Athenaeus (A.D. 200) quoted Demosthenes (500 years beforehand): ‘We keep mistresses for pleasure, concubines for daily concubinage, but wives in order to produce children legitimately and to have a trustworthy guardian of our domestic property.’ 1 Corinthians 6:12-20 is outside marriage; 1 Corinthians 7:1-9 deals with sexual relations within marriage.
- Do not deprive one another within marriage.
- 7:1, 2. Note Gen.1:28; 2:18, 24.
- there is to be a mutuality here – 7:3-4; only occasionally should this be set aside – 7:5. The greatest mind in the Church of the third century, Origen, thought he was being spiritual when he castrated himself.
- Gen.2:25; Gen.26:8; Prov.5:15-19; the Song of Songs. Both the procreative and the unitive functions of sex belong together in marriage.
- The single state is also a gift.
- 7:6-7; Matt.19:12; 1 Tim.5:14; Jer.16:1-2. Charles Simeon served at Cambridge for over fifty years, and never married.
- Be aware of dangers in this area.
- 7:8-9. ‘Better to marry than burn’ means ‘burn with passion’, not ‘burn in the judgment’.
- the biblical picture of the Christian man is not Mozart’s Don Giovanni nor is it Jerome tortured alone in his cave.
- Both the single state and the married state are valid options for the Christian but celibacy inside marriage is not, nor is sex outside marriage. God’s laws are for our good.