Commentaries:
People's Commentary (NT)
1 Corinthians 7:14
For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife, etc. This
passage has been much debated, and little understood. The unbelieving
husband or wife is not made personally holy, not do the children of
believers have personal holiness transmitted to them by virtue of birth
relation. Sanctification, then, means something besides personal
holiness. To sanctify is to separate to a sacred use, or relation
(Exodus 20:8 28:38). Food is "sanctified by the word of God and prayer"
(1 Timothy 4:4). Here Paul uses the term to denote that one Christian
member of a household brings a sanctifying influence to it, so that all
the members are to be regarded as separated in part from the great,
ungodly, unclean world. Nehemiah commanded Jews to part from heathen
wives on the ground that they were ceremonially unclean (Nehemiah 13:23-27).
Paul insists, rather, that the believer cleanses the other, and that
the unbelieving partner, or the children, are rendered ceremonially
clean.
But now are they holy. Brought into such a sacred relation that
the unbelieiving partners are under the power of sacred influences, and
not to be counted as sources of defilement.
Other commentary entries containing this verse:
1 Corinthians 7:14
1 Corinthians 7:39
1 Peter 3:1
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