In answering the question, “What can I say to my Christian friend who just got engaged to a non-Christian?” John Piper offers a question I think needs to be asked by anyone considering such a marriage.

How can you be intimately, psychologically, spiritually, physically involved with a man who does not say “Jesus is Lord,” a man who doesn’t love your Savior?

He goes on to explain the thinking a believer must have in order to justify marrying a non-believer.

What is at root here is that she is loving this man more than she is loving Jesus. Because if she really loved Jesus—and he was satisfying to her, and her best friend, and walked with her, and talked with her, and sustained her—then the fact that he doesn’t love Christ but says, “I don’t want anything to do with him. He’s not my Lord. He’s not my Savior. I think that’s mythological and foolish,” that should tear her apart emotionally.

What is she saying by delighting in him when the essence of him is anti-Jesus? That’s who he is, he’s anti-Jesus! Women or men who go that direction show that their capacities for loving Christ have shrunk down, and they’re not feeling or thinking straight about loving Christ.

What does it mean to know him, love him, walk with him, cherish him, be satisfied in him, treasure him? It can’t mean what it should if a Jesus-rejector is valued as a husband over obedience to Christ.

Read the whole of John Piper’s answer here.

For more reading on the subject, check out these:

• Should a Believer Marry a Non-Believer? by the Village Church
• Is It Sinful to Date a Non-Christian? by John Piper
• Reasons You Should Not Marry a Non-Believer by Kathy Keller