What If My Unbelieving Spouse Leaves Me?
1) Direct Answer
If your unbelieving spouse will not live with you in peace and chooses to leave, let them depart. You are not under bondage to chase, compromise, or live in continual strife; God has called you to peace. Stand true to Christ, keep your life clean, and be open to reconciliation if they truly return to dwell in peace. Do not be the one to depart, and do not deny your testimony to keep them.
2) Scriptural Explanation
- The Bible says, “If any brother hath a wife that believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away… But if the unbelieving depart, let him depart. A brother or a sister is not under bondage in such cases: but God hath called us to peace” (1 Corinthians 7:12-15).
- To the married believers it also says, “Let not the wife depart… but and if she depart, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband” (1 Corinthians 7:10-11).
- And again, “The wife is bound by the law as long as her husband liveth… but if her husband be dead, she is at liberty to be married to whom she will; only in the Lord” (1 Corinthians 7:39; see also Romans 7:2-3).
3) Simple Clarifying Logic
- Now notice: God does not tell you to compromise your faith to keep an unbeliever. If they refuse to live with you in peace because you follow Christ, you are “not under bondage” to their demands or to a life of turmoil—God called you to peace.
- But “not under bondage” does not cancel the marriage covenant; Scripture still binds a man and a woman as long as both live. So you don’t chase them into sin, you don’t fight, and you don’t bend your testimony—but you keep yourself clean before God. If they repent and truly desire to live in peace, be ready to forgive and reconcile. If not, remain as you are and walk with God.
- And should there ever be a future step, the Bible’s rule stands: only in the Lord. No yoking with unbelief.
4) Reinforcing Statement
Hold your ground in Christ, live in peace, pray for their soul, and keep your testimony spotless. God sees the abandonment, and He will sustain you.
Ask a Follow-up Question
What did the Laodicean Church Age (our age) Angel (- messenger) Say about this?
Ranked passages from the local William Branham sermon and Church Age Book database. Relevance is relative, not a statement of doctrinal certainty.
Questions and Answers
62-0527 §15
...Now, it seems like, here, that the person is wanting to know, or the question what they do want to know: "Is a brother or sister in the Lord, can marry or remarry, be free, if they leave their companion to remarry again?" No. Now let's take ... begin at the 10th verse: ... unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord [see], Let not the wife depart from her husband: [see], But ... if she departs, let her remain unmarried, or be reconciled to her husband: and let not the husband put away his wife. [That's the...
Sir, we would see Jesus
62-0724 §21
If you could take the sap, the life out of an apple tree, and put it in a grapevine, that grapevine would bear apples, see, because the life that bears apples ... the germ is in the life, and it would bear apples on a grapevine. Depends on what kind of a life was on the inside of it, see. That's right. Now, if you could take a peach tree, and a pear tree, and take the life out of the peach tree (just take out all the life), and put it over into the pear tree, every bit of the life (no more pear-tree life in it, but...
The unfailing realities of the living God
60-0626 §50
...Man is what God works through. And then when man receives the truth, hits the right highway, and starts moving on, and find these realities moving on, what does it do? The unbelieving brother, he'll look at him; it's like he's... He--he can't accept it. If he does, he has to leave his church. If he leaves his church, he stands alone. A minister said to me, right after that interview up there, a minister said, "Looky here." I said to them on the platform; I said, "If I am so wrong, there is hundreds of ministers he...