¹⁵ Has not the one God made you?^(A) You belong to him in body and spirit. And what does the one God seek? Godly offspring.^[a](B) So be on your guard,^(C) and do not be unfaithful^(D) to the wife of your youth.

¹⁴ For the unbelieving husband has been sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife has been sanctified through her believing husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy.^(A)

⁶ An elder must be blameless,^(A) faithful to his wife, a man whose children believe^[a] and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient.

¹¹ In the same way, the women^[a] are to be worthy of respect, not malicious talkers^(A) but temperate^(B) and trustworthy in everything.

¹² A deacon must be faithful to his wife^(C) and must manage his children and his household well.^(D)

⁴ He must manage his own family well and see that his children obey him, and he must do so in a manner worthy of full^[a] respect.^{(A) 5} (If anyone does not know how to manage his own family, how can he take care of God’s church?)^(B)

⁴ “Haven’t you read,” he replied, “that at the beginning the Creator ‘made them male and female,’^{[a](A) 5} and said, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh’^[b]?^{(B) 6} So they are no longer two, but one flesh. Therefore what God has joined together, let no one separate.”

² But since sexual immorality is occurring, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman with her own husband.

¹⁰ “Yet the Israelites will be like the sand on the seashore, which cannot be measured or counted.^(A) In the place where it was said to them, ‘You are not my people,’ they will be called ‘children of the living God.’^(B)