Rukayat came to Christ at thirty-three, in the staff room of the general hospital where she worked as a nurse. A colleague had been quietly praying for her for two years. One night shift, during a lull at three in the morning, Rukayat asked her why she was always so calm. The colleague opened her Bible to the Gospel of John, and by the time the morning shift arrived, Rukayat had prayed and given her life to Jesus.
Telling her husband was the hardest conversation of her life. Kabir was a pharmacist, a gentle, careful man from a devout Muslim family in Ilorin. They had been married nine years and had two children. He did not shout when she told him. He sat on the edge of the bed for a long time, looking at the floor, and then went out to the balcony and stayed there until midnight.
In the weeks that followed, Rukayat heard two very different kinds of advice. A sister in her new church took her aside after a Bible study and read 2 Corinthians 6:14 to her. “Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers. My sister, you cannot stay in that house. Light has no fellowship with darkness.” Another woman, at a prayer meeting, laid hands on her and announced with great confidence that by December, Kabir would be sitting beside her in church.
December came and went. Kabir was still praying at the mosque on Fridays. And one evening, while the children were watching cartoons in the parlour, he came into the kitchen where she was frying plantain and asked her the question that had been hanging over the house for months.
“Rukayat, tell me the truth. Are you going to leave me now that you have found your Jesus?”
She did not know what to say. She did not know what God expected of her. She was not even sure she knew what the Bible actually said.
Paul knew. He wrote about exactly her situation nearly two thousand years ago.
A question from Corinth
The church in Corinth was full of people like Rukayat. The gospel had spread through a city of Greek and Roman worship, and many who believed were already married to spouses who did not. Some of them were troubled. Did becoming a Christian mean they should leave? Would they be defiled by remaining in such a marriage? Were their children unclean?
Paul had received a letter from them asking these questions. He says so at the start of the chapter: “Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me” (1 Corinthians 7:1). Some in Corinth seem to have thought that the holiest course was to withdraw from marriage altogether. Paul spends the chapter answering them carefully.
First he addresses believers married to believers. Here he can quote Jesus directly: “unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband” (1 Corinthians 7:10). Jesus had spoken plainly about marriage between members of the covenant people. Then Paul turns to a situation Jesus had not addressed during His earthly ministry:
But to the rest speak I, not the Lord: If any brother hath a wife that believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away. And the woman which hath an husband that believeth not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean; but now are they holy. But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases : but God hath called us to peace. For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband? or how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy wife?
“But to the rest speak I, not the Lord.” Some readers have taken this as Paul offering a mere personal opinion. That is a mistake. Paul is not saying his words are less authoritative. He is saying that he has no recorded saying of Jesus on this precise question, so he gives apostolic instruction himself. At the end of the chapter he adds, “I think also that I have the Spirit of God” (1 Corinthians 7:40). The early church received these verses as Scripture, and so should we.
Notice also who Paul is addressing. This passage is for believers who are already married when they come to faith, or who find themselves in such a marriage. It is not permission for a Christian single to marry an unbeliever. Later in the same chapter Paul says that a widow may remarry, “only in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:39). Choosing a spouse and remaining with a spouse are different questions, and confusing them causes a great deal of harm.
If he is pleased to dwell with her
Paul’s first instruction is clear: “If any brother hath a wife that believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away. And the woman which hath an husband that believeth not, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him.”
The key phrase is “pleased to dwell.” The Greek verb syneudokeō means to agree together, to consent willingly. If the unbelieving spouse is content to continue the marriage, the believer must not end it. Conversion does not dissolve a marriage. The covenant made before Rukayat knew Christ is still a covenant. Kabir is still her husband. Her new faith gives her no warrant to walk away from him.
This was a striking word in its setting. Some Corinthian believers may have known the story at the end of the book of Ezra, where the returned exiles were told to separate from wives they had taken from the surrounding nations:
And Shechaniah the son of Jehiel, one of the sons of Elam, answered and said unto Ezra, We have trespassed against our God, and have taken strange wives of the people of the land: yet now there is hope in Israel concerning this thing. Now therefore let us make a covenant with our God to put away all the wives, and such as are born of them, according to the counsel of my lord, and of those that tremble at the commandment of our God; and let it be done according to the law.
That was a specific moment in Israel’s history. The small community of returned exiles was in danger of being absorbed into the idolatry of the peoples around them, and the law had forbidden such marriages in the first place (Deuteronomy 7:3-4). Paul, writing under the New Covenant, gives an entirely different instruction to believers in mixed marriages. He does not tell them to separate. He tells them to stay, if their spouse is willing.
What about the verse that the sister in Rukayat’s church read to her?
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.
