Reading: 1 Corinthians 7-8, Psalm 144

Before we move on to the topics of chapters 7 and 8, I think it important to remind ourselves of the context in which Paul is writing. Corinth was a famously cosmopolitan city. It was wealthy, culturally significant, and self important. It was, in a sense, a little New York City of it’s day. Not the official capital or anything, but massively significant in intangible ways. The church there was more tolerated than in neighboring cities like Thessalonica or Ephesus. It appears that the Christians there felt significantly more liberty both internally and externally than those around the empire. Nearly every other letter in the New Testament is written to a persecuted church. The letters to the Corinthians indicate they face little persecution except at their own hands. The threat of empire in most of the epistles is from without. To the Corinthians, it is from within.

Paul continues in his theme of sexual and relational ethics in chapter 7, but this time in the affirmative. After putting the Corinthians on blast for their immoral activities, he pipes up about the positive. Each man should have his own wife, and each woman her own husband. He puts sexuality into its correct context- marriage. He goes so far as to command it. Those married people should not discontinue their sexual relationship. This chapter has often been cited to say that Paul did not approve of marriage, or at least elevated singleness over it. I am not sure that works, but it does seem he is at pains to ensure that the Corinthians understand that life is not all about sex or marriage. He weaves together two thoughts: marriage is the right place for people who are called to it; singleness is right for those people called to it. Far too often the church has tried to elevate one over the other. In past ages of the church it was generally singleness that was revered. These days the western protestant church is at a loss for what to do with single people, since we have spent at least a century making marriage the bedrock of our understanding of the Christian life.

So if Paul is not elevating singleness, what is he doing? He is encouraging the Corinthians to see that life in the Kingdom of God is not about the categories of married or single. Or any other categories of the world- the circumcised or uncircumcised; the slave or the free- in whatever condition one was called, let them remain there with God. There are more important things in life than the state of your life according to human standards. Also note that Paul advised the slave to gain his freedom when the opportunity presents itself- Paul was not a fan of slavery, and I would say actually condemns by implication, but he is here saying it is not the primary concern. The real concern is this: are you with God? Have you sworn allegiance to the King of the Kingdom of God? Do you have a new heart? These are so much more important than marriage, or even physical freedom. The Corinthians have gotten caught up in the conditions and status of the world around them. Paul is pulling them back out of it and refocusing them on the real issue: man looks on the outward appearance, God looks on the heart. Even good things are bad when the heart is wrong.

On the same theme, Paul addresses eating. In this time and place in the Roman empire, the butcher was often also a pagan priest. To go buy meat generally meant getting it from a temple. This bothered some of the Corinthian Christians, and it did not bother others. Paul argues, as he will elsewhere, that eating the meat is fine, but that causing your Christian sibling a crisis of faith by it is absolutely not. Paul is again positioning the conflict where it belongs, in the heart. Does it matter more to you that you get to eat meat than that your brother or sister is damaged by it? If so, you have given in to the problem.

I want to point out here that in this letter Paul has confronted issues with money, sex, and food. If one were to take a fair look at the biggest problems and points of conflict in the world today, I am confident that they would all root back to money, sex, and food. It is also of note that the Scriptures provide a structure for all three. It just might be that the story hasn’t changed all that much from ancient Corinth, and we could use a bit of Paul’s corrective.