Sermon Tone Analysis

Background

This is the first of the questions the church had written to Paul about.

Their society tolerated fornication, adultery, homosexuality, polygamy, and concubinage.

Juvenal (60–140 A.D.), the Roman poet, wrote about women who rejected their own sex: they wore helmets, delighted in feats of strength, and with exposed breasts hunted pigs with spears.

He also said they wore out their bridal veils with so many marriages.

Under Roman law and customs of that day, four types of marriage were practiced.

The first type: Slaves generally were considered to be subhuman chattel.

If a man and woman slave wanted to be married, they might be allowed to live together in what was called a contubernium, which means “tent companionship.”

The arrangement lasted only as long as the owner permitted.

He was perfectly free to separate them, to arrange for other partners, or to sell one or the other.

Many of the early Christians were slaves, and some of them had lived—perhaps were still living—in this sort of marital relationship.

A second type: of marriage was called usus, a form of common law marriage that recognized a couple to be husband and wife after they had lived together for a year.

A third type was the coemptio in manum, in which a father would sell his daughter to a prospective husband.

The fourth type of marriage was much more elevated.

The Patrician class, the nobility, were married in a service called the confarreatio, on which the modern Christian marriage ceremony is based.

It was adopted by the Roman Catholic church and used with certain Christian modifications—coming, with little change, into Protestantism through the Reformation.

The original ceremony involved participation by both families in the arrangements for the wedding, a matron to accompany the bride and a man to accompany the groom, exchanging of vows, the wearing of a veil by the bride, the giving of a ring (placed on the third finger of the left hand), a bridal bouquet, and a wedding cake.[1]

[1] MacArthur, J. F., Jr. (1984). 1 Corinthians (p.

154).

Chicago: Moody Press.

1 Corinthians 7: