Don’t break up with unbelievers!

1 Corinthians 7.10-17.

When I was growing up, both Mom and my pastors taught us kids we shouldn’t date non-Christians. Because, God forbid, you were gonna fall in love with them, marry them, and now you were gonna have perpetual disagreements with your pagan spouse about religion. Then we’d have kids, and she’d of course object to me wanting to raise ’em Christian. Then she’d let the Jehovah’s Witnesses talk to her some morning, join them, and now I’d have to deal with all the heretic garbage they taught her. Or pick some other worst-case scenario; just imagine your spouse turns into a massive jerk… and presume you somehow won’t turn into one too.

Done? Good. I myself didn’t need to imagine any worst-case scenarios, ’cause I grew up with a Christian mom and an atheist dad, so I knew exactly what that looked like. Dad didn’t forbid us kids from going to church with Mom and becoming Christians, but he certainly wasn’t thrilled about it. And he especially wasn’t thrilled whenever he did something immoral—usually theft—and his Christian kids would object, and spoil his evil fun.

In the Roman Empire, divorce was widespread, and people did it for any and every reason. So if a Roman’s spouse got mixed up in some new gnostic religion, and was suddenly spending all the family’s money on it, and our hypothetical Roman wanted nothing to do with it: Divorce! Easy-peasy. Property gets divided, and you go your way with your money. And your spouse goes to temple with all their money, and leaves temple with no money, but at least you still got all your money.

Some of this attitude leaked into Jesus’s culture, and as a result a number of Jews likewise divorced for any and every reason. And certain Pharisee rabbis let them. This, despite the LORD telling Malachi he hates divorce. Ml 2.16 NKJV The rabbis would simply find a convenient loophole which permitted divorce in this instance… and could always somehow find a way to permit divorce in every instance. Human depravity is clever like that.

When Jesus was questioned about the issue, he said nope, divorce was never God’s idea. Moses permitted it “because of your hard-heartedness,” Mt 19.8 KWL i.e. your closed-mindedness; people won’t accept any scenario where divorce isn’t an option. Indeed Jesus’s own students came to him afterwards and objected Mt 19.10 —and Jesus said yeah, not everyone’s gonna accept this teaching. Mt 19.11 People should go into marriage expecting it to be lifelong, but they just don’t. They want, “just in case,” loopholes. We all want loopholes.

So some of the first Christians figured religion oughta be one of those loopholes, right? If a Greco-Roman pagan became Christian, but her spouse was a massive Zeus worshiper and wanted to stick with Zeusery, what was she to do? Especially if he demanded she come to temple with him, and couldn’t figure out why she couldn’t worship Jesus and Zeus, just like she worshiped Athena and Zeus, or Demeter and Zeus, or Artemis and Hera and Hestia and Zeus. Why’s Jesus so exclusive? What, are you monotheist now?

So that’s the cultural background to today’s scripture—namely, how Paul and Sosthenes addressed the whole pagan-spouse problem.

If you’re married, stay together.

Now yes, most bibles are gonna translate ἀνήρ/anír, “man,” as “husband”; and γυνή/gyní, “woman,” as “wife.” I translated ’em literally; I figure I can trust you to remember the men and women the apostles are speaking about, are married to one another.

I should remind you that to God’s mind, all sex is marital. (I discussed that in my article on unchastity.) So if two pagans are shacking up with one another, and one of ’em becomes Christian, it does not mean the Christian is now obligated to end their relationship. I have actually heard Christian preachers claim they should—“They’re not married, and good thing! Now they can get out of any entanglements.” Nope, not true. They’re entangled. (Obviously entangled when they have kids together.) Doesn’t matter that they haven’t made vows, nor filed paperwork with the government; these two became one flesh. Ge 2.24, 1Co 6.16 That’s not something we get to put asunder simply because a pastor who doesn’t understand biblical theology, doesn’t approve.

Paul is most likely the “I” in this passage. And y’notice he starts with what “the Master,” meaning Jesus, has already taught his followers about marriage and divorce: If you’re married, stay married. If you’ve separated from one another, getting back together is totally fine (even encouraged!) but remarriage is, in most cases, technically adultery. Mt 19.9

But, because of the Corinthians’ hard-heartedness, Paul has some concessions to add in verses 12 through 17.

1 Corinthians 7.10-17 KWL

10I give a command to the married—

not me, but the Master:

To not separate a woman from her man

11(if she is separated anyway,

she must remain unmarried

or must be reconciled to her man),

and a man to not send away his woman.

12I say to the rest of you—

me, not the Master:

If a certain fellow Christian has an unbelieving woman,

and this woman is happy to live with him,

he must not send her away.

13And a woman who has an unbelieving man,

and this man is happy to live with her,

she must not send the man away.

14For the unbelieving man was made holy by the woman,

and the unbelieving woman was made holy by the fellow Christian.

Otherwise your children are therefore unclean!

—and now they’re holy.

15If the unbeliever separates,

you must separate.

The brother or sister Christian wasn’t bound to such people.

God called us to peace.

16For woman, who knows whether you will save your man?

Or man, who knows whether you will save your woman?

17Otherwise, however the Lord distributed to each person,

however the Lord called each person,

they must walk that way.

This is how I arrange things

in all the churches.

In summary: If your pagan spouse wants to stay together, stay together! If not… there’s really not a lot you can do about it. Pagans don’t abide by Jesus’s teachings (despite how much they might claim to), so we can’t expect them to share his attitudes about marriage. If they insist upon a divorce, they’re getting one. The laws are on their side… and even if you and a bunch of fascist Christians take over the government, change those laws, and ban divorce, they can still flee to another state or country and divorce you there. So don’t fight it; God called us to peace; be at peace. Let ’em go.

Besides, who knows? Staying together might ultimately convince your unbelieving spouse to come to Jesus. Might not; my dad’s still atheist. But I’ve known couples, and heard plenty of testimonies, where the opposite happened.

The Master says… but Paul says?

Various Christians are really confused by the fact Paul wrote, “I say to the rest of you—me, not the Master.” 1Co 7.12 It’s because they’re used to thinking of the bible—the entire bible—as God’s word. Every word in it is inspired by the Holy Spirit, so every word in it is like it comes directly from God’s own mouth. And yet right here, Paul says, “This isn’t Jesus, the Son of God, God incarnate; this is just me talking.”

When I was a kid and got confused by this, my Sunday school teacher explained it this way: “Yeah, this is Paul speaking, not Jesus. But Paul was inspired by the Holy Spirit to write this. So it’s really the Holy Spirit talking. Paul was just too humble to say so. It’s still the word of God.”

That’s the popular interpretation of it. Here’s my less-popular interpretation: That’s not how inspiration works. It is Paul talking. It’s the Holy Spirit making sure Paul doesn’t say anything wrong. That’s how a fallible guy like Paul can nonetheless write an infallible letter, and we can safely consider it holy scripture.

And Paul doesn’t contradict Jesus! Jesus doesn’t want people to divorce. Paul doesn’t want that either; he’s simply saying if your pagan spouse is dead set on divorcing you because you’re Christian, don’t fight it. But hey, best-case scenario: You stay together, and your spouse becomes a believer! Who knows that God didn’t put you in that very situation to win your spouse for him?