Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Corinthians · About this commentary
Now Concerning the Things You Wrote
1 Corinthians 7:1-7
1 Now concerning the things about which you wrote to me: it is good for a man not to touch a woman. · WEB
The letter turns from what Paul heard to what they asked, and the first answer treats marriage as mutual obligation with a symmetry that was unusual in its world.
Now concerning the things about which you wrote to me: it is good for a man not to touch a woman 1 Corinthians 7:1.
The letter's hinge. From here Paul answers questions the Corinthians had sent, and some form of now concerning will mark six sections 1 Corinthians 7:25 1 Corinthians 8:1 1 Corinthians 12:1 1 Corinthians 16:1 1 Corinthians 16:12. The opening clause is best read as their position rather than his — a slogan from the ascetic party, the mirror image of the libertine slogans of chapter six. Both parties had reduced a complex matter to a rule; Paul spends forty verses declining to.
But, because of sexual immoralities, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband 1 Corinthians 7:2.
The reply is a but, and the reasoning is pastoral rather than ideal. In a city like Corinth, celibacy imposed on people not suited to it produces the disaster of the preceding chapter. Note that both clauses are given twice over, once for the man and once for the woman — a pattern that runs through the whole chapter and is its most striking feature.
The wife doesn't have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise also the husband doesn't have authority over his own body, but the wife does 1 Corinthians 7:4.
The symmetry here was remarkable in the ancient world. That a wife's body was her husband's would have been unremarkable; that a husband's body was his wife's, stated in the same breath and in the same words, was not. And the sentence is doing something more than balancing rights. It applies to marriage exactly what the previous chapter said of every believer — you are not your own 1 Corinthians 6:19. The argument for chastity outside marriage and the argument for generosity inside it are the same argument.
Don't deprive one another, unless it is by consent for a season, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer 1 Corinthians 7:5.
The one permitted exception has three conditions attached — by agreement, for a limited time, and for prayer — and even then the instruction is to be together again, with a reason given: that Satan doesn't tempt you because of your lack of self-control. Spiritual devotion is not allowed to become a pretext for withdrawing from an obligation, which is a check on the ascetic impulse the chapter keeps having to restrain.
But this I say by way of concession, not of commandment. Yet I wish that all men were like me. However, each man has his own gift from God 1 Corinthians 7:6–7.
Paul distinguishes his concession from a command, states his own preference for singleness, and then immediately refuses to universalize it. Each man has his own gift from God — and singleness is here called a gift, as marriage is treated as one elsewhere Proverbs 18:22 Matthew 19:11–12. Neither state is the higher calling; both are assignments, and the chapter's recurring counsel is to serve God in the one actually given 1 Corinthians 7:17 1 Corinthians 7:24.
held with reason What this mark means