I have spent a good deal of time in my life going through the Bible. One of the more interesting Bible verses deals with a comment St. Paul wrote to the church in Corinth. In I Cor. 7:14, he wrote:
For the unbelieving husband is sanctified (hēgiastai) through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy (hagia).
I have often wondered exactly what he meant. He speaks of mismatched couples where one has an active spiritual life in church, helping others and in praying for others. Her spouse finds the secret of life in cheeseburgers and mixed martial arts. Paul seems to be saying that as long as these two people remain together, their children are somehow better off than if the parents drift apart, only to divorce. Of course, decisions like this must take into consideration whether it is safe for a family to stay together. And that is only the first step to wherever it is that you wind up. But then again, many couples have robust relationships that allow “space” for each partner to pursue their own interests.
When I was much younger, I would hear people talk about “staying together for the sake of the kids” and I was not sure what they meant. It sounded lame or sketchy to me back then. But I doubt it had anything to do with this verse.
What Paul is referring to and what this post addresses is the notion that there is some sort of protection or benefit conferred to others living under the same roof if one of the principals is a disciple of the living God. So, let me walk you through it because it is an interesting concept.
Noah
God was fairly frustrated with how things ran amok after He created man and man became a free agent. About 1,650 years after Adam was created, God sent a flood to sort of “reset” things on earth. He was originally pleased with all that He created, but was particularly disappointed
with mankind. There was only one person who responded to Him and that was Noah. God decided to flood the planet and instructed Noah to construct an ark according to the dimensions God gave him. We don’t know for sure how long it took Noah to build the ark, but there is circumstantial evidence that it was 120 years. That would have allowed time not only for Noah to make the case to his neighbors for the need for the ark, but for the animals to migrate to the site. At any point during that twelve-decade window, had people — even one single soul — responded to Noah’s message, they would likely have been spared. But instead, they made fun of him. Sanhedrin 108b says they taunted Noah:
'Old man, what is this ark for?' — He replied, 'The Holy One, blessed be He, will bring a flood upon you.' 'A flood of what,' they jeered?
Noah undoubtedly would have taken them along had they only asked. As it was, and as the storm clouds gathered, no one was convicted and convinced to step forward. So in the end Noah persuaded his wife, his three sons and their wives to risk looking foolish and to lock themselves in the ark with the menagerie.
While the Bible doesn’t explicitly connect the dots, it has convinced generations of rabbis and early Christian theologians that one man’s righteousness was sufficient to deliver others in his family less determined and more aloof by nature from the flood. Likewise, God’s judgment of Sodom and also the events of the first Passover were also typological in a major sense. Had someone with a shred of decency cast his lot with Abraham’s nephew (named Lot), more might have been saved from that disaster. in fact, Genesis 18, 19 states that God intended to spare the city (with an estimated poulation < 20,000 souls) for the sake of ten righteous people. Had the city been spared, that would not suggest that there were thousands of righteous inhabitants, but rather these thousands of unrighteousness individuals would have enjoyed longer lives based on the ten righteous who were holy.
Some have wondered whether this divine forebearance was also true during the first Passover. The term “passover” of course refers to the Angel of Death passing over those Israelite hovels that had applied smudges of lambs blood around their doorposts in indicate to the angel that they were divine protection.
The Bible is silent on whether any Egyptians hid among the Jews as the Angel of Death moved silently and stealthily through the darkened streets. But neither does it say they were not welcome. Indeed, the sense of Scripture seems to suggest that they would be welcome. Yet, this was a special situation because the pact God made with was with His people, not just anyone (Jew or not) who showed up. So this example is a bit less clear than the first two.
An historical parallel
There is a very easy way to explain what is happening here. The underground railroad in the antebellum United States that helped runaway slaves find their way north to freedom in Canada provides an interesting parallel. It’s not possible to under-estimate the challenges that black folk faced crossing other hostile southern states, ambivalent border states and sympathetic but unfamiliar northern states, all required by law to return fugitive slaves to their point of origin and an uncertain fate. Slaves battled the elements, chance encounters with strangers, hunger and thirst, illness and injury, barking dogs that betrayed their presence and so on. But there were some houses along the way that protected them, fed them, treated their injuries and kept them from arrest. There were places owned by citizens with excellent reputations, often Quakers like John Rankin and Levi Coffin. These folks and their spouses were righteous men and women, and it was for the sake of these righteous homeowners that runaway slaves were able to catch their breath and move a step closer to freedom. All people regardless of race, free or slave, religious or not were welcomed to sample their hospitality, and while under the roofs of Rankin and Coffin they were safe (Coffin is thought to have cared for as many as 2,000 fugitives alone). Those unfortunate souls that slept in other people’s barns or sheds along the way had no such grace on which to depend.
I had a Vietnamese friend that I met during the war who came to live with me in the mid-seventies after his country fell. We were casual friends during the war within certain clearly defined boundaries. It was not prudent for either of us to spend time together, and there was actually no opportunity for such socialization to even occur. But he remembered my name and when he came to the U.S. as a refugee, he provided it to the International Rescue Committee (IRC) as someone who might sponsor him. The IRC contacted us. My wife and I talked it over. Was he still the person I knew several years earlier? Did I even know him — some of my brothers-in-arms considered him Viet Cong without evidence, simply because he was Vietnamese. We decided to take him into our home. He was our age (mid-twenties) and was as nervous as we were. After a week or so in our home, he said he had a dream and was told that he was now living in a cemetery. Our house was a cemetery. I did not understand until he explained that in his culture, a cemetery was a holy place. The dream made him feel much more at ease.
Discussion
It’s one thing to say that nonbelievers in some homes are better off living in a Christian home, but this is a premise that is virtually impossible to test because there are so many variables to control for. And then, how do you define what a Christian home is?
However, it is an established fact that while more than a few Christian families go through divorce, or sadly have issues with alcohol or drugs, the number of Christian homes with these problems is significantly fewer than what is observed in the general population. So, what faith does is provide a structural benefit where estranged spouses likely have access to marital counseling and encouragement to reconcile through their church. And as far as substance abuse is concerned, it is likely not tolerated under any circumstances (and again, unfortunately, in some cases family members are less than diligent).
Within this sacred space such as the home where a believer lives, unbelievers live free from the threat and torment that normal people encounter in homes that havew no spiritual anchor. The unbeliever’s proximity to holiness and the ministery of the Word is an ideal time for the guest to attend to his salvation and make God’s blessings permanent in their lives.
Borrowed grace or the “umbrella” or “covering” is real, but it is not absolute. Christian homes and families are not always spared from wildfires or devastating storms that strike in the night nor their children protected in every case from assassins at school or kidnapping by sexual predators. Christians do not live charmed lives. The Apostle John alone died of old age.The other eleven died violent deaths, even as God’s own son did. This is because sin is real and the devil is real. But the gospel message is a message of hope. Apart from that, what other basis of hope is there?
