1 Corinthians 7:1-16--Principles for Marriage

Principles for Marriage
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7 Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” 2 But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. 3 The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. 5 Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

6 Now as a concession, not a command, I say this. 7 I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.

8 To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single, as I am. 9 But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.


10 To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband 11 (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife.

12 To the rest I say (I, not the Lord) that if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him, he should not divorce her. 13 If any woman has a husband who is an unbeliever, and he consents to live with her, she should not divorce him. 14 For the unbelieving husband is made holy because of his wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy because of her husband. Otherwise your children would be unclean, but as it is, they are holy. 15 But if the unbelieving partner separates, let it be so. In such cases the brother or sister is not enslaved. God has called you to peace. 16 For how do you know, wife, whether you will save your husband? Or how do you know, husband, whether you will save your wife?

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While most people think about this passage talking about marriage, Paul spends some time talking about singleness as well--in fact it's probably one of the only passages in the Bible that you can point to in order to talk to people about singleness, and I'll talk about that some as it's an important to me being a single person myself (at least currently), that we understand the entirety of what Paul says here and that we understand it in light of the rest of Scripture.  I may even link to a passage that one of the members of the preaching cohort at my church preached on this exact passage at the end (I think he preached on a few more verses than I'm going to include today).

First, let's remember that Paul just told them that their bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit--this letter seems to be written as Paul answering specific questions from the Corinthians because it sounds like they are asking about specific philosophies, teachings and practices as we see quotes in some areas that would seem to indicate that most of the translators think that Paul is quoting something from culture or their original letter and then answering it (even though we know punctuation marks were not in the original text).  In this case, they must have said something in counterargument about if they could not indulge their fleshly desires then it was just better to have sexual relations at all.  Let's also clarify that even for the pagans, the concepts of sex, marriage, and family are all still closely related--though the Romans did a good job at starting a sexual revolution that would put the sexual revolution of the 50's, 60's and 70's here in the USA to shame (more like the Romans should have been ashamed of their debauchery, but they felt no shame about it whatsoever, and Corinth was at the center of much of this and that's a big piece of what Paul is dealing with in 1 Corinthians).  It may even be fair to think of Corinth in the way we think of Las Vegas nowadays--"Sin City"--where people go to engage in indulge their lusts and passions and doing whatever you feel is right is what is right and are told to do what will make you happy--even though it never does make you happy.  Hedonism was very much alive and well at that time and thrives very much in our world today, even though we may find ourselves thinking we are much more advanced than such a pagan culture, we are not that different.  So if relationships are not for our sexual conquest and pleasure, then what are they good for?  (This is a question that I think they are asking, not one that I'm asking myself).

Paul seems to answer this question first by saying that if they burn with such lust and passion that they feel the need to have sex, then they are to get married and each man should have his own wife (one man and one woman like it was in the Garden of Eden) and that sex should stay inside the bounds of marriage.  Each of them should agree not to use the other to satisfy his or her own lusts but should agree that it is their duty to fulfill the sexual needs of the other--neither has authority over his or her own body--their body belongs to their spouse, and this works both ways, and nothing here is talking about either party abusing the other physically or sexually.  The only time that married people are meant to withhold sexual intimacy from one another is when they both agree to do it for a limited time as part of a type of fast where they use that time where they "hunger" to make them hunger more for God and long to be more intimate in their relationship with Him.  Remember we already discussed that there is more than one type of intimacy and there is an intimacy even greater than sex that we can experience with God--one day we won't even have sexual identity in our new bodies (there will be no more male and female, but we will be without that kind of distinction like the angels are, though we will be different from the angels and will judge them and rule over them).  The couple is then to come back together as soon as possible so as not to give room for Satan to tempt them to get their sexual lusts fulfilled by someone else or in some other way (like pornography).  Paul may not specifically call that out here, but that is a problem that plagues both men and women of the Church today and it disgusts me that you could walk into a "Christian" bookstore and find erotic texts sold there and that such books are read by so many in the Church-this should never be.

Now that Paul has set things straight for those in Corinth that seem to be passionate, and what the proper relationship between husband and wife is, he moves on to add his personal opinion to the instruction that has already been given (and he clarifies this part as his personal preference).  He says that he wishes for all of them that they were unmarried like he is so that they could be more free to take more risks in their ministry of the gospel without thought of how it might affect spouses and children--Paul is not saying that marriage or children or bad, in fact he has just finished calling them good and will call them both gifts from God in this passage, but he will also say here that he feels like singleness for those who can be content with it, is also a gift from God that allows the Christian to do things that never could be done otherwise.  For example, Paul moved from place to place often and had no real "home base" for many long years of his life and was often beaten and thrown into prison--do you think he would have still wanted to do this if he had a family waiting for him at home?  He often suffered and went without food or shelter for himself, but do you think that he would have been okay with putting his family through the same things?  Yet there are times and places where being married may actually be better for a husband and wife to go as a team together as missionaries in certain areas of the world and being single doesn't work.

