How should we understand the holiness of the unbelieving spouse and children in 7:12-16? This is a complex issue on which good Christians can and will continue to disagree.
Some commentators assume that the holiness in the two cases has to be precisely analogous. On this reading, the holiness in view is probably best construed as a *right* to be baptized (since everyone agrees that the unbelieving spouse would not have been baptized). The unbelieving spouse forfeits the right to baptism through unbelief. A young child, of course, does not, since there is no evidence of highhanded rebellion against God. Mark Horne puts it this way, commenting on 1 Cor. 7:14:
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[T]he child of a believer and the [unbelieving] husband have the same status. The holiness involved, contrary to far too many paedobaptist exegetes, does not entail membership in the Church or Covenant, but only the right to enter the Church — a right lost to the adult because he is an unbelieving enemy of God. He is not baptized for the same reason a baptized adult living with a woman other than his wife is not admitted to the Lord’s Table. The child, however, is not blaspheming Christ by denying Him and thus has done nothing that would keep him from being incorporated into the Church.
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This is certainly a valid way to read the text, and was my own approach for several years. However, I’m now less inclined to say that the holiness in view in the two cases has to be the same. Why should it be? The context and circumstances are different. The precise word used is different (a verb in one case, an adjective in the the other). Scripture as a whole has many specific things to say that apply to covenant children that would not apply to an unbelieving spouse. Why not allow those differences to shape to shape the way we read the text?
Besides that, why would Paul contemplate children as merely potential church members in this context? If children have the right to be baptized, why aren’t they baptized already? And wouldn’t that baptism bring them into a higher degree of holiness? Why shouldn’t that be in view here?
Furthermore, once the unbelieving spouse has refused baptism, why is he/she is still holy? Once the right is given up, why would the unbelieving spouse still have some kind of special status (on this reading)? If baptism is forfeited, why isn’t sanctification forfeited as well? Why is there a kind of standing holiness that still obtains even after the unbelieving spouse has persistently refused to convert?
While I didn’t really develop it this way in the sermon, it seems that the holiness of the children of a mixed marriage is an agreed upon principle between Paul and the Corinthians; the point in dispute is what to do about an unbelieving spouse. Paul tacks on the statement about the children of a mixed marriage being holy as a piece of supporting evidence for his case that the marriage is sanctified, rather than a conclusion drawn from the fact that the unbelieving spouse is sanctified by the believing spouse. To paraphrase the argument of verse 14, he’s saying something like this:
“For the unbelieving husband is under the holy influence of the wife, and the unbelieving wife is under the holy influence of the husband. Your mixed marriage is holy; otherwise, your children would be unclean. But as you well know, since your children have been baptized, they are holy, and if the children belong to God (as we all know they do), then even your unbelieving spouse must somehow be within the sphere of holiness as well. Your family is a holy family; it is a Christian family; the presence of an unbelieving spouse does not negate the covenant promises of God.”
In other words, since their children have been baptized and are regarded as holy, they should have known that the marriage as a whole has been brought into the sphere of holiness, so that even the unbelieving spouse has been put in some kind of sanctified position of nearness to God. We obviously do not want to resurrect the whole system of graded holiness that featured prominently in the old covenant because that system has been fulfilled in Christ. Now all Christians share the same holy status. But, here perhaps, we can use some kind of analogy with the old covenant gradations of holiness: The unbelieving spouse has a kind of “outer court” holiness, as he/she is brought somewhat near to God through the influence and proximity of the believing spouse. The children, meanwhile, enter into the full holiness of church membership via baptism.
In short, I simply do not see any way to flatten out the holiness of the unbelieving spouse and the holiness of the covenant child into the same thing with creating insuperable difficulties. This has been the Baptist strategy to show that the holiness of the children has nothing to do with paedobaptism, but I do not buy it. Paul’s purpose in this passage is twofold: He wants to tell Christian spouses in mixed marriages that they can stay in their marriages because their marriages are not defiling; indeed, instead of being polluted by their spouse’s unbelief, they actually spread holiness to their spouses and even have the opportunity to convert their spouses (cf. 7:16). Meanwhile, he also wants to remind them of something they already know which underscores this point: the children of a mixed union are holy; they are covenant children, with divine promises made to them and about them; they are baptized; they are church members; they are to be given a Christian upbringing as much as the Christian spouse can provide, given the constraints of his/her family situation. There is no need even for the Christian spouse to separate from the unbeliever for the sake of the children. The whole household partakes of a kind of sanctification because of the presence of one believing spouse/parent. The whole household is favored by God.
I tend to think this way of reading the text does the most justice to the structure of the argument and causes the fewest problems.
[This is taken from my sermon and sermon notes on this text.]
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