“Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers” (2 Cor. 6:14-18).
This is instruction for the guidance and encouragement of believers, and is applicable to all their voluntary associations. It should lead a Christian to ask the question, Does God ask me to choose my company? He does, and in doing so teaches us to take into account our relationship with Him. If a Christian thinks of marriage, this scripture instructs him to choose one who is the Lord’s, so that they can have fellowship in His things, and be of one mind to serve Him.
If he is a person seeking to walk with the Lord, his conversation will turn to spiritual things, and he will soon discover whether this is agreeable to the one he is keeping company with. He ought to seek by prayer, discernment from the Lord, so that he might make no mistake. It is easy to let our natural affection or liking for a person blind us in such a matter.
A Christian knowingly marrying an unbeliever, cannot count on the Lord’s blessing on their union. Often Christians disobey the Lord in the fond hope that the person they allow their affections to run out to, will be converted; but it often turns out a lifelong hindrance to their true happiness, and deep sorrow and chastening follow such a step. How often we have heard the sad confession, “I have myself to blame.”
“Can two walk together except they be agreed?” (Amos 3:3), is another important question, and suggests that it is not every Christian that is suitable for a life companion. 1 Corinthians 7:39, says of a widow, but it applies to all Christians who have thoughts of marriage, “She is at liberty to be married to whom she will; only in the Lord.”
“In the Lord” means with the Lord’s approval.
“In Christ” would indicate our standing before God as Christians.
“In the Lord” supposes two that have the Lord’s interests before them, are owning His authority over them, and seeking to have the stamp of His approval on their ways. They own that the Lord has the first claim on each of “His own”; they “are bought with a price,” and desire to glorify God in their bodies (1 Cor. 6:19-20).
It is the Lord who has instituted all our relationships, and told us how to walk in them (Eph. 5:22-6:9; Col. 3:18-4:1; 1 Peter 3:1-9). A child is to be subject to his parents, but the Christian child must own the Lord’s claims to be higher than his parent’s; so with the husband and wife, the Lord’s claims come first. A husband who demands that his wife obey him, when it is against her conscience before God, is assuming an authority over her that God has not given him.
How important it is therefore for Christians to make sure of agreement in divine things before entering into a life-engagement.
Obedience to God and love to Him should control our natural affections.
If the Lord has the chief place in our hearts, it will be so (Luke 14:26-27,33). If we do not give Him the chief place, we will find to our sorrow, sooner or later, what a loss has been ours.
In days like the present, of trial and division in the church of God, if a sister is of a gentle, leaning disposition, and knows the truth of being gathered to the name of the Lord, while her husband does not, and is not willing or able to learn it, she is made unhappy by going into meetings that are not on scriptural ground, in her desire to please or even win her husband; or if she holds to what she knows is the truth, then there is a divided house, and both suffer through not considering this question before they were engaged. If there are children, how are they to be taught and guided aright, when the parents are divided and going different ways?
The Lord would have us consider this beforehand. Let those thinking of marriage seriously wait upon and ask the Lord what He would have them do, and they will put the Lord’s honor first, and seek to obey His word. They will seek His interests first, through grace.
If two fail to agree before marriage as to God’s path for His people, can they walk together, agreed to glorify the Lord as heirs together of the grace of life? (1 Peter 3:7) Can they give up the truth and not suffer spiritual loss? If they put natural affection first, is it not plain that it is not the Lord’s glory, but rather their own likings that they consider?
It is quite true that sometimes those who started right at the beginning, have gone wrong. This may have been through not considering together everything that comes to them, and their hearts have consequently been alienated from each other. It is needful to begin right with each other and the Lord, and then through grace to go on together with Him, “as heirs together of the grace of life” (1 Peter 3:7). Natural affection is not enough to carry us through. We need to have the Lord ever before us.