A podcast listener named Nathan writes in to ask, this, Pastor John is online dating a

good way to meet your future spouse if you don't meet anyone through your church family.

I say that the biblical issue here is not how you meet but whom you marry.

First print is 739.

Let's just get this clear and then I'll circle around to the other.

A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives but if her husband dies she is free

to be married to whom she wishes only in the Lord.

So a Christian is not free to marry outside the Lord or 2nd Corinthians 614 do not be

unequally yoked with unbelievers.

So biblically the bottom line for the follower of Christ is will you marry only a believer?

And what saddens me Tony is how many believers get so entangled emotionally with unbelievers

that they either throw away their convictions or they stand on their head to see the other

person as a believer when he's not.

So let me make it a little more precise a mature believer will want his or her spouse not

just to profess some kind of creed or be willing to go to church what what they will want

is not just a marriage that is minimally Christian but a Christian marriage and a Christian

marriage is described in Ephesians 5 like this wives submit to your own husbands as to

the Lord for the husband is the head of the wife as the Christ is the as Christ is the

head of the church and husbands love your wives as Christ loved the church and gave

himself for her.

Now what this means is a Christian woman won't just look for a man who has a cross tattooed

on his shoulder but a man who is ready to die daily in the sacrificial calling of leading

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