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What does it mean when you are asked, "Is the yoke uneven?"

Sincerely,
Huh?

Dear Huh,

The verse being referred to is 2 Cor 6:14.  A ‘yoke’ is a ‘harness used to tie oxen together, so that they can pull a plow or cart’.  When God tells us not to be “unequally yoked” to an unbeliever, He is warning us not to put ourselves in a position where we are committed and tied to someone who doesn’t share our values.  The most poignant example of this is marriage.

If you are a christian and you are married to someone who is not a christian… you are going to have MAJOR problems.  Your life is going one way, and their’s is going another.  It is hard to pull a plow if the oxen don’t both go the same direction!  This is why God tells christians to only marry other christians (1 Cor 7:39).  So when someone asks you, “Is the yoke uneven?”, they are probably asking whether you are married to a christian.

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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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