Questions From Corinth

1 Corinthians 7

The things wrote to Paul........a letter was written to Paul about some situations with the brothers and sisters in the church. Some hard difficult questions.

One thing to note about about Paul answers to these questions.....

1 Corinthians 7:10 “And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband:”

Mark 10......Jesus specifically on marriage and divorce.....to sum it up God hates divorce.

1 Corinthians 7:12 “But to the rest speak I, not the Lord: If any brother hath a wife that believeth not, and she be pleased to dwell with him, let him not put her away.”

1 Corinthians 7:25 “Now concerning virgins I have no commandment of the Lord: yet I give my judgment, as one that hath obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful.”

1 Corinthians 7:40 “But she is happier if she so abide, after my judgment: and I think also that I have the Spirit of God.”

So at no point in this chapter does Paul intend to say that I’m going to be teaching you something that the Lord is not speaking about. He is simply saying I am teaching you something that I cannot find in the precise scriptural record of the teaching of Jesus. It is no less from the Spirit, it is no less trustworthy.

One other intro thought about this.......these are touchy subjects today as well as they were back then.........And in the Corinthian church, there were all kinds of issues, as you know, and marriage was one of them, marital status was a huge, huge issue.

The background, however, of what he’s doing here is the Corinthian chaos. People in the Corinthian church didn’t come out of a Jewish background, so they didn’t have an Old Testament view of marriage and divorce, even a convoluted one like the Jews. They came out of paganism. They came out of godlessness and worldliness, and myriad marital problems and entanglements and misunderstandings existed

Rome had no uniform marriage law. They would be under the influence of the Roman Empire. And the Empire contained, for example, many slaves and many of the believers were slaves. A marriage in the strict and legal sense did not even exist for slaves. A master could allow what was called contubernium or, literally, tent companionship - living together, we would say. This was entered by slaves without a ceremony and could be ended if the master chose to end it, and at any point he could sell one of the slaves, and that would virtually end it anyway. It is like today’s “live-in” sex partners.

Since many early Christians were slaves, it is very likely that they had lived in such unions in the past and maybe in multiple unions and maybe even in the present. Now what? What’s their status? What do they do?

Beyond the slaves, for the common people, there was a custom called usus, U-S-U-S. It specified if a woman had dwelt with a man for a year, she was his wife. That would be what we call common-law marriage, only in America, I think it’s seven years. Another way of marrying for common people was called coemptio in manum, marriage by sale. You went to a man who was a little low on cash and you bought his daughter. This is a rather traditional way, kind of the dowry. The father would sell his daughter to a husband with money.

The Quiet Man.....John Wayne......

Now, if you get beyond the common people, you get to the upper classes and the noble people, a little more of the elite folks, they had marriage called confarreatio.

They actually had a ceremony, the noble people. They had a joining of right hands. They said vows. They prayed prayers to Jupiter and to Juno.

They had rings, by the way, they had rings and you could find in ancient Roman literature the fact that they cut up a cadaver and somebody named Aulus Gellius cut up cadavers and said that there was a nerve that ran from the third finger on the left hand directly to the heart and so the ring should be put on the third finger of the left hand. That was part of the ceremony.

They had wreaths, veils, flowers, and cake, so guess where your wedding came from. An old Roman tradition picked up by the Roman Catholic Church and standardized.

The moral character of life in the Roman world and life around Corinth was low. Divorce was high where marriage even existed. And with the slaves, where marriage really didn’t exist, the changing of partners was a rather constant issue. And even the common people in their sort of informal covenants together broke them and went to other people.

On top of that, immorality was rampant. In fact, you can find in the literature that the Romans had wives for the cooking and the care of the house and concubines for their sexual needs. Concubinage was everywhere, fornication was everywhere, adultery was rampant. It was a horrible world.

So marriage in Paul’s day is a disaster, like in our day, chaotic. And, of course, among the Corinthians now that have come to Christ and they have been taught the standard of one man, one woman for life in a true covenant, a real covenant, a public covenant before God and before others, they have all kinds of questions, and the questions are the best way to break down this chapter.

Verse 1......It is good for a man not to touch a woman......

So first, it is good for a man not to touch a woman. That’s a euphemism for sexual relationships. It is good, it’s okay. It’s good not to have sexual relationships.

That is to say, it’s not evil. It’s good. It falls within the realm of goodness, kalos. It’s okay. Celibacy is all right. It’s honorable. It’s excellent. It’s all right not to marry. It’s all right to stay single. It’s all right never to do that.

Verse 2.......Contrast.....

“The general rule, however, because of immoralities, each man is to have his own wife and each woman is to have her own husband.” Why? Because of what? Immoralities. You say, “I want to stay single all my life.” Huh. Well, singleness is good if it is not the cause of sexual sin. The general rule is: Get married. The reason is simple. Because of temptation - because of temptation. There is no place for fornication .....

