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Transcript 853B
Pregnancy and Unequally Yoked Couples
HC: Good evening. Welcome to Open Forum.
CALLER: Yes, Brother Camping. I have a question about marriage, about being unequally yoked. If a pregnancy is involved with an unequally yoked couple, must they marry?
HC: The question is, here is a Christian young man (could be an old man, too, but he's a Christian), definitely a Christian. And he has become romantically involved with a woman who is not saved, and she becomes pregnant. Now what is his Christian duty? Is he to marry her? The problem is, if he marries her he is in violation of II Corinthians 6, which says that we are not to be unequally yoked. On the other hand, he has fathered that child, and he has a responsibility to that child. Of course this is what sin always does. It just gets you into a great big mess. But what he will have to do now is care for that child. It's his child. And yet he cannot marry the mother, as long as she is unsaved.
CALLER: And you can tell a Christian by their fruits. Is that correct?
HC: Yes, "by their fruits ye shall know them." And the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, self-control. Or, putting it in another way, the fruit of salvation is that there is an earnest ongoing desire to do the will of God.
CALLER: I even doubt myself many times, the things I do, and so, on.
HC: If we find that there is ongoing sin in our life, of course we're going to wonder whether we're really a child of God. That's a fair question, because I John 2 says that if we say we know Him and don't keep His commandments the truth is not in us, and we're just lying to ourselves. And so that should frighten us quite a bit. But on the other hand, if we really are a child of God, we know that the power of sin has been broken, and we are to turn away from that sin. We're to repent of it. We're to ask God for a hatred for it. And there should begin to be victory in our life over this sin and that sin.
CALLER: Also, what does the term "bastard child" mean in the Bible?
HC: Well, in the Old Testament the Bible spoke about illegitimate children, using an old English word "bastard", saying that an illegitimate child could never enter into the temple. By the same token, anyone who was deformed or crippled in any way could not enter into the temple, or anyone who was, let's say, of the nation of Moab, or Ammon, because they were cursed nations, could not enter into the temple. Now again God is not saying that these people could not be saved. He is setting up figures and types. And the temple, in the Old Testament, was a picture of figure of the body of believers. Those who were deformed, or those who were born illegitimate, or those who were citizens of Moab or Ammon, were pictures of someone who is still unsaved, someone who is under the wrath of God. And of course someone who is unsaved cannot be in the temple of God, cannot be in the kingdom of God, unless he becomes saved. And so while God set up these physical types, so that an illegitimate child or a deformed child or person could not come into the temple, under no circumstance was God teaching that they could not be saved.
CALLER: Okay.
HC: Thank you so much for calling and sharing.