1. Ezra 10:2–3 (ESV)
  2. Application

Opposing what would bring us to sin

Ezra 10:2–3 (ESV)

2 And Shecaniah the son of Jehiel, of the sons of Elam, addressed Ezra: “We have broken faith with our God and have married foreign women from the peoples of the land, but even now there is hope for Israel in spite of this.

This is not so much about biblical teaching and regulations and grounds for divorce, though it does speak to that…Here it concerns marrying in an unequally yoke situation. Do we carry that into the New Testament? For example, if you have married someone and you find out it is the wrong person and they are not believers, you can put them away?... I do know this: it is not just about divorcing unbelieving wives. Jesus says, If your right eye causes you to sin, pluck it out, then it follows if your spouse causes you to sin, at least separate yourself from her. Or to put it in the more dramatic terms that Jesus uses in Luke 14:26: If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple. This is not about maintaining marriage or divorcing. This is about maintaining communion with and cleaving to the Lord, and being zealously opposed to anything that would incline us to sin.1

William Harrell