The entire chapter of 1 Corinthians 7 deals with the subject of marriage. It begins a new section of Paul’s letter to the Corinthian church, saying, “Now concerning the things of which you wrote to me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman.” For the first 6 chapters, Paul has been dealing with issues that were brought to his attention by some members of Chloe’s household (1:11), and now he is addressing questions that came directly from the Corinthian congregation.
Paul was dealing with two extreme positions held by groups of members in the church. One group followed the motto, “All things are lawful for me” (6:12), believing that the body and spirit were so separated that neither one affected the other. In their minds, a Christian could sin with their body, and it would not affect their spiritual life in any way. They actually went so far as to conclude that a believer could have sex with a prostitute without consequence! As we noted when we discussed 1 Cor. 6:15-17 in an earlier segment, Paul rejected such thinking out of hand, warning that sex outside of marriage joins together the body of Christ with that of a prostitute. Such an action ought to be unthinkable for the Christian. The other group lived by the motto, “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.” They believed that spiritual things were good, while physical things were evil, and that meant that in order to be truly spiritual the Christian must suppress every physical desire. From their perspective, celibacy was the only legitimate way for a believer to live. This is the primary subject of 1 Corinthians 7.
Now Paul does not dismiss their mantra out of hand. Indeed, it is a good thing for a man to abstain from sexual relations with a woman, at least in some cases (as he will make clear in v.7). But that does not exclude intimacy within marriage. On the contrary, Paul says, “because of sexual immorality, let each man have his own wife, and let each woman have her own husband.” The concern here is that singleness leaves no legitimate outlet for sexual desire, and therefore, Christians who pursue spirituality through celibacy run the risk of falling into immorality by trying to suppress their natural desires. As a solution to the “problem” of sexual desire, Paul says that each man should have his own wife and each woman should have her own husband. In other words, marriage serves to provide a mechanism to satisfy your sexual urges in a legitimate and lawful way. That is not to say that marriage is only or even primarily to prevent immorality, but that is certainly one of the purposes for which God designed the institution. John MacArthur offers five biblical purposes for marriage: procreation (Gen. 1:28), pleasure (Prov. 5:18-19), partnership (Gen. 2:18), to picture the church (Eph. 5:23-32), and purity (1 Cor. 7:2), and then he summarizes Paul’s point when he writes, “Although celibacy is good, it is not superior to marriage, and it has dangers and temptations that marriage does not have.”
Paul goes on to further explain the importance of regular sexual intimacy in marriage:
Let the husband render to his wife the affection due her, and likewise also the wife to her husband. The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. And likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one another except with consent for a time, that you may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again so that Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.
1 Corinthians 7:3-5
If you are single, you must remain celibate in order to honor the Lord and avoid sexual sin, but Paul explains that married men and women should not normally be celibate. In fact, neither the husband nor the wife has authority over his own body, but in marriage, each one belongs to his spouse. As F. F. Bruce puts it, “By the marriage vow each relinquishes the exclusive right to his or her own body and gives the other a claim to it.” To withhold sexual intimacy from your spouse is to claim authority over your body that Scripture says you do not have.
For one partner, then, to insist on abstinence amounts to robbing the other of his or her rights. Because of this, Paul says, “Do not deprive one another” in v.5, or, “Stop depriving one another,” as it may also be translated. Sexual intimacy between a husband and his wife is good and ordained by God to satisfy the desires that he has created. You should not consider it a necessary evil or merely for the purpose of procreation, but as a means of expressing and experiencing love and strengthening your bond with your spouse. Any period of abstinence needs to be agreed upon by both partners, and it must be limited to a brief period of time for the purpose of fasting and prayer. When the prearranged time of refraining from sex is over, it is important that normal marital relations resume so that Satan does not gain an opening through which he may attack. During a period of abstinence, your own desire or that of your spouse will naturally increase, and, if it does not find its legitimate outlet, Satan may use that desire to lure you or your spouse into sexual sin.
Paul has much more to say in this chapter about singleness, marriage, divorce, widowhood, and Christian service, but from the opening verses it is clear that sex within marriage serves God’s purpose of protecting men and women from temptation. That this is true does not demean marriage or sex, it elevates it to a place of honor and a means of ministering to your spouse by acknowledging their rightful claim to your body. Rather than abstinence producing spirituality, it may actually be sinful, and sex within marriage serves as a protective shield against Satan’s deceitful tactics.