“At thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore” (Ps. 16: 11)
The Basket Case Chronicles #60
“Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman” (1 Cor. 7:1).
The first thing to note is the phrase “concerning the things whereof ye wrote.” Reading this epistle is like listening to one half of a phone conversation. The Corinthians had written a list of questions for Paul, and he was working his way through the answers. One of the things we have to do, therefore, if we are to understand this epistle correctly, is to reconstruct the questions rightly. The context of the question affects the intent and meaning of the answers. If we treat Paul’s statement here (“good for a man not to touch a woman”) as an absolute that fell from the timeless sky, we will draw erroneous and unbiblical conclusions about marriage. Marriage will be thought of as somehow “less good” than the ideal state of affairs found in verse 1, where the man is urged to keep his hands in his pockets.
But a bit later in this chapter a bit more of the context of the question leaks out. Paul says there that “this is good for the present distress . . . it is good for a man so to be” (v. 27). It is one thing to be told that if you don’t deny Christ you will be thrown to the lions. It is another to be told that if you don’t deny Christ you, your wife, and three little children will be thrown to the lions. But this emergency situation was just a temporary one; the “time is short” (v. 29). Reasoning by analogy, we can conclude that the same counsel is good for comparable situations down throughout the history of the church. But even then, even in times of impending persecution, the encumbrances and cares of marriage are to be preferred to trap of fornication (v. 2).
Compare this to our time, when the encumbrances of porn are preferred to the liberation of marriage. We should write the apostle Paul a different list of questions.