The following post was first an email to a young church planter seeking counsel. He is planting a church in a rough area. Not a few of those who are getting converted have been living together, sometimes with children, sometimes for years, without getting married. His question, then, is what should be said to these couples where one of the pair gets converted, and the other, so far, does not. Should the advice be to get married? Or is that encouraging people to be unequally yoked?
The question you’re facing is really about what marriage is, according to the Bible. At various times, I’ve faced the same questions you are now facing. The following are some guidelines. Some of these depend directly on what the Bible says, and some belong in the domain of prudential wisdom that is itself shaped by the Bible.
More than sexual union
(1) In the Bible, marriage is more than sexual union between a man and a woman, but it is not less. It also includes public commitment to each other in some public, legal, and culturally acknowledged way that sets this pair apart as husband and wife. In the nomadic culture of Abraham’s day, a part of the ceremony was for the groom to take his bride ‘into his mother’s tent’ (so Isaac) — that was the equivalent of the wedding night. Under the law of Moses, if A and B sleep together, and if it is clearly not rape, the law does not say, ‘Oh, well, I guess that makes them married’. No, the dowry must still be paid (that was part of the public declaration of marriage under that culture), the two families are involved, etc. So today, if A and B have been living together in sexual intimacy for some time, but without benefit of public attestation (whether in a church or before, say, a justice of the peace), they are not really ‘married’ in the full sense of that term (the sexual union is there, but not the public mutual commitment according to the laws of our day); but equally, if A and B take vows of marriage and then don’t sleep together, this is not fully ‘marriage’ either.
