Psalm 84:8-12 1 Corinthians 7:1–40 Matthew 6:25-34
Practical Principles for Present Crises
Few chapters in Scripture have generated more confusion, misuse, defensiveness, and anxiety than 1 Corinthians 7. Entire traditions have treated marriage as spiritually inferior sparking enforced celibate priesthoods and strict monastics movements. Others have reduced marriage to little more than a legal arrangement for sexual fulfilment or procreation. Some have twisted Paul’s words into a defence of passivity in the face of injustice, while others have ignored his urgent pastoral concern altogether.
Yet beneath all the debates stands a remarkably practical and deeply compassionate chapter.
Paul is not writing abstract theology detached from real life. He is writing to believers living under pressure. Corinth was in distress. There were food shortages. There was economic instability. There was social stratification…the hierarchical division of society into classes based on socioeconomic status, wealth, or power. And these things were raising their ugly faces within the church of God in Corinth. So as in the case of the poorer believers, marriage carried unbelievable financial burdens. Families were strained. Did you really want to risk another unwanted pregnancy when you were struggling to feed the children you already have?
And so the believers in Corinth were navigating difficult relationships, financially strained marriages, along with questions of divorce, social status, slavery, singleness, widowhood, and this thing called sexuality.
And into that confusion Paul does not offer simplistic rules. He offers gospel-shaped wisdom.
This chapter is about how Christians are to live faithfully in difficult times. It does not deal with how to escape difficulty or how to gain financial freedom or how to manipulate circumstances, but how to belong wholly to Christ in whatever condition we find ourselves.
And that makes this chapter intensely relevant to our own age.
As humans often do, we too are tempted to define ourselves by our status, our relationships (the more big names we can drop in one conversation the better we feel about ourselves), our sexuality (whatever that means in this age of bizarre and phantasmagorical redefinitions), our achievements, our economic security, or our sense of superiority.
And like the believers in Corinth and doubtless throughout time, we also constantly think: “If only my circumstances changed, then I could finally serve God faithfully.”
In reply to these types of thoughts and anxieties Paul says something profoundly liberating: your usefulness to God is not suspended until your life becomes ideal. Did you hear that? Your usefulness to God is not suspended until your life becomes ideal. God didn’t choose you to be his child because you are someone special or someone important or influential or whatever…he chose you because he loves you and he loves you because he is love.
So, having this reality as our baseline, let’s unpack what the Holy Spirit has to say through Paul.
Paul begins with marriage and sexuality because the Corinthians themselves raised the issue. Apparently, some believers had concluded that abstinence within marriage was spiritually superior…perhaps because they viewed physical desires as inherently inferior…or perhaps they were concerned because of the current crisis…or perhaps because of ascetic philosophical influences.
Whatever their reasoning may have been Paul responds carefully.
Later in verse 26, he acknowledges the underlying anxiety behind these issues…they were experiencing some “present distress”…but notice that he refuses to treat marital intimacy as something unclean or spiritually lesser. Instead he says: “The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband.”
Now while this may not sound revolutionary to you, that statement was astonishing in the first century.
In Jewish society, while wives possessed certain protections under Mosaic law, divorce largely remained in male hands, and the reasons could be as arbitrary as her serving him tasteless or burnt food…an interpretation based on Deuteronomy 24:1 which states that a husband can divorce his wife if he finds "some unseemly matter" in her.
In Greco-Roman society women possessed somewhat greater legal flexibility, yet the culture remained deeply patriarchal and sexually exploitative. Men frequently exercised unilateral authority. Sexual double standards were normal.
But Paul does something radical. He speaks of mutual authority within the marriage. Not merely the wife’s obligation to her husband. But the husband’s obligation to his wife. “The wife does not have authority over her own body,” he says, “but the husband does; likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.”
This is not tyranny. This is not coercion. This is not ownership. It is reciprocal selfless giving and receiving.
As you all know, the curse introduced distortion into male-female relationships. Instead of a mutually cooperative relationship, men and women strive to rule over each other…we seek to establish some form of self-centred dominance in the relationship. But in Jesus, the pattern of Eden begins to re-emerge; complementarity, dignity, mutual honour, and covenant faithfulness. A man leaves his parents and cleaves to his wife and the two become one flesh…and only people with severe trauma issues or mental challenges treat their own body disrespectfully or poorly.
Paul’s vision of marriage is profoundly countercultural because it destroys selfishness and self-centredness. In his understanding, marriage is not a relationship between two autonomous people negotiating competing rights or one in which one partner uses or abuses the other. No, marriage is a relationship between two believers who are both learning how to serve the other better.
And notice something else. Paul refuses extreme ideas. While on the one hand he rejects sexual immorality, on the other hand he rejects hyper-spiritual denial within marriage. Abstinence may occur, he says, but only for concentrated prayer and only by mutual consent and only temporarily.
Why? Because, as we have already seen, Christianity does not treat our embodiment as evil. God made us embodied creatures. And therefore, as marriage is a covenant made between two embodied people, their physical intimacy is good and pure and holy.
One of the reasons why some marriages collapse is not because of sudden conflict, but rather through a slow process of selfishness. One spouse withdraws emotionally…another weaponizes affection…another becomes cold and indifferent…another treats intimacy as leverage.
But Paul calls Christian marriage back to mutual service. He flips the question from “what can I get out of this relationship” to “what can I give to this relationship…how may I love faithfully?” And that transforms everything.
Then secondly, in 7:6–24, Paul tells us that faithfulness matters more than status. As the discussion unfolds, Paul addresses singles, widows, married couples, mixed marriages, slaves, Jews, and Gentiles…almost every social category imaginable. And he speaks about these categories because the Corinthians were obsessed with status.
