1 Corinthians 7: What the Passage Says

The Chapter in a Sentence

Paul answers questions the Corinthians had written to him about marriage and single life. He gives instructions to married couples, to the unmarried and widows, and to believers married to unbelievers, saying that a wife should not separate from her husband and a husband should not divorce his wife, and that if an unbeliever leaves, the believer is not bound. He then tells each person to stay in the situation they were in when God called them, whether circumcised or not, slave or free. Because of what he calls the present distress and the shortness of the time, he says staying unmarried is good, while marrying is not a sin.

Claim by Claim

1. 7:1
   • Paul turns to the matters about which his readers wrote to him.
   • It is good for a man not to touch a woman.
2. 7:2
   • Because of sexual immorality, each man is to have his own wife.
   • Each woman is to have her own husband.
3. 7:3
   • The husband is to pay his wife what he owes her.
   • The wife likewise is to pay her husband what she owes him.
4. 7:4
   • The wife does not have authority over her own body.
   • The husband has authority over the wife's body.
   • The husband does not have authority over his own body.
   • The wife has authority over the husband's body.
5. 7:5
   • Husband and wife are not to deprive one another.
   • Depriving one another is permitted only by mutual agreement.
   • Such abstinence is only for a set time.
   • The purpose of the abstinence is to give themselves to fasting and prayer.
   • They are to come together again afterward.
   • The reason for coming together again is so that Satan does not tempt them.
   • Satan's opportunity to tempt them comes through their lack of self-control.
6. 7:6
   • Paul says this as a concession.
   • Paul does not say this as a command.
7. 7:7
   • Paul wishes all men were as he himself is.
   • Each man has his own gift from God.
   • One man's gift is of one kind and another's of another kind.
8. 7:8
   • Paul addresses the unmarried and the widows.
   • Paul says it is good for them if they remain as he is.
9. 7:9
   • If they cannot exercise self-control, they are to marry.
   • It is better to marry than to burn.
10. 7:10
    • Paul gives a command to the married.
    • Paul says the command is not his but the Lord's.
    • A wife is not to separate from her husband.
11. 7:11
    • If she does separate, she is to remain unmarried or be reconciled to her husband.
    • A husband is not to send his wife away.
12. 7:12
    • Paul says the following is spoken by himself, not by the Lord.
    • Paul addresses the rest of them.
    • If a brother has an unbelieving wife and she consents to live with him, he is not to send her away.
13. 7:13
    • If a woman has an unbelieving husband and he consents to live with her, she is not to leave him.
14. 7:14
    • The unbelieving husband is sanctified by the wife.
    • The unbelieving wife is sanctified by the husband.
    • Otherwise their children would be unclean.
    • As it is, their children are holy.
15. 7:15
    • If the unbelieving partner departs, that partner is to be let go.
    • A brother or sister is not under bondage in such cases.
    • God has called us to peace.
16. 7:16
    • Paul asks the wife how she knows whether she will save her husband.
    • Paul asks the husband how he knows whether he will save his wife.
17. 7:17
    • Each person is to walk according to what God has distributed to him.
    • Each person is to walk according to the calling by which the Lord called him.
    • Paul orders this in all the churches.
18. 7:18
    • If a man was called already circumcised, he is not to remove the marks of circumcision.
    • If a man was called uncircumcised, he is not to be circumcised.
19. 7:19
    • Circumcision is nothing.
    • Uncircumcision is nothing.
    • What matters is the keeping of God's commandments.
20. 7:20
    • Each person is to remain in the calling in which he was called.
21. 7:21
    • If you were called as a slave, do not let it concern you.
    • If you are able to become free, make use of it rather.
    • It is left unclear whether the opportunity to be used is freedom or remaining in slavery.
22. 7:22
    • A slave called in the Lord is the Lord's freedman.
    • A free man who is called is Christ's slave.
23. 7:23
    • You were bought with a price.
    • You are not to become slaves of men.
24. 7:24
    • Paul addresses them as brothers.
    • Each person is to remain with God in the condition in which he was called.
25. 7:25
    • Concerning virgins, Paul has no command from the Lord.
    • Paul gives his own judgment.
    • Paul gives it as one who has received mercy from the Lord to be faithful.
26. 7:26
    • Paul supposes that this is good because of the present distress.
    • It is good for a man to remain as he is.
27. 7:27
    • If you are bound to a wife, do not seek to be released.
    • If you are free from a wife, do not seek a wife.
28. 7:28
    • If you marry, you have not sinned.
    • If a virgin marries, she has not sinned.
    • Those who marry will have trouble in the flesh.
    • Paul is sparing them.
29. 7:29
    • Paul addresses them as brothers.
    • The time has been shortened.
    • Those who have wives should live as though they had none.
30. 7:30
    • Those who weep should live as though they did not weep.
    • Those who rejoice should live as though they did not rejoice.
    • Those who buy should live as though they possessed nothing.
31. 7:31
    • Those who use this world should live as not making full use of it.
    • The outward form of this world is passing away.
32. 7:32
    • Paul wants them to be free from anxiety.
    • The unmarried man is concerned about the things of the Lord.
    • The unmarried man is concerned about how to please the Lord.
33. 7:33
    • The married man is concerned about the things of the world.
    • The married man is concerned about how to please his wife.
34. 7:34
    • There is a difference between a wife and a virgin.
    • The unmarried woman is concerned about the things of the Lord.
    • Her concern is that she may be holy in body and in spirit.
    • The married woman is concerned about the things of the world.
    • The married woman is concerned about how to please her husband.
35. 7:35
    • Paul says this for their own benefit.
    • Paul does not say it in order to put a restraint on them.
    • Paul says it for what is seemly.
    • Paul says it so that they may wait upon the Lord without distraction.
36. 7:36
    • If a man thinks he is behaving improperly toward his virgin, and she is past the flower of her age, and it ought so to be, he is to do what he wishes.
    • Such a man does not sin.
    • They are to marry.
    • It is left unclear whether the virgin is the man's daughter or the woman he is betrothed to.
    • It is left unclear whether the condition described is that the woman is past her prime or that the man is at the height of passion.
37. 7:37
    • A man who stands firm in his heart, is under no necessity, has authority over his own will, and has decided in his heart to keep his virgin, does well.
38. 7:38
    • He who gives his virgin in marriage does well.
    • He who does not give her in marriage does better.
39. 7:39
    • A wife is bound by the law as long as her husband lives.
    • If her husband dies, she is free to be married to whomever she wishes.
    • She may marry only in the Lord.
40. 7:40
    • In Paul's judgment she is happier if she remains as she is.
    • Paul thinks that he too has the Spirit of God.

