15. 1 Corinthians 7:14

Last time we had a baptism I looked at the book of Ephesians. Today I would like to look at 1 Corinthians 7:14. And for me, this is a very encouraging verse. It says, For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband; otherwise your children would be unclean, but now they are holy. One of the most exciting things about God’s grace is the way it invades families: it extends to wives, to husbands and to children. And it does so in two stages. The first stage is outward and the second is inward.

But before we get into the details, let me quickly share five things that are pretty obvious about this passage. Whether we can understand what it means or not, there are five facts that emerge that are undisputed. The first is that children are in some way considered unclean by God if both parents are unbelievers. He says, otherwise your children would be unclean. The second thing that is obvious is that even one believing parent permits a child to be taken out of an unclean status and into a clean status. And I want to examine this morning, what is that clean versus unclean status? Is it outward cleansing or inward cleansing? I believe it is outward, but at this point we are just sticking with the undisputed facts. This child has the privilege of being brought into a clean status because of one parent’s faith. The third undisputed fact is that there is some way in which both the unbelieving spouse and the child can be considered to be holy or sanctified, which is the same Greek word. And we Westerners tend to be confused with that: how can an unbeliever be sanctified? Jews would have had no problem with that piece of data, because there are over 600 times that the Old Testament referred to a holy land, holy hill, holy place, holy pots and pans, and holy children. But Westerners often scratch their heads over that one because they only think of inward holiness. But it is undisputed that both the child and the unbelieving spouse are in some way said to be holy or sanctified. The fourth obvious fact is that the holiness or sanctification that is mentioned in verse 14 cannot be the internal holiness created by regeneration. And the reason this is an obvious, undisputed fact is that verse 16 tells us that very clearly. It says, For how do you know, O wife, whether you will save your husband? [implying what? That he’s not saved, right?] Or how do you know, O husband, whether you will save your wife? He’s sanctified, but he’s not saved. Which means that it is an outward, covenantal setting apart. But we ought to be encouraged by that because the outward sanctification of verse 14 is moving the whole family toward the inward sanctification of verse 16. This is the way God works: He first sets us apart outwardly so that He can later save us.

But that by itself ought to give us a hint as to what kind of cleansing these children were receiving. Just as there is an outward and inward sanctification, there is an outward and inward cleansing. There is the outward cleansing of water baptism and there is the inward cleansing of Spirit baptism. The word for unclean is virtually a synonym for “unbaptized.” Over and over again in the Scripture it is used for those who do not have the sign of the covenant placed upon them. So when Paul said, otherwise your children would be unclean, it is synonymous with saying, “otherwise your children would be unbaptized, but now they are holy.” And in saying that he was implying two things: First, that the children of believers in Corinth were all baptized or covenantally cleansed, and Second, that the children of unbelievers do not have the right to be baptized.

So what can we say in conclusion? We can say that God is still concerned about setting aside entire families today just as he was in the Old Covenant. Acts 3 applies the Abrahamic covenant to the church and says, And in your seed all the families of the earth shall be blessed. In fact, almost every time baptism is discussed in the New Testament it either connects the baptism to the Abrahamic covenant or it mentions that the household was baptized. Our God is a God who values families. The second we can conclude is that verse 16 implies that we have a responsibility to bring our families to faith.

And as the [parents] present [child] for baptism this morning, they are not only trusting God’s promises to them, but they are making the promise of verse 16 — to lead [child] to put her trust in Christ. 1 Corinthians 7:14 is an exciting promise that God’s grace invades entire families — extending His reach to husbands, wives and children. Verse 16 is a call for us to lift our entire families up to God and lead them to salvation.