Singleness (1 Corinthians 7)
He recognizes that continence is a divine gift. Those who have not received it should not try to remain unmarried. Each has his own gift from God. The question of whether to marry or not cannot be decided by applying one law to all. Each must consider what gift God has given, and marriage, just as much as celibacy, is a gift from God.
Paul’s advice is conditioned by the present crisis (anangkē). This is usually taken to mean the troubles preceding the second advent, and indeed this is often held to be self-evident. But the word is never used in the New Testament in this way; the nearest is a reference to the troubles preceding the fall of Jerusalem (Luke 21:23). Paul often refers to Christ’s return, but he does not associate anangkē with it. When he uses this word it has meanings like ‘compulsion’ (v. 37), ‘compelled’ (9:16), ‘hardships’ (2 Cor. 6:4), etc., but never the events preceding the second coming. It seems here to denote more than the opposition the Christian always encounters. Some pressing constraint lay hard on the Corinthians at the time of writing (Bengel says firmly, ‘The famine in the time of Claudius, Acts xi. 28’). Whatever the precise meaning, Paul’s friends were at that time in unusually difficult circumstances, and in view of the troubled times Paul felt it best for them to stay as they were. When high seas are raging it is no time for changing ships.
Paul has consistently maintained that, while it is good for some not to marry, yet marriage is the normal state. There is nothing sinful about it. He repeats this. Though in the prevailing troubles he advised a man not to marry, he says plainly that it is no sin if he does. And so with a virgin. Paul’s reason for not advocating marriage is the many troubles (actually thlipsis, ‘trouble’ is singular) the married face, but he does not define the nature of the trouble. Robertson and Plummer appropriately cite Bacon, ‘He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune’, and ‘children sweeten labours, but they make misfortunes more bitter’. Marriage implies responsibility, and marriage in times of distress must lead to some kind of trouble. In this life is more literally ‘in the flesh’, an expression which here points to human weakness, ‘the totality of the limitations under which we live’ (Ruef). Paul’s tenderness comes out in his refusal to pursue the matter further. His I is emphatic; he for his part is trying (conative present) to spare them.
What I mean (‘But this I say’) gives what follows a heightened solemnity. Short is a perfect participle: ‘the time has been shortened’. Many see a reference to the second advent. This may be right, but though he often refers to the Lord’s return, Paul never elsewhere gives this kind of counsel with regard to it. Both in his earlier and his later epistles he uses the second advent to inspire people to blameless conduct (e.g. 1 Thess. 5:1–11; Phil. 1:9–11). The note of present crisis, so marked here, is absent. Those who see the second advent here never seem to face the question of why the last generation should live differently from any others. We all face the same judgment. Calvin thought of the shortness of life (so also Robertson); but it is difficult to see how this justifies the following instructions. RSV has ‘the appointed time’, which raises the question, ‘appointed for what?’ It is best to see a reference to prevailing circumstances at Corinth (the ‘crisis’ of v. 26). The culmination was evidently not far off; in this troubled period many kinds of conduct must be transformed. In particular those who have wives must be ‘as those who have none’.
Paul repeats his thought of vv. 27f. that he wishes his friends to be free from concern (‘anxieties’, RSV). The trying nature of the times meant that the married must take anxious thought for their partners: ‘A man who is a hero in himself becomes a coward when he thinks of his widowed wife and his orphaned children’ (Lightfoot on v. 26). This concern would distract from that perfect service of the Lord at which Paul aimed. But the unmarried man is concerned about the Lord’s affairs. Paul may see this as desirable (as most commentators hold). But he has just said that he wants his readers to be free from concern; he may thus mean that he wants their service of the Lord to be a relaxed acceptance of God’s will for their lives rather than a worried preoccupation with personal holiness and the like. MM shows that the verb areskō (please) includes the thought of service in the interests of another, in this case, of God. This is the extent of Paul’s preference for celibacy. He wants people to be given to the service of God without distraction.
33. The married man, by contrast, must have a certain concern about the affairs of this world. This does not, of course, mean ‘worldliness’, but is a reminder that the married man must take thought for the interests of his family. He has obligations, and their discharge demands some attention to the things of this world. He must face the question of how he can please (areskō, as in v. 32) his wife. We should probably take ‘and he is divided’ here rather than in v. 34. The man wants both to please the Lord and to please his wife. He ‘is divided’.