BEARING AN UNEQUAL YOKE

30. How should a husband and a wife render the marriage due, and what did Paul by way of concession say to married believers in this regard?

³⁰ Where the husband faithfully and loyally loves his wife in a Christian way and his wife, in turn, displays deep respect for her husband, it produces peace, harmony and happiness in the home. In a dignified, honorable, wholesome way they will lovingly render to each other the marriage due, as being one flesh. “Let the husband render to his wife her due; but let the wife also do likewise to her husband. The wife does not exercise authority over her own body, but her husband does; likewise, also, the husband does not exercise authority over his own body, but his wife does. Do not be depriving each other of it [the due], except by mutual consent for an appointed time, that you may devote time to prayer and may come together again, that Satan may not keep tempting you for your lack of self-regulation. However, I say this by way of concession, not in the way of an order.” (1 Cor. 7:3-6) Paul said that by way of concession because fornication was prevalent in that pagan world.

31. Instead of separating, what should married Christians strive to do, but during any agreed-to living apart how should each one conduct individual living?

³¹ Dedicated, baptized married couples should seriously strive to stick together, with one heart, one mind and one objective. “To the married people I give instructions,” continues Paul, “yet not I but the Lord, that a wife should not depart from her husband; but if she should actually depart, let her remain single or else make up again with her husband; and a husband should not leave his wife.” The departing wife, though she dwells apart, must remember this divine law: “A wife is bound during all the time her husband is alive. But if her husband should fall asleep in death, she is free to be married to whom she wants, only in the Lord.” (1 Cor. 7:10, 11, 39) Bound by her husband’s law, she will not feel free to carry on with the opposite sex as an unmarried woman might or does, thus endangering her moral cleanness. If her better judgment prevails, she will seek reasons and ways to make peace with her living husband and get back to him. She will be careful not to conduct herself in such a loose or immoral way during her separateness from him that he would be filled with disgust and not be eager, yes, yearning, to have her back again, with no grounds for reproaching her or being suspicious of her. The like rule applies, in turn, to the husband who leaves his wife without legal divorce.

32. What higher thing should separated Christian couples remember that they represent, and hence from what course should they refrain?

³² In this respect, both separated mates should remember that they represent something higher, grander and more important than their marriage union. This thing is the Christian congregation with which they are associated and in which they are obligated to be active ministers of God’s Word. Hence they ought to shrink back aghast from any course that would furnish basis for the mud of reproach and reviling to be slung at God’s honorable organization.

33, 34. (a) Where a couple are unequally yoked religiously, must the believer leave the unbeliever? (b) What must the believer remember as to the effect of his accepting the truth and dedicating himself?

³³ However, what about where a couple are in an unequal yoke religiously, where one is a dedicated, baptized believer, an ordained minister of Jehovah God, and the other is an unbeliever toward the New World society of Jehovah’s witnesses because of being an atheist or holding some other religious profession? Such religious inequality could ordinarily be expected to produce discord.

³⁴ In the pursuit of peace, must the believer leave the unbeliever? Not necessarily. Neither is the believer automatically free to abandon the unbeliever. We must keep in mind that when one adopts the truth and becomes a believer by dedicating oneself to God and getting baptized, this does not annul or break the previous marriage bond. One’s believing and adopting the Kingdom truth may cause a division in the home, just as Jesus Christ foretold in Matthew 10:34-36. But that does not mean breaking up the marriage. Jesus is no marriage wrecker. The wise and optimistic way to handle an unequal yoke is set out for the believer by Paul:

35. What wise and optimistic way does Paul set out for handling the case of an unequal yoke?

³⁵ “To the others [other married people] I say, yes, I, not the Lord: If any brother has an unbelieving wife, and yet she is agreeable to dwelling with him, let him not leave her; and a woman who has an unbelieving husband, and yet he is agreeable to dwelling with her, let her not leave her husband. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified in relation to his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified in relation to the brother; otherwise, your children would really be unclean, but now they are holy. But if the unbelieving one proceeds to depart, let him depart; a brother or a sister is not in servitude under such circumstances, but God has called you to peace. For, wife, how do you know but that you will save your husband? Or, husband, how do you know but that you will save your wife?”—1 Cor. 7:12-16.

36. Because of the effect of the truth upon the marriage mate, what should the unbeliever rather want to do?

³⁶ Except as regards his religion or belief, a dedicated, baptized worshiper of God should give his unbelieving wife no occasion for wanting to depart from him. Because of the bettering effect of her husband’s belief upon him, she should see all the more reason for being agreeable to dwelling with him the same as before he became an ordained minister of God. The parallel thing should be true in the case of a believing wife and her unbelieving husband.

37. How did Timothy’s mother Eunice show respect for her pagan husband, and yet how did she discharge her religious obligation to their son?

³⁷ Take the case of the Jewish wife Eunice and her Greek pagan husband. They had a son named Timothy. In course of time, about A.D. 44, the apostle Paul and Barnabas preached in their city, and Eunice and her mother Lois believed and became Christians. Did Eunice now leave her Greek husband because he remained pagan? No; for he was still agreeable to dwelling with her. Eunice was submissive to him; and because he objected, she even had not had their son Timothy circumcised. Whether his father took Timothy to pagan temples of worship, it is not recorded. But Timothy’s mother Eunice and his grandmother Lois saw to it that he got the Biblical religious education, for they taught him themselves at home. Thus from infancy Timothy the half-Jew knew the holy writings that were able to make him wise for salvation through faith in the Messiah. (2 Tim. 3:14, 15; 1:5; Acts 14:4-18) This home religious education of Timothy prevailed over any pagan influence of his Greek father. So when Paul came to town the first time Timothy joined his Jewish mother and grandmother in becoming a Christian. Hence Paul could speak of Timothy as “a genuine child in the faith,” “a beloved child.”—1 Tim. 1:1, 2; 2 Tim. 1:1, 2.

