In many Indian families the question arrives before the wedding season does. An aunt at a function, a neighbour at the vegetable stall: "So, when is the good news?" For a single woman past twenty-five, or a widower who has chosen not to remarry, it can feel as if life is waiting in a lobby until a marriage opens the door. Chapter 7 reads very differently. The Corinthians had written Paul a letter of questions, and the first was about marriage and sex. His answer takes marriage seriously as a mutual bond — and then, to many modern readers' surprise, speaks of singleness not as a waiting room but as a gift, and one he himself prefers.
Where it sits in the story: Act 5 — the church forming new households inside the Roman world. From here the letter answers questions the Corinthians sent ("now concerning…"). Paul's advice sits between creation's gift of marriage (Genesis 2, quoted in chapter 6) and the coming new creation, where "the present form of this world is passing away". That end-time horizon explains why he can honour marriage and still commend the undistracted single life.
What this chapter is doing: To answer the Corinthians' questions on sex, marriage, divorce and singleness, correcting both an ascetic suspicion of marriage and a careless view of it, and teaching contentment in one's calling in light of the passing age.
- 7:1–9 — He takes up their line, "it is good for a man not to touch a woman", and qualifies it: husband and wife owe each other their bodies equally and should not deprive one another except briefly by agreement. He wishes all were as he is, but each has a gift; those who burn with desire should marry.
- 7:10–16 — Passing on the Lord's command, he says a wife should not separate from her husband, nor a husband divorce his wife. To those married to unbelievers he adds his own ruling: stay if the spouse is willing, for the family is made holy through the believer; but if the unbeliever leaves, the believer is not bound.
- 7:17–24 — The general rule: remain in the situation in which God called you. Circumcision or uncircumcision counts for nothing; keeping God's commands does. A slave should not be troubled — though if freedom is possible, take it — for the slave is the Lord's freedman and the free man Christ's slave.
- 7:25–35 — On the never-married he has no command, only advice: because of the present distress and because time is short, it is good to stay as one is. Marriage is no sin, but it divides one's concerns; he wants them free from anxiety and devoted to the Lord.
- 7:36–40 — A man engaged to a virgin does well to marry her and better not to, if he is settled in his mind. A widow is free to remarry, only in the Lord, though Paul thinks she will be happier if she stays as she is — and he believes he too has God's Spirit.
Key verse: 1 Corinthians 7:7 · So what: For readers in a culture where marriage can feel compulsory, Paul's calm honouring of singleness is striking, and so is his insistence that within marriage the obligations run both ways equally. He is also careful to mark which rulings come from Jesus and which are his own judgement — an honesty worth copying when Christians give advice about other people's lives.