This is a serious passage, and it does speak to marriage. A believer should not enter a marriage, or any binding partnership, that would yoke her to idolatry and pull her away from Christ. But Paul wrote this to the same church to which he had already said, “let her not leave him.” He clearly did not mean these words to undo his own instruction. Whatever “be not unequally yoked” requires of us, it cannot mean that a Christian already married to an unbeliever must leave. The same apostle has told us the opposite in so many words.
So the answer to Kabir’s question, as far as Scripture is concerned, was simple. If he wished to remain, Rukayat was not to leave him.
PunchlineConversion does not dissolve a marriage. If an unbelieving spouse is content to remain, the believer remains, and lives out her faith inside that covenant.
Sanctified by the believer
Paul then gives a reason that would have astonished his readers: “For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband: else were your children unclean; but now are they holy.”
The Corinthians’ fear seems to have been that contact with an unbeliever would defile the believer. Paul turns that fear upside down. In this marriage, holiness does not leak out of the believer. It flows from the believer into the home.
What does sanctified mean here? It cannot mean that the unbelieving spouse is saved. Paul says in the very next sentence that the believer does not know whether the spouse will be saved. The word hagiazō means to set apart, to make holy in the sense of belonging to God’s sphere. Through the believing spouse, the marriage itself and the home are set within the reach of God’s blessing and influence. The unbeliever is in a privileged place. He lives every day close to the life of God in another person.
The children, too, are “holy.” This does not mean they are automatically saved either. Each of them will need to come to faith personally. But it means they are not outsiders to God’s covenant concern. They are growing up in a home where God is honoured by at least one parent, under the influence of the Word, within reach of the prayers of the church.
The New Testament gives us a living example. When Paul arrived in Lystra, he met a young disciple “named Timotheus, the son of a certain woman, which was a Jewess, and believed; but his father was a Greek” (Acts 16:1). Timothy grew up in a mixed home. His father was not a believer. But Paul later reminded him “that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures” (2 Timothy 3:15), taught by his mother Eunice and grandmother Lois. That home was sanctified through a believing mother, and from it came one of the most faithful pastors of the early church.
For Rukayat this was a great relief. She had been afraid that by staying with Kabir she was somehow compromising her own walk with God, or harming her children. Paul’s word said the opposite. Her presence in that home was a channel of God’s grace into it.
If the unbelieving depart
Paul then turns to the other possibility: “But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us to peace.”
Notice where the initiative lies. The believer is not to leave. But if the unbelieving spouse insists on leaving, the believer is not obliged to hold him against his will. “Let him depart.” The verb chōrizō is the same word Paul used in verse 10 for a wife separating from her husband. It describes a real ending of the marriage relationship by the unbeliever’s choice.
Then comes a phrase that has been much discussed: “not under bondage.” The word is douloō, to be enslaved. In such cases, the believer is not enslaved. But not enslaved to what?
Here sincere believers differ, and it is right to set out the views fairly. Many Christians, across several traditions, have understood this to mean that when an unbelieving spouse permanently deserts the marriage, the believer is free from the marriage bond and may remarry. This has sometimes been called the Pauline privilege. Others understand Paul to mean only that the believer is not bound to pursue the departing spouse or to hold the marriage together by force, but remains bound by the marriage and should not remarry, in line with Paul’s earlier word that one who departs should “remain unmarried, or be reconciled” (1 Corinthians 7:11). Others take a middle position, accepting that desertion ends the marriage but urging great caution and patience before concluding that it is final. Each of these views is held by careful readers of Scripture. Wise pastoral counsel on a particular case is better than a quick slogan.
What all agree on is the word that closes the sentence: “God hath called us to peace.” The believer is not called to a lifetime of anxious struggle to keep a spouse who has decided to go. Nor is she called to provoke his departure. She is called to peace, to live in a way that seeks peace when he stays and accepts peace when he goes.
Paul is also careful about what counts as departure. Disagreement about faith is not departure. Disapproval is not departure. Refusing to attend church with her is not departure. Paul is describing an unbeliever who will not continue the marriage at all. A spouse who stays, even unhappily, is still “pleased to dwell” in the sense Paul means, and the believer’s instruction remains: do not leave him.
How knowest thou?
The last verse of the passage is the one that most needs careful reading: “For what knowest thou, O wife, whether thou shalt save thy husband? or how knowest thou, O man, whether thou shalt save thy wife?”
This question has been read in two ways. Some take it hopefully: stay, because who knows, you may be the means of your spouse’s salvation. Others read it in connection with the verse just before: let the unbeliever go if he insists, because you cannot know whether holding on will lead to his salvation, and God has called you to peace, not to endless struggle.
