Two Believers Under One Yoke

Let us take the inquiry further, as though we really were examiners of God’s verdicts, and ask whether these marriages are rightly condemned. Even among the pagans, do not all the strictest masters, the ones who hold hardest to discipline, forbid their own slaves to marry outside the household? The point, of course, is that the slaves should not break out into loose living, neglect their duties, or hand their master’s goods over to outsiders. And more than that: have not the pagans ruled that a woman who goes on sleeping with another man’s slave, after his owner has formally warned her, may be claimed as a slave herself? Are earthly rules to be held stricter, then, than heaven’s own instructions? A pagan woman who joins herself to an outsider loses her freedom; ours join themselves to the devil’s slaves and go on in their old standing untouched. No doubt they will tell us that no formal warning was ever served on them by the Lord through his own apostle. [a]

What am I to name as the cause of this madness, except a weak faith, always leaning toward cravings for the pleasures of this present world? And it is chiefly among the wealthier women that it is found. The richer a woman is, and the more puffed up by the title of “matron,” the larger the house she needs for all her trappings — a field, as it were, where her ambition can run. To such women the churches look shabby. A rich man is a hard thing to come by in the house of God, and if one is found there, it is harder still to find him unmarried. So what are they to do? Where but from the devil are they to look for a husband who can keep up their litter, their mules, and their hairdressers of outlandish height? A Christian man, even a rich one, would probably not pay for all that.

Set the pagans’ own examples in front of you, I beg you. Most pagan women, noble by birth and rich in property, attach themselves without any discrimination to men who are low and mean — men picked out to serve their luxury, or cut for their lust. Some take up with their own freedmen and slaves, with no regard at all for what people say, so long as they get husbands from whom they need fear no check on their own freedom. Yet a Christian woman finds it beneath her to marry a believer poorer than herself — she, who stands to have her wealth increased in the person of a poor husband! For if it is “the poor,” not the rich, whose are “the kingdoms of the heavens,” then a rich woman will find more in a poor man than she ever brings him. She will be dowered with a larger dowry out of the goods of a man who is rich toward God. Let her be his equal on earth, since in heaven she may well not be. Does it really take doubt, and inquiry, and going over it again and again, to decide whether a man whom God has trusted with God’s own estate is fit to be given a bride’s goods?

Where are we to find words enough to tell the happiness of that marriage which the church arranges, and the offering confirms, and the blessing seals — which angels carry the news of back to heaven, and which the Father holds ratified? For even on earth children do not marry rightly and lawfully without their father’s consent.

What a yoke it is, when two believers share one hope, one desire, one discipline, one and the same service. They are brother and sister; they are fellow servants; there is no difference between them of spirit or of flesh. In fact they are truly “two in one flesh,” and where the flesh is one, the spirit is one as well. Together they pray, together they bow to the ground, together they keep their fasts; teaching each other, urging each other on, holding each other up.

They are equally in the church of God, equally at the banquet of God, equally in hardship, in persecution, in relief. Neither hides anything from the other; neither avoids the other; neither is a burden to the other. The sick are visited and the poor are helped, freely. Alms are given without anyone being tormented for it; sacrifices are attended without a qualm; the daily duties are carried out with nothing in the way. No signing yourself with the cross in secret, no greeting given in fear, no blessing said under your breath. Psalms and hymns go back and forth between the two of them, and each dares the other to sing better to their Lord. When Christ sees and hears such things he is glad. To them he sends his own peace. Where two are, he is there himself; and where he is, the Evil One is not.

These are the things that the apostle’s short saying left underneath it for us to work out. Bring them to your own mind whenever you need them. Use them to turn yourself away from the examples some people set. For believers, to marry any other way is not “lawful,” and it is not “good for us.”