Words Worth Explaining

Every language note in this chapter, gathered. These explain what a word meant, never what it means for the reader.

7:1

Paul is replying point by point to a letter the Corinthians had sent him; phrases like "Now concerning" mark where he takes up each of their questions. "Touch a woman" is a Greek idiom for sexual relations, not for physical contact in general. Many readers of the Greek take the whole sentence to be a slogan Paul is quoting back from the Corinthians' own letter before he qualifies it.

7:2

"Fornication" translates porneia, a broad term covering sexual activity outside marriage of every kind, not one narrow offense.

7:3

"Due benevolence" sounds in modern English like kindness or generosity, but the Greek is the language of debt: what each partner owes the other, here sexual relations. The oldest manuscripts read simply "what is owed."

7:4

In Greek and Roman custom a husband's claim over his wife's body was simply assumed. What would have struck the first hearers is that Paul says the sentence twice, in both directions, giving the wife exactly the same claim over her husband.

7:5

"Defraud" here means deprive or withhold, not cheat someone financially. "Incontinency" is an old word for lack of self-control and has no connection to the modern medical sense. The words "fasting and" are absent from the earliest manuscripts, which read only "prayer."

7:6

"By permission" means as a concession, something conceded rather than commanded. What "this" points back to is disputed: either the temporary abstinence just described, or the advice to marry at all.

7:7

"Proper" in 1611 English means one's own, belonging to that person. It does not mean suitable or correct.

7:8

"The unmarried" translates a word meaning simply not currently married. Widows are named separately, so the group probably includes the widowed and divorced as well as those who never married.

7:9

"Contain" in 1611 English means to hold oneself in, to keep control of oneself. "Burn" is burning with sexual desire.

7:10

Paul is marking a distinction he keeps up through this section: here he passes on a ruling he traces to a saying of Jesus, while in verse 12 he gives his own judgment on a situation no such saying covers.

7:11

"Put away" is the standard KJV expression for divorcing a wife. The wife "departing" and the husband "putting away" are most likely the same act described from each side, not two different legal procedures; in the Greek world a wife could end a marriage by leaving it.

7:12

"Brother" here means a fellow Christian, not a blood relative. "The rest" are couples where only one partner has become a believer, a situation that would arise constantly in a new congregation.

7:14

"Sanctified," "holy" and "unclean" are borrowed from Jewish purity vocabulary. Holy means set apart for God; unclean means standing outside that sphere. Neither word means dirty, and "unclean" children would not mean illegitimate ones.

7:15

"Not under bondage" means not bound, not held to the obligation just described. The KJV wording suggests slavery, and the Greek verb here is a different word from the one translated "bound" in verse 39.

