Privilege and Responsibility

“Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.”

The situation is as follows, and you have probably seen it many times. I have.

A married man comes to faith in Christ. His wife is not quite there yet in her thinking, and she may never be. How should that new believer look at his existing domestic arrangements? What does the Bible have to say about that?

The situation could just as easily be reversed, and often is. I have seen more wives than husbands saved first over the years. Perhaps women are easier to engage in conversation.

Either way, a “mixed marriage” of this sort is an unequal yoke that happened not because of a sinful choice, but by the grace of God. Once they were both lost. Now one has become a child of God, and has a new set of responsibilities, priorities, goals and aspirations entirely different from his or her life partner. How do you deal with that?

Houston, We Have a Problem

Given that Paul’s first letter to Corinth included a number of responses to questions from believers there, it’s probable this situation had already occurred at least once in Corinth. In fact, it’s almost inevitable. For every man or woman saved upon hearing the gospel for the first time, there may be ten who take longer to process what they have heard and decide how to respond. Sometimes that process seems nearly endless, especially these days, when familiarity with God’s revelation is not what it used to be. In the meantime, Houston, we have a problem, especially if the marriage has produced children. How does the brand new believer deal with that?

Paul makes the statement I have quoted above in this difficult context. “Your children are holy,” he says. I mean that such a situation is difficult for the parties involved, producing conflicts and concerns. I do not find the text itself overly complex. Yet the statement gives rise to all manner of questions that need answers, depending on where the reader is coming from in his own thinking.

Three Different Conclusions

For example, a reader at The Puritan Board inquires, “Doesn’t 1 Cor. 7:14 teach that children of believers are covenantally set apart and thus eligible for baptism?” Another blogger is more certain: “Just because one partner is not a believer does not diminish the spiritual worth of the family unit.” Finally, Morris writes, “Until he is old enough to take responsibility upon himself, the child of a believing parent is to be regarded as Christian. The parents ‘holiness’ extends to the child.”

Three men read the passage. Each has different concerns and draws different conclusions. The first assumes holiness has something to do with a covenant and may therefore make a child eligible for baptism. The second associates the holiness Paul is talking about with spiritual worth. The third thinks Paul’s teaching has implications for how other Christians should regard the child’s salvation status.

We need to ask ourselves “What does Paul mean here? ‘Holy’ in what sense?”

A Little Holy History

The Greek word translated “holy” is hagios. In the ESV at least, “holy” occurs three times in the immediate context of Paul’s statement. He says, “The unbelieving husband is made holy [hagiazō, sometimes translated ‘sanctified’] because of his wife”, then “the unbelieving wife is made holy [same] because of her husband”. Finally, he says, “your children … are holy [hagios]”, contrasting it with being unclean.

The concept of holiness didn’t originate in the New Testament. We find it all the way back in Exodus, where “holy” translates the Hebrew word qōḏeš, which literally means “set apart”. God tells Moses to take off his sandals. The place he is standing is “holy”. The contrast is with that which is common. I’ll avoid using the original English translation, which was “profane”, because that word now has associations of sinfulness that it did not initially. There was nothing sinful or immoral about the ground on which Moses was walking up to that point. It was ordinary dirt, perfectly fine for the purpose it served. However, when he came to the burning bush and the presence of God, he was in different territory. He could not approach it in the same way, because God had a claim on it. The Sabbath was “holy” in the same sense. It was not like other days.

Holiness and Morality

So then, we have word with a literal meaning, and we have a bunch of religious associations that naturally follow. The obvious implication of setting something apart is that it is only for God’s use and purposes. The words “hallowed”, “sacred”, “sanctified”, “consecrated” and “dedicated” are all used to translate this same concept. In the OT, when “holy” is used of an object or place, it is in the sense of being distinguished from the ordinary and commonplace, as being uniquely God’s. It should be evident that we are not speaking of moral qualities but of a particular claim that God had on the thing set apart. A “holy” altar, “holy” garments or “holy” perfume do not possess innate morality. Whatever value they have is conferred rather than intrinsic to them. That’s the meaning of qōḏeš the vast majority of times we find it in Israel’s law and throughout the OT: set apart. Distinguished from the ordinary.

However, the command to “be holy”, which we find many times in Leviticus, introduces practical behavioral implications. It means there were certain things an Israelite needed to do as the member of a nation set apart to God. In Exodus 22, that meant not eating flesh torn by beasts. In Leviticus 11, it meant not eating “swarming things” that crawl on the ground. In Leviticus 19, it meant respecting mother and father, keeping the Sabbath, and not making idols to worship. In Leviticus 21, being holy meant not mourning the way the people of other nations mourned, by cutting themselves and shaving their hair. Many of these commands were more ceremonial than explicitly moral. You could perform them without your heart in the right place. Nevertheless, they pointed toward an attitude of heart that said, “I’m doing this because God has called me to be separate to himself.”

Being ‘Holy’

The first time I can find created beings referred to as “holy” is in Deuteronomy, where qōḏeš is translated “saints” or “holy ones”. Even there, I believe the emphasis is primarily on the fact that these beings belonged to the Lord in a way that other beings do not, rather than on their personal moral qualities. Again, we find in the Psalms phrases like “the beauty of holiness”, but never unambiguously referring to created beings. The psalmist may actually be contemplating God’s holiness rather than telling us what behaviors are appropriate to us as his worshipers.

