Question:
Is interracial marriage a sin?
Answer:
No. In Genesis 2:18-25 God offered his original instructions for marriage. Jesus refers back to “the beginning” as He defines marriage in Matthew 19:4-6. He says, “Have you not read that He who made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, ‘For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh?’ So then, they are no longer two but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let not man separate.” While Jesus specifies the monogamous nature of marriage (two shall become one), and the genders intended to marry (male and female), there is nothing said about race, nationality or religion in this passage.
There are many who base their opposition to interracial marriage on a misunderstanding of the Old Testament text. Without reading carefully it may be easy to be led into thinking God had forbidden marriage of the races. To the contrary, the real issue under this old covenant was keeping the religion of the Jews intact along with their belief in Jehovah. Skin color was not the issue.
In fact, notice Deuteronomy 7:1-4, “When the Lord your God brings you into the land which you go to possess, and has cast out many nations before you, the Hittites and the Girgashites and the Amorites and the Canaanites and the Perizzites and the Hivites and the Jebusites, seven nations greater and mightier than you, and when the Lord your God delivers them over to you, you shall conquer them and utterly destroy them. You shall make no covenant with them nor show mercy to them. Nor shall you make marriages with them. You shall not give your daughter to their son, nor take their daughter for your son. For they will turn your sons away from following Me, to serve other gods; so the anger of the Lord will be aroused against you and destroy you suddenly.” In this passage, the real issue was religion. God did not permit the Jews to marry other nations because of the spiritual consequences. In fact, for more reading on this issue consider the following passages (Exodus 34:11-17; Deuteronomy 6:24,25; 7:1-6; Joshua 23; Judges 3:1-7; Ezra 9:10-15; Nehemiah 13:23-30). In each passage, ask yourself if God’s real concern was race or religion?
Today, we are not under Old Testament law. Ephesians 2:14-18 says, “For He Himself is our peace, who had made both one, and has broken down the middle wall of separation, having abolished in His flesh the enmity, that is, the law of commandments contained in ordinances, so as to create in Himself one new man from the two, thus making peace, and that He might reconcile them both to God in one body through the cross, thereby putting to death the enmity. And He came and preached peace to you who were afar off and to those who were near. For through Him we both have access by one Spirit to the Father.” Clearly, whatever separation existed before Christ has now been abolished through Christ!
Indeed, Paul writes in Galatians 3:28, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ’s, then you are Abraham’s seed, and heirs according to the promise.” In every situation of life, Christ should be our unifying factor. Regardless of our race, gender, nationality or past we may all be one in Christ—that includes the “one flesh” of marriage.
March 2005