“Rendering Unto Caesar”

Wednesday, April 13, 2016

Is it a sin to not be legally married with a marriage license but to be married in God’s eyes?  The reason I am asking this is because my husband and I can't get legally married because he is on SSI, and they will take all of his money and his insurance if we got married because I work. But his dad is a preacher, and he married us under GOD's eyes.  I was just wondering if there is such a thing as that.  A guy I work with said to me, “Follow the law of the land”; is that what that means, that we are supposed to get married legally?  I got saved a year ago and baptized, so am I living in sin?

Sincerely,
The Bride (Maybe)

Dear The Bride (Maybe),

It is important to make the distinction between 'can't' and 'would be hard to'.  It isn't that you and your husband can't get a marriage license; it is that it would be hard on you financially to have one.  Whether or not your marriage is valid without the government's paperwork is not the issue – either way, you are being deceptive.  The Scriptures say that you should get married rather than live together in a sinful relationship (1 Cor 6:18), AND they say that you should obey the laws of the land (1 Pet 2:13-15).  Right now, you are obeying one command… but not the other (you yourself said that you are "not legally married", which – by definition – means you are doing something you believe is illegal).  Currently, you are intentionally deceiving the government in regard to your relationship with your husband in order to continue to receive money from it.  We can't simply obey some of God's laws and forsake the others.  The sum of God's Word is truth (Ps 119:160).

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