38. What was the attitude of Eunice toward a missionary career for Timothy, and why was first then circumcision practiced upon Timothy?

³⁸ On Paul’s return visit to the city, he found Timothy to be a “disciple . . . well reported on by the brothers in Lystra and Iconium.” Timothy’s mother Eunice, of course, was agreeable and his pagan father did not stand in the way of a missionary career for their son; and so Paul arranged to take Timothy along with him and Silas. In order to remove a stumbling block from before Jews in that neighborhood to whom they might preach, Paul circumcised Timothy, who was now a young man; “for one and all knew that his father was a Greek.” (Acts 16:1-3) Whether Eunice, his mother, ever won her pagan Greek husband over to Christianity by continuing to dwell with him as long as it was agreeable to him, we do not know. However, shortly before his martyrdom Paul wrote Timothy a last letter and spoke of the faith that dwelt in his mother Eunice.—2 Tim. 1:5.

39. To what particular Christian women is Eunice an example, and how does the believer treat the unbelieving mate as relatively sanctified and any children as holy?

³⁹ So Eunice is an example to those dedicated Christian believers who are married to a pagan or a person of a different religious system. The choice of the unbelieving mate to keep on dwelling with a dedicated Christian witness of Jehovah offers a splendid opportunity to the believer, namely, to try in the closest neighborhood to “save” the marriage mate. The believer therefore has to take a positive course, namely, to treat the unbelieving mate as “sanctified in relation” to the believer. That means that the believer has to do everything to the unbelieving mate as if to the Lord himself. The Lord God is a sanctified Person. (Eph. 6:7; Col. 3:22-24) Also, any minor, dependent children to the marriage are now to be considered as “holy” and hence to be treated as clean. The believer will follow Eunice’s example and endeavor to give such “holy” children Bible instruction, that they may continue holy and possibly at last make a personal dedication of themselves to God through Christ. Not only their salvation but also that of the unbelieving marriage mate is at stake. So it is opportune to dwell with him.

40, 41. (a) In case the unbelieving mate is hard to please, what should be the believer’s course? (b) How does Peter counsel unequally yoked Christian wives in harmony with that principle?

⁴⁰ Even if the marriage mate is opposed and hard to please, the believer should not feel obliged to depart. The believer should endure the persecution and opposition, just as he puts up with the persecution and opposition in the territory to which he preaches from house to house. By this course the salvation of the unbelieving mate is possible. This is the argument of the apostle Peter in writing to persecuted Christians. Peter says:

⁴¹ “Let house servants be in subjection to their owners with the full measure of fear, not only to the good and reasonable, but also to those difficult to please. . . . if, when you are doing good and you suffer, you endure it, this is a thing agreeable with God. In fact, to this course [of suffering unjustly] you were called, because even Christ suffered for you, leaving you a model for you to follow his steps closely. . . . In like manner, you wives, be in subjection to your own husbands [baals, Hebrew Bible], in order that, if any are not obedient to the word, they may be won without a word through the conduct of their wives, because of having been eyewitnesses of your chaste conduct together with deep respect [toward your husbands]. And do not let your adornment be that of the external braiding of the hair and of the putting on of gold ornaments or the wearing of outer garments [which outward adornment will not win husbands who are not yet obedient to God’s Word], but let [your adornment] be the secret person of the heart in the incorruptible apparel of the quiet and mild spirit, which is of great value in the eyes of God. For so, too, formerly the holy women who were hoping in God used to adorn themselves, subjecting themselves to their own husbands, as Sarah used to obey Abraham, calling him ‘lord’. And you [wives] have become her children, provided you keep on doing good and not fearing any cause for terror [toward your husbands].”—1 Pet. 2:18 to 3:6.

Separation and Divorce for the Sake of Peace

1. If, in spite of all, the unbeliever chooses to leave and live separate, what should the believing mate do about it?

THERE are innumerable cases of where dedicated, baptized believers have obeyed the apostle Paul’s advice and have kept dwelling with unbelieving mates to have the joy of finally ‘saving’ the marriage mate. But what about a believer who uses God’s spirit to endure persecution and opposition in the effort to hold the marriage together, but whose unbelieving mate still finds it disagreeable and at length departs, either by living independently somewhere else or by divorce or legal separation? Paul answers: “But if the unbelieving one proceeds to depart, let him depart; a brother or a sister is not in servitude under such circumstances, but God has called you to peace.”—1 Cor. 7:15.

2. If a separation does occur, is there a Scriptural ground for divorce, to be followed by remarriage to another?

² In the interest of his own Christian peace, the believer may let the unbelieving marriage mate depart and live elsewhere. The departed unbeliever may not remarry, any more than a departed Christian believer may do so: “But if she should actually depart, let her remain single or else make up again with her husband.” (1 Cor. 7:11) The abandoned believer has no Scripture grounds for procuring a legal divorce, that is, on the mere basis of abandonment or of incompatible difference of religion. Hence if he did get a divorce, he would not have the Scriptural freedom to relieve himself of unsatisfying legal singleness by remarrying. Jesus Christ himself says not, in the following words:

3. What did Jesus say on the matter, according to Matthew 19:3-9?

³ “Pharisees came up to him, intent on tempting him and saying: ‘Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife on every kind of grounds?’ In reply he said: ‘Did you not read that he who created them at the beginning made them male and female and said: “For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and will stick