The fact of life is that if you try to stay single, as good as celibacy can be, marriage is the norm, and marriage is better if being single results in temptation. I want you to know that Paul doesn’t say get married because you find somebody that you like. He says, really, get married because you’re running at a very high risk of life if you don’t.

One preacher wrote this....... “There are six reasons for marriage that I jotted down. Procreation, Genesis 1:28; pleasure, Hebrews 13:4, the bed is not defiled, it’s undefiled, pleasure; purity, right here; provision, you take a wife in order that you might protect her and care for her and nourish her and cherish her as the Lord does the church; partnership, not good to be alone, you need a helper; and picture, a picture of Christ in the church.”

Right in the middle of those six is “purity”........The sexual relationship between a man and a woman is pure before God and anything else is not.

Everything was so sexually immoral around these Corinthian, their thinking was to just stay single.....

Paul started off by saying that would be good, nothing wrong with staying celibate, but if that is a problem then get married......that would be best to in the case of avoiding fornication.

Verse 3-5.......So Paul is saying - there are some people saying, “Well, should we just stay single? Should we just be celibate? Should we see sex as evil?” Why would they say that? Because it mostly was in their world. It was just immorality everywhere, fornication everywhere, adultery everywhere, all the time, by everybody. And so some of them think they’re taking the noble high ground and saying, you know, “Maybe we just don’t do that at all” because it was a pornographic culture, it was a debased culture.

You know, it’s nothing new for that to be the conclusion that people make in a time of debased living. I think there were many mediaeval monks who made that conclusion, that the high ground was to be celibate. They were seeing sexual relationships of any kind in any relationship as some kind of a defilement.

But Paul says, “Look, it’s okay to be single, it’s okay to live without any relationships with the opposite sex, but it’s a whole lot better to marry because of immoralities. And then when you do marry, you have the duty to fulfill to each other.”

That duty, obviously, is to render the physical affection that is consistent and God ordained for the procreation and the pleasure of people in a marriage. In fact, the duty is so high in a marriage that the wife doesn’t even have authority over her own body, the husband does. And likewise, the husband doesn’t have authority over his own body, but the wife does.

So stop depriving one another. Paul says that’s not what God is asking. You look at the culture you live in and the history you come from in the past and all of that and maybe you want to say - the high ground, the noble ground in this sex-saturated, sex-mad culture is to just say, “I’ll never do that, I’m going to live a life of complete abstinence, and this is the level of purity.” Paul says, that’s good, that’s not wrong, that’s not bad. But for most people, that’s going to lead to immorality, so have your own wife, have your own husband, and fulfill your duties to each other, and do not deprive each other of that.

You think that you’ll be more pure by withholding that. The truth is you’re going to go right down the path that Satan wants you to go, into sin, because you’re going to be tempted because of your inability to exercise self-control. Get married for the sake of purity, and when you’re married, fulfill your marriage covenant physically, do not deprive each other except for some great spiritual cause, and come back together again so that you don’t put yourself in a position that Satan would tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

Verse 6-7........Now, Paul says this in verse 6, “I say this by way of concession, not of command. Yet I wish that all men were even as I myself am. However, each man has his own gift from God, one in this manner, and another in that.”

What he is saying is, “Look, celibacy is a gift. It’s a gift. And I’m just conceding the fact, not commanding it. I can’t command celibacy because that wouldn’t be right. But I would, by way of concession, say, ‘I wish you were like me,’” which is to say that he’s what? He’s not married.

Was he ever married? Most of us think he was because he was a member of the Sanhedrin, and you had to be married to be a member of the Sanhedrin. What happened to his wife? Who knows, we don’t know. We don’t think he left her at home and took off for the rest of his life. So he probably lost his wife in death.

He says to the Corinthians in 1 Corinthians chapter 9, “A man has a right to lead about a wife,” has that right, but Paul did not exercise that right, and it was based upon the fact that each man has his own gift from God.

Verse 8-9......Unmarried and widows.......most believe this is divorced and the widowed .....because he specifies virgins in this chapter........and some just believe that this is just referring to all unmarried people.

Verse 8, Well, it’s good, again it’s good to be single, so it’s good to stay single. It’s good so that you can serve, so that you can be free as verses 32, 33, and 34 were pointed out to you.

Look at verse 9. If they do not have self-control, let them what? Marry. It’s better to marry than to burn. Not burn in hell but burn with desire. It’s fine. You were married, now you’re single, be single, stay single, stay focused, live your life that way. That is preferable. I think that’s great advice from the apostle Paul, great advice.

But if you need to be married, if that’s a problem physically, get married.

