God: "I looked for someone to take a stand for me, and stand in the gap" (Ezekiel 22:30)
God does not countenance the marriage of a believer to an unbeliever. In 1 Corinthians 7:39, Paul says that Christians must marry only “in the Lord.” That phrase means within the common faith that Christians hold toward Jesus Christ, that faith which identifies them as a part of the body of Christ. Thus they can be said to be “in Christ,” or “in the Lord” together. Nothing in Scripture in any way relaxes the clear-cut commandment that believers must not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. Christians may marry only in the Lord; that is, only within the faith.
We must not be troubled by unbelievers when they say that this promise of rewards makes the Christian's life a mercenary affair. There are different kinds of reward. There is the reward which has no natural connection with things you do to earn it, and is quite foreign to the desires that ought to accompany those things. Money is not the natural reward of love; that is why we call a man mercenary if he marries a woman for the sake of her money. But marriage is the proper reward for a real lover, and he is not mercenary for desiring it… The proper rewards are not simply tacked on to the activity for which they are given, but are the activity itself in consummation.
