Sex and Marriage – 1 Corinthians 7:1-7

ReligionNews.com asks “Why is sexuality such a big deal for the church?”  Sexuality has become, they argue, “the dividing line for many Christians, especially over issues of the LGBTQ kind.”  Sexuality is such an important part of every human life, it is no surprise that the Corinthians had issues and questions about it, and not surprising that they were messing up in this area.

Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

Now as a concession, not a command, I say this. I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another.  (1 Corinthians 7:1-7 ESV)

Paul now begins to address actual questions the Corinthians sent him, and the first is about marital issues.  Quoting, apparently, the Corinthians, “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman,” Paul takes what they have made a standard for not marrying and even for celibacy within marriage and made it a preference not to marry if one is so gifted, but requires sexual relations in marriage and requires marriage itself if sexual temptation is too much for someone.

It is likely that part of the Corinthians’ hyper-spirituality that reflects their excitement with their spiritual gifts and a belief that they are already ruling in God’s kingdom somehow, has led them in some cases to take sexual immorality as nothing (chapter 6) and in other cases to take sex as wrong in and of itself, or, for sure, less than holy.  Whenever people get off base theologically it leads to confusion about sexuality.