God and the
forces of the devil, a war between Christ and His Truth and false gods their lies. The
devil will fight you tooth and nail to make you give up. The devil will target you
through the unbeliever who will pressurize you or emotionally manipulate you to
worship false gods. And there is a truce only when you- the believer is willing to
compromise on your faith and go the unbeliever's way. If you refuse to compromise,
then the battle wages on. Any relationship that takes you away from Christ is not a
good relationship. Consider this, you have been made clean by the Blood of Jesus
Christ while the unbeliever is still unclean. You are born again of the Spirit, spiritually
alive by the indwelling of the Holy Spirit within you while the unbeliever is spiritually
dead. Your heart is filled with the Light of Christ while the unbeliever’s heart is filled
with darkness. Christ sits on the throne of your heart where as Satan sits on the
throne of the unbeliever’s heart. You are the temple of the Living God where as the
unbeliever is a temple of idols/devils. You are holy ground because God dwells in you
while the unbeliever is unholy and unclean ground. You know the Truth while the
unbeliever is still deceived and spiritually blind. Believers are the seed of Jesus Christ
while the unbeliever is the seed of Satan. While believers are from the Vine of Christ,
the unbeliever is from the vine of Sodom. While you as a believer live for Christ, the
unbelieving spouse lives for themselves, to fulfill their own selfish desires. While you
are sober with God’s Truth, the unbeliever is intoxicated with the false doctrines of
devils. Believers have eternal life with Jesus Christ while unbelievers are destined to
Hell. While you believe that Jesus is the only Saviour, the unbeliever rejects Jesus
Christ as God and may even hate Him? So you tell me, what compatibility is there
between a believer and an unbeliever?! We are from different lineages and have
different eternal destinies. How can you bear to live with a person who has chosen
Hell over Jesus Christ?! How can you bear to live with a person who rejects and
denies your Lord, your Creator, your Saviour?! Unbelievers may appear very soft and
gentle but they have a very hard heart towards God. We blur the lines but God
establishes a clear separation between believers and unbelievers. God even said not to
mix different kinds of cattle, seeds and even garments: “Thou shalt not let thy cattle
gender with a diverse kind: thou shalt not sow thy field with mingled seed: neither
shall a garment mingled of linen and woollen come upon thee.” Leviticus 19:19, KJV.
So how much more would He say about mingling unbelievers with believers?! You
may say that by marrying an unbeliever, you will lead the person to Christ, but the fact
is when you do not have control over another person’s choices and free will. Almost
always in marriages between believers and unbelievers, the believer always gets
corrupted by the doctrines of the unbeliever rather than the unbeliever coming to
Christ. God never blesses things that are mingled against His commands.

At the start of this subtle drift away from God was your rejection of God’s love, as
expressed in His commandment for your holiness. As a Christian, you need to make
an up-front surrender of your life to God, trusting that He loves you and knows what
is best for you. That includes His commandment for you not to marry an unbeliever.
If you don’t want to go to the altar with an unbeliever, don’t accept that first
date. Getting romantically involved is likely to happen if you spend a great deal of
time with someone of the opposite gender. If you don’t want to get romantically
involved with an unbeliever then don’t spend hours one-on-one. If you can’t marry an
unbeliever without a supernatural conversion wrought by the Holy Spirit in their
heart, over which you have no control, then it would be both extremely foolish and
very unkind to consider such a marriage in the first place.

The moment you marry an unbeliever, you are in fact selling out Christ and His Word
for your life with the unbeliever. Worse yet, if you decide to get married in the
customs and traditions of the unbeliever to please him/her, every pagan custom you
do is a way of you selling your soul to the devil in exchange for a happy marriage with
the unbeliever at the cost of Jesus Christ. "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall
gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?" Mark 8:36, KJV.

You may be thinking, “I would never marry a pagan idolater. Even though he/she
isn’t especially religious, my fiancé/fiancéé is a decent person. He/she doesn’t set up
statutes and bow down before them!” But if the unbeliever doesn’t follow the Lord
Jesus Christ, then he/she by default follows other gods. It may be the god of self or
money or status. But he/she is not following the Living and True God. By joining
yourself to him/her in marriage, you are linking yourself and God’s people by
marriage covenant to an idolater, no matter how nice a guy/girl he/she may be.

You cannot rebel against God in an area as important as this and then go on about
life among God’s people as if nothing happened, expecting God to ignore it. What
does commitment to God mean if it does not affect life’s most significant human
relationship? Apart from your relationship to Jesus Christ, nothing else matters as
much as your choice of a marriage partner. If you go to church and sing, “Oh, how I
love Jesus,” but go out the door and marry an unbeliever, it tells others your
commitment to Christ doesn’t make a bit of difference as to how you live. You’ve
greatly damaged your witness for Christ to your family and friends. It means that you
were never really a true believer in Christ; you were just as fair weather Christian who
skipped ship for your convenience.