Holiness eventually became associated primarily with behavior and purity, but that sense of the word is not used frequently until later in scripture. Romans speaks of presenting your bodies “holy and acceptable to God”. Here, the implications are clearly behavioral. A person “set apart” to God in heart and mind behaves differently than a person living for his own interests. The rest of the chapter explores the ways in which holiness transforms the believer’s life, conduct, thoughts, aspirations and priorities. Again, later on in 1 Corinthians 7, Paul contrasts the experience of a single woman devoted to God, occupied with “how to be holy in body and spirit”. The contrast is with a married woman. She’s not sinning by marrying, but by doing so she has introduced elements of the ordinary into her existence. She now has obligations to her husband and family, and daily occupations that the single woman is free from. Marriage is a time sink, and Paul says Christians need to think about that before getting into it. It affects the time, energy and resources you have available to devote to the Lord.

Finally, holiness occasionally stands in contrast not just to the ordinary and day-to-day, but to sinfulness. In writing Timothy, Paul contrasts holiness with “anger and quarreling”. That should probably be obvious.

What Did Paul Mean?

Now that we have several distinct senses in which the writers of scripture use the word “holy”, let’s come back to 1 Corinthians 7. It is reasonable to ask which meaning Paul had in mind when he says concerning the children of a mixed marriage that they are “holy”. Was he speaking about their salvation, about their value to God, or maybe about whether they ought to be allowed to participate in church or merely observe? Or did he have something else in mind?

I take it the apostle is using the word in the same sense in all three instances. That is to say, prior to coming to the point in their lives where they exercise faith in Christ, the children of a mixed marriage are holy in the same sense that the unbelieving husband is made holy by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy by the husband.

1/ Baptism

First, as to baptism. Christian baptism is not a rite we ought to administer to children too young to understand what is happening to them. It is a choice made by those who believe, an act of obedience to Christ and a declaration of personal faith in him. Someone becomes a disciple, you baptize them, and then you teach them. That’s the order. A child too young to understand the gospel is not a disciple. He has yet to exercise saving faith. He is not yet “holy”, either by having received the conferred holiness of Christ at salvation or by his practical conduct. He is holy in some other sense, and I don’t think it has anything to do with a covenant. If so, I’d love to know which one.

2/ The Value of the Family Unit

Second, as to the spiritual worth of the family unit, the unbelieving child of a mixed marriage is in exactly the same position as any other unbelieving child. Were he to die, he would be treated no differently than the child of an unbelieving couple who have never heard the gospel or a child with two believing parents. The fact that he has one parent who loves the Lord does nothing for him personally and changes nothing about his value, potential or actual. What it does is present him with an opportunity. We all know children of mixed marriages who, like Timothy, upon hearing the truth, seized the opportunity it presented and declared themselves believers. Likewise, we all know those who have not. Either way, the “holiness” Paul is talking about changes nothing about the value or worth of the family unit. That will be determined in eternity.

3/ Treatment by Others

Third, as for regarding him as “Christian” until he is old enough to take responsibility, that seems to me a dangerous game. Christianity is not conferred by one’s circumstances or by the beliefs of one or even both parents. It does not rub off on you by default. It is a choice. You believe or you don’t. Treating someone as a believer who has yet to make that choice may give him a false sense of security and blur lines scripture makes exceedingly bright and distinct: righteousness or lawlessness, light or darkness, Christ or Belial. What right have we as parents, relatives, or friends to blur those lines? We have already discussed baptism, but I believe participating in the Lord’s Supper falls into the same category.

With Great Privilege …

I believe when Paul wrote, “your children … are holy”, he meant it in the original, literal sense we find used throughout most of the Old Testament. He didn’t mean that the child of mixed marriage is automatically saved. He wasn’t concerned with the relative worth of a mixed-marriage family unit to God, whatever that value might be. He certainly did not mean that Christians should confuse the unbelieving child by baptizing him or conferring upon him other Christian privileges before he expresses any interest in them or is capable of understanding their value. Holiness is indeed transferable, but it passes from person to person consciously and deliberately. The will and intellect are always involved.

I think Paul was simply telling us that a believing parent changes the family unit forever. The unbelieving husband, wife or child is brought before the throne of grace day after day, not just by a concerned mother, father, wife or husband, but by the local Christians who know about the situation. When my eldest son was old enough to understand what he was saying, my father told him he prayed for him every day that he would become “a man of God”. In that sense, my son was “set apart”. His friends at school didn’t have that blessing or privilege. It gave him an opportunity many never receive and a unique hedge of divine protection as he grew up.

… Comes Great Responsibility

But with great privilege comes great responsibility. An unbelieving child of a believing parent will hear the gospel clearly and regularly, and becomes all the more accountable to respond to what he has heard. Holiness is a choice, and some privileged, blessed, much-prayed-for children, husbands and wives never make it. A unique hedge of divine protection is no help to you if you deliberately leap over it, as I did more than a few times in my youth. Some children of mixed marriages rebel openly, just like children from families where both parents are believers. As Paul says in this very same passage, “How do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?” The answer is that you can’t.

That’s true of an unbelieving husband “made holy” by his partnership with a believer. It’s true of an unbelieving wife “made holy” by her husband’s faith in Christ. And it’s certainly true of unbelieving children made holy by the presence and prayers of a believing mother or father in a mixed marriage.

Being set apart for God’s special attention and care is a wonderful and rare opportunity. But even the most precious privileges are sometimes ignored, rejected, dismissed or even despised. Life gives us no guarantees.