1 Timothy 5:14, the apostle Paul makes this very clear when he’s talking about widows there. He says, “I want younger widows to get married, bear children, keep house, give the enemy no occasion for reproach, for some have already turned aside to follow Satan.” You don’t want a lot of young widows with all their desires being vulnerable to evil things around them.

Stay single if you’re able. Paul was able and he was focused, and he was given that gift. It indicates that God can give that gift even after marriage if He so desires.

Paul is settling things down with all the questions......staying single is good if it is to set our minds and hearts on Jesus Christ.....but if we have problems in the flesh go ahead and marry and not open yourself up to temptations because you are burning with passion.

Verse 10-17........Some in this church have come to faith in Christ but their spouses hadn’t. Men and women and one of the questions was..... “Do I stay with an unbeliever?”.......Do not be unequally yoked......Light and darkness should not be joined together, right?

The Lord’s instruction not Paul’s .......Matthew 5.....Matthew 19.....Mark 10......

The wife/husband shouldn’t leave her husband/wife. Why? Because God hates divorce and because God joins together every couple. What God has joined together, let not man separate. So he reiterates what the Lord taught.

God hates divorce. Don’t divorce. One man, one woman, in one union, the indivisible one, for life, no separation.

Now you come to verse 12. “To the rest, I say” - not the Lord, this is from me, the Lord hasn’t got any instruction on this specifically - “if any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever and she consents to live with him” - this is the opposite situation. But in this case, this is a brother who has a wife and in this case she’s the unbeliever but she wants to live with him. Should he divorce her just because she’s an unbeliever? The answer: No, he must not divorce her.4

And a woman, verse 13, who has an unbelieving husband and he consents to live with her, she must not send her husband or divorce her husband. Why? “For the unbelieving husband is sanctified through his wife, and the unbelieving wife is sanctified through her believing husband; for, otherwise, your children are unclean but now they are holy.”

What is that saying? That is saying, “Look, if your unbelieving partner loves you and wants to stay with you, you stay in that marriage.”

Why? Because you become the sanctifying instrument in the life of that nonbeliever and in the lives of the children of that union because you are the one receiving the grace of God that is being poured out on your life that will spill over to those unbelieving people and to your husband or your wife and your children.

Instead of the Christian - listen - being defiled by the unbeliever, the unbeliever is cleansed by the presence of the Christian.

We’re not talking about salvation here, we’re simply talking about the pure, wonderful blessings of God falling on a believer and spilling over to a nonbeliever and making a purer, cleaner, lovelier home.

However, verse 15 creates another scenario. If the unbelieving one leaves, let him leave. Let him leave. Literally, if he takes himself out, that’s the verb, if he eliminates himself, chōrizō, technical term, really, for divorce. “If an unbeliever divorces a believer, let him leave. The brother or the sister is not under bondage in such cases, but God has called us to peace.”

Here is the second exception for divorce. The first is adultery, we saw that in Matthew 19, Matthew 5.

Second one is an unbeliever divorces a believer. You are not under bondage. The bondage is broken, the bond is broken. You are no longer bound.

Romans 7. The married woman is bound by law to her husband while he is living. If her husband dies, she is released from that law. Same language here. If an unbeliever leaves, you are not bound.

What does that mean? The union has been broken, you no longer are bound by it, which then assumes that you have the right to remarry if a nonbeliever leaves because God has called us to peace, and the blessings of peace are what God wants for His children.

You say, “Well, I think I’ll just hang on until the dying day. I think I’ll fight this guy all the way to the end. I think I’ll make it really impossible for him to divorce me because I want to see him saved.”

Good. However, verse 16 is written for you. “How do you know” - “How do you know, O wife, whether you’ll save your husband?” That’s pretty practical, isn’t it? Marriage is not an evangelistic tool. It’s an evangelistic context, but don’t think that just by hanging onto this guy that somehow you’re going to save him.

How do you know whether you’ll save him? Or how do you know, husband, whether you’ll save your wife? That’s not the point. You have no knowledge of that. When the unconverted person is determined to leave and seeks a divorce, you don’t need to perpetuate the tension and the frustration and the hatred and the animosity under some notion that you might be the only person on the planet who can be the instrument of salvation. That’s for God to decide.

Well, the summary comes in verse 17, and this answers another question: Should salvation change our marital status?.......

Salvation doesn’t really change anything. Now that you’re a believer, you don’t have to give up sex, throw out your partner - doesn’t change anything. If you - he gives some illustrations and analogies.

Verses 18-24.....Don’t become uncircumcised. If you were called in uncircumcision, don’t be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but what matters is the keeping of the commandments of God.

And that’s simply an analogy and an illustration to say everybody remains in the condition in which he was called. So if you were saved single, that doesn’t change. If you were saved married, that doesn’t change. If you were saved and all of a sudden your unconverted spouse wants to divorce you, stay the way you are. Stay the way you are.

