“I want us to help each other with the faith we have. Your faith will help me, and my faith will help you.” Romans 1:12 (NCV)

You can have a lot in common with someone, but if you don’t share the most important part of your life—your relationship with God—you’ll never have the spiritual unity God intends for marriage.

When you have spiritual unity, you believe the same things about God, you enjoy a relationship with him together, and you’re headed in the same direction. And spiritual unity allows you to have unity in many areas of life.

But if you aren’t spiritually unified with your spouse, you’re never going to enjoy the deep physical, emotional, and relational unity God desires for your marriage. You just can’t do it. You need to be unified in the number-one area of your life, which is your relationship with God.

The Bible teaches, “Stop forming inappropriate relationships with unbelievers. Can right and wrong be partners? Can light have anything in common with darkness? . . . Can a believer share life with an unbeliever?” (2 Corinthians 6:14-15 GW). In other words, if you don’t have spiritual unity, how in the world can you be unified in any other area?

Let me just be honest with you. As a pastor, I don’t like to disappoint people or hurt their feelings. I want them to like me; I want them to be happy. But I can’t tell you how many times someone has told me about their wonderful fiancé, only to tell me later that the person isn’t a believer.

Everything in me wants to say, “It’s no big deal. Go ahead. Be happy.” But after seeing so many spiritually divided marriages end in divorce, I’m blunt with them. I say, “I love you enough to tell you the truth. You’re making the biggest mistake of your life. If you don’t have spiritual unity, you’re never going to have unity in other areas the way God intended. If you have committed your life to Christ, there is no way you can give your life away to somebody who rejects your Savior.”

The Bible is really clear about this: “Do not be yoked together with unbelievers” (2 Corinthians 6:14 NIV). If you want God’s best, don’t even consider somebody who’s not committed to Jesus Christ.

But here’s what your marriage can look like when you do have spiritual unity: “I want us to help each other with the faith we have. Your faith will help me, and my faith will help you” (Romans 1:12 NCV). That’s what God wants for your marriage. He wants the faith of the husband to help the wife and the faith of the wife to help the husband.

God wants to protect and bless your marriage. He wants to be the glue that holds it together. And he can only do that when you have spiritual unity in your marriage.