“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
The Basket Case Chronicles #81
“The wife is bound by the law as long as her husband liveth; but if her husband be dead, she is at liberty to be married to whom she will; only in the Lord. But she is happier if she so abide, after my judgment: and I think also that I have the Spirit of God” (1 Cor. 7:38-39).
The pending distress, which affected Paul’s advice on whether to get married in the first place was a distress that was still pending if a married woman, for example, lost her husband by death. What then?
As long as he is alive, that consideration outranks all the others. If he has died, then Paul allows that she was at liberty to marry again. He says in the next verse that his advice to all unmarried people would still apply here—and this advice is Spirit-led. Traveling light through persecution was a God-given strategy. But even here, he leaves the decision up to her. At liberty means at liberty.
Two other things should be noted. A widow gets to make her own decisions in this regard. She is now the head of that household, and Paul says she can marry “whom she will.” The decision is up to her, and does not have to revert to father, or brothers, or anything like that. The second thing is the one restriction that Paul places on her—she must marry “in the Lord,” she must marry a fellow Christian. An unequal yoke is a bad idea at all times, but it is particularly bad when it comes to marriage.