If you are a slave you are still able to obey and honor Christ........

In ways that truly count, no man is freer than a Christian....No bondage is as terrible as that of sin, from which Christ frees the believer.

Those who are not slaves, but free in the social sense, are in the spiritual sense made slaves/servants of Christ in salvation.

Once more the point is that outward circumstances matter little. The important thing for the free man is his relationship to Christ; his whole life is to be lived in lowly service to his Master. Nothing matters alongside this.

You were bought with a price!!!! Do not return to the bondage of this world!

Verses 25-38..........So “I have no command of the Lord.” The Lord didn’t say anything - the Lord didn’t say anything. “However, I will give you my judgment,” literally, “as one who by the mercy of the Lord is trustworthy” or faithful. “I will give you a faithful judgment as one who is trustworthy” because he is inspired by the Lord. “I think, then, that this is good, in view of the present distress, that it is good for a man to remain as he is.”

This is just good teaching here.....nothing wrong spiritually with staying single or marrying....we have established that, but from what Paul sees and understands what is to come.....it would be better to stay single.

Why? because it is going to get rough for them........Persecution....

Trouble in the flesh....carries the meaning of under pressure......”pressed”

The idea here is that the whole spiritual walk would a lot less pressing if it is just one.....rather than the family.

The single can mind the things of the Lord, only!

The married has the things of their spouse, children!

Imagine that pressure!

I have heard some commentators talk about that Paul knew full well how to use families to get people to renounce the Lord and to do what he wanted.

That is tough for those with a family!

Human life is brief.....

Verses 30-31....

Believers are not swept away in the emotions of this life, so as to lose motivation, hope, and purpose.

Mourners tend to be engrossed in their mourning. Those that rejoice are taken up with their happiness. Purchasers concentrate on their new possessions. In the prevailing distress and the shortened time all will be jolted out of their normal attitudes. Believers should accordingly not be preoccupied with their earthly circumstances; they should be detached from them all.

This world is passing away.

In the next few verses Paul describes again the contrast between being married and unmarried.....nothing wrong spiritually with either one, but the hard road that they were about to go down would be somewhat more tolerable if you were not married........

Marriage has no relation to the eternal, right? You remember when they said to Jesus, “Whose wife shall she be in heaven?” And Jesus said, “In heaven, there is neither marrying nor giving in marriage.”

This is good advice. Paul says the pressure of the system, the problems of the flesh, living in this life, and the passing of the world means that if you can concentrate on the eternal things in dire times, you simplify your life. We’re all going to have to simplify. We’re all going to have to pull things in. We’re all going to have to live in these difficult, difficult times. But for single people, life is simpler and not nearly as threatening or painful.

Being divided over things… these are not sinful things it is just responsibilities that you have accepted by being a spouse and a parent.

Verses 36-38........So then both he who gives his own virgin daughter in marriage does well and he who doesn’t give her in marriage will do well if this pleases her. But if it gets to the point where this is now an action that is unbecoming to her, that is irritating to her, that she doesn’t desire, that she doesn’t want, let her marry. So if she wants to stay single, keep her, care for her, let her invest her life in the kingdom and the advance of the gospel. But if she wants to get married, let her marry.

Verses 39-40......A wife is bound as long as her husband lives but if her husband’s dead, she’s free to be married to whom she wishes, with one provision - what is it? - only what? Only in the Lord. Only marry believers. Only in the Lord.

And I say this to you that are single, particularly. If you can remain single in the service of Christ, do so, but not to the jeopardy of your purity. If that’s an issue, get married. And if that’s an issue, don’t postpone your marriage because marriage postponed constitutes an illegitimate single life. If you don’t have the gift of singleness, get married.

Summary........Well, all of that to say Paul gives us some great practical help here - doesn’t he? - in this chapter. Really wonderful choices here. Isn’t that like our Lord who gives us such grace - such wonderful grace? For single people, don’t delay. If God’s designed you for marriage, get married. If you’re divorced or widowed and you can stay single, stay single. If not, and you have grounds for remarriage, get married. If you’re widowed and you can stay single, stay single; if not, get married. If you’re married to a believer, remain. If you’re married to a nonbeliever and he wants to stay or she wants to stay, remain, and be a sanctifying blessing to the family. And if you’re married to an unbeliever who wants out, let him go. You’re not in bondage to that person.

Grace.......A commentary I read in this study, the pastor said this at the end........ “You say, “Well, look, I’m so far down the line, I’ve already messed up all that.” Well, you’ll be glad to know if we confess our sins, He’s faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness, right? It’s all about His forgiveness. There must have been many such in Corinth who were seeking His forgiveness. Accept His grace and live from now on the way He commands us to live.”