In first-century society, marriage carried status just as freedom carried status and ethnicity carried status. Obviously, upward economic mobility carried status and respectability carried status.
Corinth was a culture obsessed with climbing the proverbial ladder, but Paul dismantles the entire system.
“Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing. Keeping God’s commands is what matters.”
Again, to us that doesn’t really leave much impact, but in their situation in life, that statement is extraordinary. Remember, circumcision had once marked covenant identity itself. Yet Paul now says external distinctions no longer define spiritual worth because Jesus has fulfilled what circumcision pointed toward. The stripping off of the flesh through the shedding of blood.
Likewise, slave and free stand equal before Christ. Of course, this does not mean slavery was good as some have argued in the past. In verse 21 Paul explicitly says slaves should gain freedom if possible. But he refuses to allow worldly hierarchies to define Christian identity.
The Church was revolutionary precisely because it created a community where worldly status lost ultimate significance. Imagine the scandal of master and slave sharing the Lord’s Supper together as equals.
The Roman world had never seen anything like it. And Paul keeps repeating the same principle: remain faithful in whatever state God has called you.
Again, this does not mean that Christians must never seek to change or better their circumstances. Paul is not condemning marriage, freedom, or improvement in this chapter. Rather, he is attacking the restless belief that spiritual worth depends upon external advancement.
That temptation still dominates modern culture. “If only I had more money…” “If only I were married…” “If only I were single…” “If only I had another career…” “If only my social standing improved…” Then I would finally matter.
But identity rooted in status always enslaves. While the world constantly urges us to become more, the gospel says that we have everything we need because we already belong to Jesus who is the sovereign king over all things.
And therefore Paul says: “You were bought with a price; do not become slaves of men.” That applies far beyond literal slavery. Many people today are enslaved to approval or to image or to ambition or to romantic fantasy or to social comparison.
But Christians belong to another kingdom. Our worth was settled on the cross. God demonstrated his love for you by paying a penalty that was not his to pay, but yours.
Then thirdly, in 7:25–31Paul speaks about the present form of this world that is passing away. Now, this section is often misunderstood.
Some imagine Paul expected the physical end of the universe within months. But the context points more naturally toward a present historical crisis affecting Corinth…a period of severe instability and suffering which Paul believed God would mercifully shorten. Now, after saying that he believed the time of distress has been shortened, he offers them some startling advice: “Those who have wives should live as though they had none… those who mourn as though they were not mourning… those who buy as though they possessed nothing.”
What on earth does he mean? Well, I don’t believe that Paul is calling believers to emotional detachment or abandonment of responsibility. I think that he is speaking about perspective. He is saying that as every earthly structure is temporary, none of them are ultimate. Marriage, though it matters deeply, it is not ultimate. While sorrow is real, it is not ultimate. While possessions are useful, they are not ultimate. Because the present form of this world is passing away. Everything in creation is moving towards a new creation where the temporary will be discarded for the eternal.
You see, Paul wants believers to live free from total absorption in temporary realities. That is as desperately needed today as it was in the first century. Modern society teaches us to absolutize temporary things.
Politics, romance, career, possessions, personal fulfilment…these things are all presented to us as ultimate…and when temporary things become ultimate things, they crush us.
But followers of Jesus must live differently within the world.
Of course we date, we get engaged, and we marry…we work, we grieve, we rejoice, we buy, we sell…but we hold all these things with open hands, because our citizenship lies elsewhere.
But unfortunately, some believers are spiritually exhausted because they are trying to extract eternal meaning from temporary things.
Finally, in 7:32–40, Paul summarises everything he has said by urging undistracted and undivided devotion to the Lord.
His final concern is not anti-body or anti-marriage. It is undivided devotion.
Of course the unmarried believer possesses certain freedoms for ministry that married life naturally limits because marriage brings legitimate responsibilities, concerns, and obligations.
But Paul is not criticising those responsibilities. He is simply being realistic given their present circumstances. While marriage is glorious, it is demanding.
But notice that he also says that singleness is not deficiency. Now, while our culture does not frown on singleness, Roman society strongly incentivised marriage and often penalised lifelong celibacy socially and economically. Voluntary singleness was unusual unless tied to some philosophy or religion.
Yet Paul says Christianity honours both marriage and singleness, because neither state determines spiritual worth. Marriage is good. Singleness is good. Neither is ultimate because only Jesus is ultimate.
And that means every believer…married or unmarried…must ask this simple question: “How may I serve God most faithfully in my present calling?”
You see, at the heart of 1 Corinthians 7 lies a single, liberating truth: followers of Jesus do not belong to themselves. They belong to God.
And that changes the way we view marriage, singleness, giftedness, suffering, status, and ambition because following Jesus ultimately changes our identity.
In this chapter, Paul is teaching believers how to live faithfully during unstable times without being consumed by instability itself.
The Corinthians feared scarcity, uncertainty, and social pressure. And I think we do too. But Paul keeps redirecting our eyes away from panic or self-preservation, toward faithful devotion. We are to serve faithfully in whatever state or circumstance that God has placed us because we do not belong to ourselves…we have been bought with a price and that defines who we are in the present form of a world that is passing away.
So here is the great comfort of the chapter: Because Christ reigns, believers are free. Free to marry without idolising marriage. Free to remain single without shame. Free to serve faithfully even in hardship. Free from slavery to status. Free from the exhausting need to prove themselves.
You see, the Christian life is not about constructing the perfect earthly existence. It is about wholehearted devotion to the Lord Jesus Christ in whatever circumstances he has appointed. And then one day, when the present form of this world finally passes away completely, those who belong to Christ will discover that none of their faithfulness was wasted.
Shall we pray?
© Johannes W H van der Bijl 2026
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