I suppose therefore that this is good for the present distress. — Better, I think then that it is good because of the impending distress — that it is good for a person to be so — i.e., to continue in the state in which he is, married or unmarried, as the case may be.
The construction of this sentence is strikingly characteristic of a writing which has been taken down from dictation. The speaker commences the sentence, and afterwards commences it over again: “I think it is good,” &c., and then, “I say I think it is good.”
From this verse to the end of 1 Corinthians 7:35 the Apostle deals again with the general question of marriage, introducing a new element of consideration — “the impending distress”; and at 1 Corinthians 7:36 he returns to the immediate subject with which he had started in 1 Corinthians 7:25, viz., duty of parents regarding their young unmarried daughters. The “impending distress” is that foretold by Christ, Matthew 24:8 et seq. The Apostle regarded the coming of Christ as no distant event, and in the calamities already threatening the Church, such as the famine in the time of Claudius (Acts 11:28), and in the gathering persecutions, he heard the first mutterings of the storm which should burst upon the world before the sign of the Son of Man should appear in the heavens.
It is good for a man. — It is most important to remember how much stress St. Paul lays upon this point as the ground of his preference for celibacy. As the reason for the preference has ceased to exist, so the advice, so far as it springs from that cause, is no longer of binding obligation (see 1 Corinthians 7:29-31).