Piper continued: “God intended food to be eaten and drinks to be drunk with thankfulness and faith in him. All other uses of his gifts are sinful. They are failures to live up to God’s design for meat and drink.”
Nevertheless, Piper argued that this doesn’t mean that Christians should forbid unbelievers from eating or drinking.
Piper then related the principle to marriage, saying that “marrying without trusting Jesus and thanking Jesus is sinful.” Nevertheless, Piper rhetorically asked, “Does He require that unbelievers not marry? Or does He require that unbelievers believe and trust Him and thank Him for the gift of marriage?” Piper’s implication being that non-Christians are not forbidden from marrying.
Piper then compared the institution of marriage to the institution of government.
“God ordained that there be human institutions like government…They’re real governments…So everything these governors and emperors do is sin in their unbelief, because they don’t do it from faith. And yet, that doesn’t stop God from recognizing the governments as real, God-ordained institutions of government accomplishing his purposes,” Piper argued.
Relating the principle to marriage, Piper said, “In the same way, God ordained the institution of marriage, and it too accomplishes many of God’s purposes, even when the husband and wife are unbelievers, like providing replenishment for the earth, some measure of stability against chaos, some semblance of the covenant love that God intended marriage to portray.”
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While Piper argued in a previous episode of his podcast that churches should excommunicate Christians who knowingly enter into a marriage with a nonbeliever, in referring to a spouse who became a Christian after getting married while the other spouse remained unbelieving, Piper said, “[God] does not tell them that they are now in a half-marriage or an illegitimate marriage, and He doesn’t tell them that they need to have a new wedding ceremony because they were in a non-marriage…It was a marriage, and it is a marriage — imperfect, to be sure, but still marriage.”
Piper further argued that even when a marriage begin in a sinful way, such as through adultery, the marriage is still a legitimate one, even if not a righteous one.