Whichever reading you prefer, notice what Paul does not say. He does not promise that the unbelieving spouse will be saved. He asks, “How knowest thou?” The honest answer is: you don’t. You may pray, love, serve and witness for forty years, and your spouse may still not believe. Or he may come to faith in a month. That outcome belongs to God.
This matters enormously for believers in mixed marriages. Many have been told, by preachers and prophets, that if they pray enough, fast enough and submit enough, their spouse will certainly be saved. When that does not happen, they are left wondering whether their faith was too weak, or whether God has failed them. Rukayat felt exactly that after the December prophecy came to nothing. “What did I do wrong?” she asked me.
She did nothing wrong. A prophecy that goes beyond what Scripture promises is not a word from God, however confidently it is delivered. Paul refuses to make the promise because God has not made it. Each person must come to Christ personally, and no spouse can believe on another’s behalf.
That does not make prayer useless or hope foolish. God loves your husband or your wife far more than you do. You may pray with great hope. But your faithfulness in the marriage cannot depend on the outcome. You are not staying as a strategy for conversion. You are staying because the covenant still holds and because God has called you to live as His child in that home, whatever your spouse decides.
Won without a word
Peter, writing to believers scattered across Asia Minor, speaks to the same situation from another angle:
Likewise, ye wives, be in subjection to your own husbands; that, if any obey not the word, they also may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives; While they behold your chaste conversation coupled with fear.
The phrase “if any obey not the word” refers to husbands who have heard the gospel and not believed. Peter’s counsel to their wives is striking: they “may without the word be won by the conversation of the wives.”
The word conversation in the King James Version does not mean talk. The Greek anastrophē means manner of life, the way you conduct yourself. Peter is saying that a husband who has already heard and rejected the gospel will not usually be persuaded by hearing it again and again. He is far more likely to be affected by watching what the gospel does in his wife’s life.
“Without the word” does not mean the believer must never speak about her faith. Peter elsewhere tells all believers to “be ready always to give an answer” (1 Peter 3:15). It means she does not need to preach at her husband, leave tracts on his pillow, play sermons loudly in the car, or turn every disagreement into a spiritual argument. Pressure rarely opens a heart. Holiness lived with gentleness often does.
Peter describes that life further:
Whose adorning let it not be that outward adorning of plaiting the hair, and of wearing of gold, or of putting on of apparel; But let it be the hidden man of the heart, in that which is not corruptible, even the ornament of a meek and quiet spirit, which is in the sight of God of great price.
“The ornament of a meek and quiet spirit.” Meekness is not weakness. It is strength under God’s control, the opposite of harshness and self-assertion. A quiet spirit is a settled spirit, one that does not need to win every argument because it rests in God. Peter adds that the holy women of old were “not afraid with any amazement” (1 Peter 3:6), not intimidated or ruled by fear.
Two guard-rails are important. First, Peter’s call to wives to be in subjection to their husbands sits within the wider teaching of the New Testament on marriage, which Christians understand in different ways, and which never includes obeying a husband into sin. Where a husband demands that his wife deny Christ, the answer of the apostles still stands: “We ought to obey God rather than men” (Acts 5:29). Second, Peter immediately turns to husbands as well, calling them to dwell with their wives “according to knowledge, giving honour unto the wife” (1 Peter 3:7). The principle of winning by conduct applies just as much to a believing husband with an unbelieving wife.
For Rukayat, this meant a change of strategy. She stopped leaving Christian books on Kabir’s side of the bed. She stopped asking him every Sunday whether he would come to church. Instead she tried to be the kindest, most honest and most faithful wife he could have. She was respectful toward his mother, even when his mother was not respectful toward her. When Ramadan came, she rose early to prepare his meal before dawn. She did not share his fast. She did it because she loved him.
As much as lieth in you
Paul’s wider counsel in Romans 12 gives the believer in a mixed marriage a steady guide for daily life:
If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men.
Nugget“If it be possible.” Paul is realistic. Peace is not always possible. But “as much as lieth in you,” your part is to seek it. You cannot control your spouse’s responses. You can control your own.
In a mixed marriage, that touches many practical matters. There will be questions about church attendance, and the believer may need to arrange her worship and fellowship in ways that do not neglect her home. Church is a gift to her, not an escape from her husband. There will be questions about the children’s religious upbringing, which need to be discussed honestly and respectfully, not decided in secret. There will be questions about money and giving, about festivals and family occasions, about food and household customs. In Nigeria, where Christian and Muslim families have intermarried for generations, these questions are familiar, and wise believers have learnt to hold firm convictions with deep courtesy.