Marrying an unbeliever is spiritual quicksand. Don’t linger and think about how good
the warm mud feels between your toes! Before you know it, it will suck you right into
the darkness of Hell and destruction. This kind of relationships entangles you to the
sinful world and entangles you to the devil and brings you under bondage. Christ has
set you free and given you liberty. Don't lose this liberty by willfully entangling
yourself with an unbeliever. Entangling with an unbeliever means you are entangling
yourself to their gods too. “Stand fast therefore in the liberty wherewith Christ hath
made us free, and be not entangled again with the yoke of bondage.” Galatians 5:1,
KJV. It is a matter of obedience to God not to pursue a relationship with a non-
believer. No matter how it feels, to call right that which God calls wrong is calling
God a liar. And entering a marriage relationship with an unbeliever is to willingly enter
the yoke of bondage under Satan.

Your decision to marry an unbeliever will reverberate for many generations to come
and have an effect on your children’s eternal destiny. It’s the principle of sowing and
reaping. If you sow corn, you don’t reap peaches. If you marry an unbeliever,
generally, you won’t have children who are committed to the Lord. They will see your
half-hearted commitment and hypocrisy, seen in your disobedience in marrying an
unbeliever. They will also see the pleasure-oriented, materialistic lifestyle of the
unbelieving parent. They will conclude, “Why commit myself fully to the Lord?” No
good parent would be so apathetic as to let their children slip into Hell.

Thank God, there are exceptions, especially when the believing parent repents. But no
one should disobey God and hope for their case to be the exception! If the believing
partner thinks that he (or she) can disobey God and then “bring his offering” to take
care of things, Malachi says, “Think twice!” Such offerings will be of no value. God
looks for obedience, the sacrifice of your heart and not earthly sacrifices. Your
children will suffer for your disobedience.

The way a Christian lives is different from the rest of the world. A Christian goes
through life depending on God for everything. He/she prays to God and waits for
God rather than getting things for themselves. It’s the same for finding a spouse.
Trust in God to provide according to His Will. And if it feels like God is taking a long
time, then rather than compromising and choosing to get things done according to
the worldly ways, settle in your heart that you are not going to disobey God and throw
away the liberty in Christ no matter what. That even when God does not give you a
spouse, you will trust and obey God rather than compromise by marrying an
unbeliever. God will honor you for that for it is in such circumstances that our faith
is tested as genuine or fake, whether you will obey God and His Commands and
refuse to marry an unbeliever or will you fall away from your faith under pressure and
decide to marry an unbeliever. Such testing circumstances are what separate the true,
strong believers from the weak and false ones. Christian life is difficult and it will cost
you something, may be your friends, family, a comfortable life, a successful life, a
family life, etc. Whatever it is that we lose in this life, we will gain that much more in
Christ.

The New Testament gives a clearer revelation of marriage: it’s a partnership that
pictures the redeeming love of Christ for His church. The whole point of marriage is
to picture the Gospel (Ephesians 5:21–33, KJV; Revelation 21:9–27, KJV). Beyond
that, it pictures the very relationship between the Father and the Son (1 Corinthians
11:3, KJV). To marry a non-believer is like two artists trying to paint two different
pictures on the same canvas. You’re trying to paint a picture of Jesus and the church,
but your spouse is trying to paint something entirely different. Or, to take a musical
analogy, it would be a partnership where one person is trying to sing one song, and
the other is trying to sing an entirely different one. You sing: “I want this song to be
about Jesus,” while your spouse sings, “It’s just you and me.” There can be no
ultimate harmony. God created marriage to help us understand the spiritual
relationship believers have with their Lord Jesus Christ. To marry an unbeliever would
defeat this purpose. What’s the purpose of the life of a believer? Jesus tells us in John
17:3, KJV, “And this is life eternal, that they might know Thee the only True God,
and Jesus Christ, Whom Thou hast sent”. The believer lives to know—and in
knowing, to love, honor, worship, and follow—God through His Son Jesus Christ.
It’s far better to live without a spouse and within the company of the believers, than
with someone who is living for a life that’s not eternal. If that’s the price you will have
to pay to be with Jesus, then so be it.

Marriage is difficult enough when both partners are committed to Christ and God’s
Word. You are only heading for a life of pain if you marry an unbeliever who is living
for self. The one thing you need to look for when you are choosing a spouse is not
their charm or beauty and not even their wealth. See if they have the love and fear of
the Living God in them. If you know a Christian who is dating an unbeliever, share
this message with her or him. If you care about this person, about the Lord, and
about His people, you can’t remain silent! Parents, impress on your children the
importance of marrying only a person who loves and follows Jesus Christ. Pray for
your children’s future mates, that they would be godly young people. Don’t fall for
Satan’s age-old con game. Too much is at stake!