Now Paul talks about remarriage--something we don't see discussed a lot in the Bible.  I believe in context that we're probably dealing with only a couple of situations here and this is probably not a "no-fault divorce" situation after both husband and wife were saved--the Bible as a whole seems pretty clear on that, even in the epistles that Paul wrote.  This would seem to address the issue of women, sometimes young women, whose husbands had died--maybe because of disease, maybe because of war, or maybe because of other factors.  In such cases Paul says that the bonds of matrimony only last until death and while it is better for the woman to remain unmarried if she can, it is understandable that she may not be able to for financial reasons or because she may still desire to have children or for some other reason and that it is okay for her to remarry.  We also know of situations where a married couple were both unsaved and one of them (often times the woman) would get saved first and the unsaved spouse would no longer want to be married to their believing spouse since everything had changed about them.  In such a case Paul tells the believer not to contest the divorce and that they are also free to remarry if they wish, but again, it may be better for them to remain single if they can.

On this idea of divorce, Paul makes it abundantly clear that for Christians the right answer is always reconciliation and is never divorce, and that this is no longer Paul's opinion, but is a command from the Lord.  God hates divorce--I know some modern translations have removed this from their translations, but you should be able to find it in Malachi 2:6 in a faithful translation of God's Word.


Malachi 2:16
New American Standard Bible16 “For I hate divorce,” says the Lord, the God of Israel, “and him who covers his garment with violence,” says the Lord of armies. “So be careful about your spirit, that you do not deal treacherously.”


Paul now goes back to interjecting his opinion with regards to the "mixed marriage" situation that I already addressed earlier.  Remember that we are never supposed to be unequally yoked to unbelievers as Christians so this situation should never have come up because a Christian and a non-Christian married each other that way to start off--that would be sin for the Christian and the Bible is pretty clear on that, however, there were lots of people coming to Christ out of idolatry and paganism of all kinds and there were disputes about how to raise their children if they had them and if they still wanted to be married or could still be married after so much had changed for the spouse that got saved.  Paul desired for them to stay together if possible as this would be the best chance for the unbelieving spouse and the children to come to know the gospel through the way that believing spouse lived it out, and again it was never for the Christian to initiate divorce.  We only see one exception to that given by Christ and that has to do specifically with marital unfaithfulness, which again is a sin issue that should not be happening between Christian couples.

There is some confusing language here about the children being holy or unclean that I'm not sure that I completely understand.  I don't think there's enough here for me to build a doctrine that children are somehow saved or made holy through the faith of their parents (or even just one parent), though some do try to build a doctrine out of this verse and talk about "being born into a Christian family" as if somehow that makes them saved--I think it's clear from the rest of Scripture that salvation is something individual for us and something we will individually be held to account for, though this may be addressing the issue many of ask about children who are too young to make that decision for themselves and maybe saying something like, if you divorce and your children are given over to  your unbelieving spouse and raised in a way where they grow up in rebellion to God, are you going to be okay with that?  Christians need to think about the eternity and souls of everyone involved in the decision and not be selfish in their choices about marriage and family.  God may use the believing spouse to help save the unbelieving spouse and the two of them may become even closer than ever before.  Christians should not give up on their unbelieving spouses, but should allow them to divorce them and turn the other cheek in the process if the unbelieving spouse no longer desires to be married to the believing spouse.

There will be a bit more that Paul will say on this topic later in the chapter, but this is probably again one of the most substantive passages on marriage and family in the Bible outside of the book of Ephesians which also says much in Chapters 5 and 6, but doesn't get into the matters of singleness and divorce--just marriage and children.

As promised, here's the message that my friend and currently my Sunday School teacher, Robert Cline, preached at my church on Single-minded Devotion to the Lord (and what the Bible has to say to single people):  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-SL83qogl-c&feature=youtu.be.  The video contains our entire worship service--the preaching starts about 24 minutes into the video. (here's a different link if you'd like to jump ahead to that point:  https://youtu.be/-SL83qogl-c?t=1478).