We get a steady stream of really tough, pastoral questions for Pastor John in our inbox.

Thank you for sending them into us and thank you for your patience as we try to work

through as many of them as possible.

Here's one of those questions is from a listener named Eric, who's a pastor?

Hello, Pastor John.

I'm a pastor wondering what should be a corrective course of action when a Christian knowingly

Mary's an unbeliever.

The believer was forewarned and went ahead with the union anyway.

Now the marriage has been formalized.

How should we, the church, now respond?

To answer this, let's clarify how many layers of sinfulness there are when a professing

believer rejects the counsel of the church elders and Mary's an unbeliever.

I'll just mention three layers.

There are others, but this will help us feel the seriousness of it.

First, the professing believer is defying and rebelling against an explicit command of

the New Testament of God.

Paul says in 1 Corinthians 739, a wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives, but

if her husband dies, she's free to be married to whomever she wishes only in the Lord.

Only in the Lord means only to a person who is in the Lord, a believer, a follower of

Jesus.

So if this teaching is made clear to the believer and the believer rejects obedience to this

command, she or he is acting in open defiance of the teaching of the apostles and of God.

...