7:16

The Greek can be read two ways, and it does not settle which is meant. Hopefully: "who knows, you may yet save your husband," which argues for staying. Or discouragingly: "how can you be sure you will save him?", which argues for letting the unbeliever go.

7:17

"Ordain" here means lay down as a rule or direct; it has nothing to do with ordaining ministers. "Walk" is a standard biblical idiom for how a person conducts his life.

7:18

Circumcision, the cutting away of the foreskin, was the bodily mark of belonging to Israel. "Become uncircumcised" refers to a real surgical procedure, called epispasm, by which Jewish men stretched or restored the foreskin. The usual motive was to avoid being recognized as a Jew at the gymnasium or the baths, where men exercised and bathed naked.

7:19

God's commandments are the rules God gave his people to live by.

7:20

A "calling" here does not mean a job. It means the life and situation you were in when God called you.

7:21

"Servant" in this passage translates doulos, a slave who is legally owned property, not a hired worker. The second sentence is one of the most disputed in the letter: the Greek says only "rather use," with no object supplied, so it can mean "take your freedom instead" or "make use of your present condition instead." Translators divide, and the rendering here picks one side.

7:22

A "freeman" in the KJV sense is a freedman, a slave who has been legally released. Under Roman law a freedman kept lasting obligations to his former owner, who became his patron, so the word carries the memory of the slavery it ended.

7:23

"Bought with a price" is slave market language: the sum paid to acquire a person, or the sum paid to purchase a slave's freedom.

7:25

"Virgins" translates parthenos, which can mean an unmarried woman generally or specifically a woman engaged to be married. Who exactly is in view runs as a question through verse 38. "Faithful" here means trustworthy or reliable, not full of faith.

7:26

"The present distress" translates a word meaning pressure, constraint or crisis. It may point to a particular hardship then pressing on Corinth, such as a famine or local hostility, or to the general pressure of an age Paul thinks is running out. The Greek does not specify.

7:27

"Bound" and "loosed" are ordinary words for tied and untied. "Loosed from a wife" need not mean divorced or widowed; it can simply mean unattached.

7:28

"Trouble in the flesh" means hardship in ordinary bodily life, not moral corruption. In the KJV "flesh" often just means human existence with its physical needs and limits. "I spare you" means Paul wants to spare them that hardship, though some read it as Paul sparing them the details of what it involves.

7:29

"The time is short" renders a verb meaning drawn together or compressed, the picture of a sail being furled or cloth gathered in. The point is that the remaining interval has been shortened, not simply that life goes by quickly.

7:31

"Abusing" is a false friend. In 1611 it meant using up or using to the full, making the most of something; it did not mean mistreating. "The fashion of this world" translates schema, the outward form or arrangement of things, close to the set of a stage that is about to be struck.

7:32

"Carefulness" in 1611 English means anxiety, being full of care. The same root gives "careth" in the verses that follow, where it means being preoccupied with something or taken up by it, not being fond of it.

7:34

The manuscripts and the ancient punctuation divide here. The phrase translated "is divided" can attach to the end of verse 33, making the point that the married man is pulled two ways, or to the start of verse 34, making the point that there is a difference between a wife and a virgin. The KJV follows the second option; most modern translations follow the first.

7:35

"Cast a snare upon you" is the image of throwing a noose or net over someone to restrict his movement. "Comely" means seemly or fitting, proper in bearing and conduct.

7:36

This is the most disputed passage in the chapter. "His virgin" may be the man's fiancee, or a daughter whose marriage he is responsible for arranging, or a woman he shares a household with but does not sleep with. The Greek does not say which. "If she pass the flower of her age" translates a single word that may describe the woman as past the usual age for marrying, or may describe the man as at the peak of his sexual urges. The rendering chooses one reading out of several defensible ones.

7:37

"Keep his virgin" means keep her as she is, that is unmarried, rather than keep her for himself. "Having no necessity" means being under no compulsion or pressure of circumstance.

7:38

The verb translated "giveth in marriage" can mean give a woman in marriage, which fits a father, or simply marry her, which fits a fiance. Which sense is right depends on how verse 36 is taken.

7:39

"Bound by the law" means held by binding obligation; the words "by the law" are missing from the oldest manuscripts, which read simply "bound." "Only in the Lord" is compressed in the Greek. It is usually taken to mean she must marry a fellow Christian, though it can be read as meaning she should marry in a way consistent with her faith.

7:40

"Happier" translates a word closer to more fortunate or better off than to more cheerful. The closing sentence is deliberately understated in Greek, and many readers hear a note of irony in it aimed at Corinthians who claimed the Spirit for their own opinions.