“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
The Basket Case Chronicles #65
“And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord. Let not the wife depart from her husband” (1 Cor. 7:10).
In order to understand Paul rightly here, we have to grasp what he means by “not I, but the Lord.” This is too often assumed to be Paul exempting his instructions in this matter from any claim of authoritative inspiration. In other words, this is taken as Paul just giving his personal opinion in verse 12, as opposed to the inspired requirement he lays down in verse 10. I believe we have to reject this, and take the argument in another direction entirely.
The marriage tangles that arose in Corinth could be divided into two broad categories. The first was the kind of situation in a Gentile church like Corinth that had a parallel in the covenant of Israel—what is our view of divorce when it concerns two believers, two covenant members? The Lord, during the course of His earthly ministry, taught on this directly. Paul is simply applying the marriage teaching from the Gospels to the situation at Corinth. This teaching did not originate with him, Paul says, and he says this by saying “not I, but the Lord.”
But when he gets to verse 12, he is addressing a circumstance that would have been common in the new churches among the Gentiles, and comparatively rare among the Jews in Israel. What do we do with questions about divorce when it is a mixed marriage? One spouse was converted, and the other was not. Now what? This would have been a regular problem in a place like Corinth, and the Lord’s teaching in the Gospels did not address it. It was therefore a circumstance that called for apostolic legislation.
If we keep this distinction clear in our minds, it will help us a great deal as we work through the remainder of this section.