1 Corinthians 7:1

1. Advisory counsel as to marriage and celibacy, 1 Corinthians 7:1-9.

1. Concerning This concerning is repeated at 1 Corinthians 7:25, 1 Corinthians 8:1; 1 Corinthians 12:1, as commencing responses to the several written queries.

Good Καλον , proper to a Christian man; the reverse of αισχρον , shameful, improper.

Paul here compares celibacy and matrimony, not in respect to their intrinsic holiness, but in respect to the comparative probability that a given person will be holy in one or the other. If persons have not the gift of continence they are not likely to be holy in celibacy; and they had better prefer the chance of being holy in marriage. If they have the gift of continence they had better remain celibate, as they would thereby be free from the moral dangers of marriage. That is, some persons can be most holy in celibacy, others most holy in marriage. And here comes in the suggestion of Stanley, that marriage and the family constitution stand on a much higher moral plane in these later European Christian ages than in the old Orient. Paul’s reasoning would land him in far stronger matrimonial conclusions in our day than his own. Protestantism prefers, for many good reasons, that even her foreign missionaries should be married.

That the apostle sees no superior holiness in celibacy is plain. 1. He utters no rapturous eulogy upon it, like later monastic writers; advocates no vows of virginity; proposes no convents nor monasteries. Celibacy is holy only if one is holy in it. 2. Marriage, with Paul, has a holy ideal, being typical of the unity in the Trinity, (1 Corinthians 11:13,) and of the union between Christ and his Church. Ephesians 5:25; Ephesians 5:32. Similarly St. John (Revelation 14:4) honours the virgins, but yet makes the glorified Church to be “the bride, the Lamb’s wife.” Revelation 21:2. Says Jeremy Taylor: “Single life makes men in one respect like angels; but marriage, in many things, makes the chaste pair be like Christ.”

Touch A term of modesty (equivalent to the Latin tangere) to express any contact with sexual purpose or feeling. Same word in Genesis 20:4.

St. Jerome, “in his heat against Jovinian,” as Fulke ( Confut. of Rhemish Test.) says, argued, “If good not to touch a woman, it is evil to touch; for nothing is contrary to good but evil.” And again the same ascetic saint argued, in a similar “heat,” “If, as Paul commands, we must always pray, we must never serve marriage; for so often as I render due to marriage I cannot pray.” This last logic would equally forbid sleeping. And as for the inference from the contrariety of “evil” to good, St. Paul holds that celibacy and marriage are not the one good and the other oppositely evil; but each to be good or evil according to the case.