1 CORINTHIANS CHAPTER 7
Instructions with Regard to Marriage. 1 Cor. 7, 1–40.
The question of celibacy in general: V. 27. Art thou bound unto a wife? Seek not to be loosed. Art thou loosed from a wife? Seek not a wife. V. 28. But and if thou marry, thou hast not sinned; and if a virgin marry, she hath not sinned. Nevertheless, such shall have trouble in the flesh; but I spare you.
Paul now applies his advice in detail: Are you bound to a wife? Do not be seeking separation. Are you (as a bachelor or widower) without a wife? Do not be seeking a wife. In the former case the lawfully wedded person sins by trying to break the marriage-tie; in the latter case the one that does not accept the advice of Paul is making himself liable to many forms of unpleasantness.
But Paul does not want to be misunderstood as coming into conflict with the general rule of God, so he hastens to add: But if indeed you have married, you have not sinned, and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. The Corinthian Christians were not to set up a false ascetic ideal in forbidding marriage. There was no sin connected with entering into that state or with being in that state.
The only thing was, as Paul states: But affliction for the flesh such will have; I, however, am seeking to spare you. He is not referring mainly to the special cross of the married woman, Genesis 3, 16, but to all forms of tribulation which are liable to strike the body, the physical life, in such times as were upon the Christians.
Persecution was more bitter to endure for the married, because to the perils threatening the body and life there were added the cares and worries for the well-being of the members of the family. Very often, indeed, the alternative lay between duty to God and affection to wife and children. It is in that sense that Paul desires to spare them, to save them a good deal of temporal adversity by giving them his advice.