Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 1 Corinthians · About this commentary
The Time Is Short
1 Corinthians 7:25-31
25 Now concerning virgins, I have no commandment from the Lord, but I give my judgment as one who has obtained mercy from the Lord to be trustworthy. · WEB
Paul gives advice he is careful to label as his own, and grounds it in the shortness of the time rather than in any suspicion of marriage.
Now concerning virgins, I have no commandment from the Lord, but I give my judgment as one who has obtained mercy from the Lord to be trustworthy 1 Corinthians 7:25.
The fourth now concerning, and the most careful attribution in the chapter. He has no word from the Lord and does not manufacture one; what he offers is my judgment, and even the credential he claims for it is mercy rather than authority. A reader is being told how much weight to place on what follows.
Therefore I think that because of the distress that is on us, it's good for a man to remain as he is 1 Corinthians 7:26.
The reason is circumstantial — the distress that is on us — not a judgment about marriage itself. Whatever pressure was on the churches then, the counsel is tied to it, which is why the same chapter can recommend singleness and insist that marrying is no sin two verses later.
But if you marry, you have not sinned. If a virgin marries, she has not sinned. Yet such will have oppression in the flesh, and I want to spare you 1 Corinthians 7:28.
Said twice, so it cannot be missed. The ascetic party in Corinth would have preferred a prohibition and does not get one. And the motive behind the advice is disclosed: I want to spare you. He is not defending an ideal; he is trying to reduce somebody's difficulties.
But I say this, brothers: the time is short 1 Corinthians 7:29.
Here is the real ground of the chapter, and it is eschatological rather than ascetic. The word pictures a sail being taken in, a space contracted. What follows is a series of five clauses that apply it to every ordinary condition of life — those who have wives as though they had none, those who weep as though they did not, those who rejoice, those who buy, those who use the world 1 Corinthians 7:29–31.
The sequence is what keeps the passage from being about marriage at all. Weeping, rejoicing and buying are not renounced any more than marriage is; each is to be held loosely, because the arrangement they belong to is temporary. For the mode of this world passes away 1 Corinthians 7:31 — the word suggests a scene or a fashion, the way things are currently arranged. Paul is not asking for detachment from people but for a correct estimate of a stage set.
That estimate is the letter's habit. A church absorbed in its own present — full, rich, reigning already 1 Corinthians 4:8 — is repeatedly reminded of the tense it actually lives in: waiting for a revelation 1 Corinthians 1:7, proclaiming a death until he comes 1 Corinthians 11:26, and expecting a trumpet 1 Corinthians 15:52.
held with reason What this mark means