He now passes on to special classes. First, those who are unmarried or have lost their partners. It would be best for them to follow Paul's example and remain as they are. But if they have not the gift of continence, it would be better to marry than to be inflamed with illicit desire. The married must abide in the married state, as Jesus Himself commands. If the wife should leave her husband, she must refrain from contracting a new union, or, if she feels she must have a man to live with, she must make it up with her husband. Similarly, the husband must not desert the wife. So much for the case where both are Christians. But for the cases where one is a heathen, no command of Jesus can be quoted. If the heathen is willing to continue the relationship, the Christian is not to dissolve it. It was natural for a Christian to feel that the continuance of the relation involved defilement and made the member of Christ unclean. Paul replies that the relation works in the opposite way. The unbeliever does not defile the Christian, the Christian consecrates the unbeliever. Were this not the case, were heathen uncleanness more potent than Christian holiness, the offspring of the marriage must be unclean, springing from parents both unclean, one intrinsically, the other by contamination. But the children, so Paul asserts without argument, are holy, and this involves the holiness of the parents. The conception of holiness here is not ethical, ultimately it is primitive (p. 196). The unbeliever, apart from any co-operation on his part and simply in virtue of the marriage with a believer, is sanctified, even if he remains an unbeliever; he is not placed by it in a state of salvation, this remains very problematical (1 Corinthians 7:16). To primitive thought holiness and uncleanness are alike infectious. The circle of ideas is strange to us, and should not be modernised. The unbeliever may, however, abandon the Christian. In that case, the latter is to hold the tie no longer binding nor seek to maintain a relationship in which peace cannot be preserved, all the more that the sacrifice may not lead to the other's salvation. The general rule which Paul lays down in all his churches applies here, let each continue in his Divinely-appointed position. If he has become a Christian while circumcised, let him not seek to obliterate the marks and adopt the Gentile mode of life; if uncircumcised let him not accept the obligations of circumcision. For circumcision and uncircumcision have no intrinsic worth, what matters is to keep God's commandments. The rule stay where you are applies to the slave, he must not trouble about his position; though if he can become free he should use the opportunity of freedom (p. 650). He should not make a trouble of his slavery, for the slave who becomes a Christian is thereby made Christ's slave. All alike have been bought with a price, as the purchase of God let them not make men their masters. It is quite uncertain to what Paul is alluding in 1 Corinthians 7:23 b; after 1 Corinthians 7:21 a it sounds strange. Presumably the meaning is that the Christian should, as one who calls Christ his master, refuse to become enslaved to merely human standards. The Jew who had the operation for effacing the marks of circumcision (1 Corinthians 7:18 a), that he might escape Gentile mockery, the Gentile who submitted to circumcision (1 Corinthians 7:18 b) to conciliate Jewish prejudice, are equally in his mind with the slave whom he has just been addressing. Bondage to Christ emancipates a man from bondage to human opinion; servile conformity is unworthy of the independence He confers.
1 Corinthians 7:8. widows: perhaps we should read widowers (so H. Bois), since unmarried seems to be strictly masculine, and not to include women, and Paul has a special section on virgins in 1 Corinthians 7:25-40.
1 Corinthians 7:10 a. Cf. Matthew 5:32; Matthew 19:9; Mark 10:9; Luke 16:18.
1 Corinthians 7:15. is not under bondage: is not bound by Christ's regulation to oppose the separation. Paul need not mean that the deserted Christian is free to marry again, desertion annulling the marriage. Still he may mean this.
1 Corinthians 7:16. Some think Paul means that the Christian should stay with the heathen in hope of securing the latter's salvation; in this case, we should render thou shalt not save. But this should have followed 1 Corinthians 7:13; in its present position it means that the Christian should not in the very problematic hope of winning the heathen for Christ, persist in maintaining a situation leading not to peace, the Christian's vocation, but to mutual exasperation.
1 Corinthians 7:19. Cf. Galatians 5:6; Galatians 6:15; Colossians 3:11.