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In My last post I spoke about preachers appealing to the Greek of a verse to make a point, but I used as my example 1 Corinthians 7 verse 1 (explaining the findings of Greek scholars including C K Barratt and Gordon Fee that the Greek term “to touch a woman” is idiomatic for “to have sexual relations”). What I did not do was provide an interpretation for this passage that makes sense of it armed with this knowledge.

So here is my view (which I think is quite clear once the idiom is understood).

The passage reads:

Now concerning the things about which you wrote, “It is good for a man not to touch a woman.”

But because of immoralities, each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband.

The husband must fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband.

The wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does; and likewise also the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does.

Stop depriving one another, except by agreement for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer, and come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

Notice I have added some quotation marks. The Greek text has no quotation marks – they hadn’t been invented yet! So it is only conjecture, but I think it is a good one, that Paul immediately quoted from the letter that the Corinthians had sent to him.

He has dealt with many other issues in the preceding chapters – issues that had been reported to him. But now he turns to the Corinthian letter and he says:

“Now about the matters you wrote to me about. You said ‘It is good for a man not to have sexual relations’”.

And then he immediately answers this point “*BUT* because of the temptation to immorality, each man should have his own wife” and he goes on to say that husbands and wives should fulfill duties to one another.

So what is going on here?

It seems that some of the Corinthian Christians had come to the conclusion that sexual relations were not appropriate for Christians *within* *marriage*. One or other of a couple were advocating sexual fasting within marriage, and had written to Paul to commend this practice.

This interpretation fits with what we know of the Corinthian church. They were proud of their spirituality, whilst embracing practices that we would find astounding in today’s church. They also had a pre-gnostic theology that might have led them to disdain the flesh and thus God’s gifts within marriage.

We also know that some of them were sexually immoral, and it may be that part of the reason that there was sexual immorality in the Corinthian church was because one partner in a marriage was denying the other their “conjugal rights”.

So Paul’s prescription: He agrees that celibacy is a wonderful option, but argues that where couples are married, to avoid the temptation to immorality, they should not deny their partners (except perhaps for short periods, when devoting themselves to prayer).

Read the passage again with this interpretation in mind, and I think you will agree that it makes much more sense than the NIV’s interpretation that Paul is talking about marriage.

(Incidentally, the passage quoted above is taken from the NASB, which is a literal translation. The RSV and AV (KJV) which are also literal translations, read almost identically.

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