Seeking peace does not mean compromising faith. Rukayat would not return to the mosque, and she told Kabir so, gently and clearly. But it does mean refusing contempt. She would not mock his faith, insult his parents’ religion or speak to the children about their father as though he were an enemy. He was her husband, made in the image of God and loved by Him.
It also means patience with the pace of change in a home. Kabir did not agree, at first, to the children attending her church. Rather than fight, she asked if they could attend the children’s Christmas programme. He came too, sitting at the back. The next year he let them go to the Sunday school. Peace, sought patiently, often opens doors that pressure would have kept shut.
When the unbelieving spouse is dangerous
There is one situation that this passage does not ask anyone to endure. Some believers are married to spouses who are violent, threatening or controlling, which is a very different thing from being uninterested in faith. They may beat the believer for attending church. They may threaten to harm her or the children. They may confiscate her money, lock her in the house or forbid her to see anyone.
Hear this clearly: God hath called us to peace, and peace cannot mean staying in danger. Paul’s instruction to remain addresses a spouse who is “pleased to dwell” in a marriage. A spouse who uses violence or terror is violating the most basic promises of the covenant, whatever he says about wanting to stay. Abuse is never a covenant obligation, and no believer is required to suffer it in order to prove her faithfulness or to win her spouse to Christ.
Scripture is full of wisdom about protecting oneself from harm:
A prudent man foreseeth the evil, and hideth himself: but the simple pass on, and are punished.
The prudent foresee danger and take cover. When Paul learnt that men were watching the city gates to kill him in Damascus, the disciples “let him down by the wall in a basket” (Acts 9:25). He did not stay to prove his courage. He fled, and lived to preach another day.
If you are in danger, get to safety first. Contact the police, a domestic violence helpline, a trusted pastor or a lawyer. Tell people you trust what is happening. Keep important documents and a little money somewhere safe. If you have children, their safety matters alongside yours. A church leader who tells a battered spouse to go home and pray harder is not giving biblical counsel. Long-term questions about the marriage can be addressed later, with wise and qualified help. Safety comes first.
Some believers face persecution in their own homes rather than violence: mockery, pressure from relatives, threats of being cast out by the extended family. That too calls for wisdom, support and sometimes protection. Jesus warned that “a man’s foes shall be they of his own household” (Matthew 10:36). You are not alone in that experience, and you should not face it alone. Let the church come around you.
Six years after that evening in the kitchen, Kabir has not become a Christian. Rukayat no longer expects a particular date. She still prays for him every morning, but she told me that her prayers have changed.
“At first I prayed for God to change him quickly so that my life would be easier,” she said. “Then I began to pray for him because I love him. Now I just ask God to show him Jesus in me, and I leave the rest to God.”
Their marriage is peaceful. Not perfect, but peaceful. Kabir still goes to the mosque on Fridays. Rukayat still goes to church on Sundays. The children attend her church, and they visit his parents in Ilorin for Sallah every year. Last rainy season, when the roads were flooded, he drove her to the Wednesday service himself, waited in the car for two hours, and drove her home again.
PunchlineOn the way back he said quietly, “Your people sing well.” It was the first time he had said anything about her church at all.
She does not know what that sentence means for the future. She doesn’t need to. How knowest thou, O wife? She does not know. But she knows the One who does, and she knows that God has called her to peace in that house. For now, that is enough.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- If you are married to an unbeliever, what has shaped your understanding of whether you should stay: Scripture, or the voices around you?
- How does Paul’s teaching that the unbelieving spouse is “sanctified” change the way you view your presence in your home?
- What pressures or promises about your spouse’s salvation have you been carrying that go beyond what Scripture actually says?
- In what practical ways could your “conversation,” your manner of life, speak more clearly than your words this week?
- If you are in danger, who is one person you can contact today to begin getting to safety?
This Week
This week, choose one practical way to honour your unbelieving spouse that has nothing to do with persuading him or her about faith: a meal prepared with care, a respectful conversation with an in-law, an apology for a harsh word, or time given to something your spouse enjoys. Do it simply as an act of love, and leave the outcome with God. If your home is not safe, set aside time this week to speak confidentially with a trusted person, a counsellor or a domestic violence helpline about a plan for safety.
A Prayer
Father, thank You that You have called me to peace. Thank You that my faith in Christ makes my home a place where Your grace can reach. Give me wisdom to live as Your child beside the one I married, with gentleness, honesty and a quiet strength that does not need to win every argument. Free me from promises You have not made and from pressure You have not placed on me. Teach me to pray for my spouse in love, and to leave the outcome in Your hands. Where there is danger, show me the way to safety and give me courage to take it. Let the light of Christ be seen in me, in Jesus’ name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.