Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Corinthians · About this commentary
If the Unbelieving Partner Departs
1 Corinthians 7:12-16
12 But to the rest I—not the Lord—say, if any brother has an unbelieving wife, and she is content to live with him, let him not leave her. · WEB
A believer married to an unbeliever is told to stay, because the household is sanctified rather than contaminated — but not to hold a partner who insists on leaving.
But to the rest I — not the Lord — say, if any brother has an unbelieving wife, and she is content to live with him, let him not leave her 1 Corinthians 7:12.
A new situation, created by the gospel itself: one partner converted and the other not. The Lord had given no teaching on it because it had not yet arisen, and Paul says so plainly. The ruling is the same in both directions 1 Corinthians 7:13, and it runs against what the ascetic party in Corinth would have expected. Their instinct — and it has recurred in every century — was that the believer should withdraw for the sake of purity.
For the unbelieving husband is sanctified in the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified in the husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy 1 Corinthians 7:14.
The reasoning inverts the assumption. In the sanctuary system, uncleanness was the contagious thing — what was unclean spread to what it touched Leviticus 5:2–3 Haggai 2:11–13. Here the influence runs the other way: the believing partner does not become defiled, the household is sanctified by the believer's presence in it. The word cannot mean the unbeliever is saved, since the same passage envisages his possible conversion as still future 1 Corinthians 7:16. It means the marriage and the home are set within the sphere of God's claim rather than outside it — which the children's status is produced to prove.
Yet if the unbeliever departs, let there be separation. The brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God has called us in peace 1 Corinthians 7:15.
The limit on the obligation. The believer must not initiate the break; the believer is not required to prevent it. Not under bondage releases the deserted partner from an obligation that the departing one has already refused, and God has called us in peace gives the reason — a marriage held together by force against one party's settled will is not the peace God calls people into.
For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife? 1 Corinthians 7:16.
The closing question can be read two ways and either supports the ruling. It may be encouragement — stay, because you do not know what may come of it — or realism, since you cannot guarantee an outcome and may not hold a marriage hostage to a hope. What the verse establishes either way is that the believing partner's presence is missionary rather than merely tolerated. The same expectation appears where a wife's conduct is described as the argument most likely to win a husband who will not listen to words 1 Peter 3:1–2.
held with reason What this mark means