Marry or Not
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2025 · 7 September 2025
We are coming to an important and controversial chapter. And we’re going to find some very practical information. The book of 1 Corinthians is intensely practical. It deals basically with the subject of marriage, and marriage is a hot item today. It’s a discussion topic constantly. And the Bible has a lot to say about marriage. Our Lord Jesus taught much about marriage. He referred to marriage many times in the Gospel records.
He stated in Matthew 19 that man and woman were made for each other. God made them for each other. He states that they should join themselves together and become one flesh, and that was actually a joining together by God himself. Jesus also emphasized that marriage was to be monogamous; that it was to be two becoming one flesh, something that was first stated by God in Genesis 2.
Jesus also taught, in Matthew 19, that marriage was to be unbroken. God hadn’t changed his attitude at all about divorce. Jesus also taught that it was only for this life. Matthew 22:30, Mark 12:25, Luke 20:35, all of those indicate that marriage is only for this earth, not for heaven. But all that He said was theology. So we find much more information about marriage from Paul, who has much to say about marriage.
Paul explains the basic truths of marriage in 1 Corinthians 7. Here Paul takes the basic things that the Lord said, and he goes on from there to make application of those statements. The most important thing is not to just learn what it says, but to do what it says and to make application in our lives. But, he wants to make it very clear to begin with that there are some verses that are his opinion from the Holy Spirit, not God’s.”
In 1 Corinthians 7, you have an illustration of that. Paul is saying, “Here is something old, and here is something new. This is what the Lord said; I’m quoting. And this is what I say; this is a new revelation. Now, Paul begins, in chapter 7, to speak of the practical side of marriage. Sometimes quoting the Lord for the basic theological principle, and then going on to speak the new truth of the practical.
And the Corinthians had four major questions they were asking Paul. And from chapter 7 through 11, he deals with the questions they asked in the letter. After that in chapter 12, he says, “Now I’m going back to spiritual things, back to the things that concern me.” But this little block in the middle are the things they were asking him about. They wanted some information about marriage; and chapter 7 deals with that.
Let me tell you a little bit about the Roman marital situation. First, Rome had no uniform set of marital laws. You could get married at least four different ways in some sense. There were hundreds of thousands of slaves, and they weren’t even considered human with rights. When they wanted to get married, or just a living together, the owner would agree to what was called a contubernium which means a tent companionship.
Now, if the owner didn’t particularly care for the situation, the slave owner could go in there and take them apart, he could sell off the husband, or he could sell off the wife. So, you had a lot of problems in the early Church because so many of the early Christians were slaves. Paul did not try to break up everything. He tried to teach them the sanctity of the marriage that they had whatever the legal basis was.
“Stay together. Prove yourselves true to one another. Love one another. Make everything of that marriage that God designed it to be, because that’s really all the choice they had as slaves.” There was another way that you could be married, which was called U-S-U-S. And this custom meant that a woman and a man could live together for one year. At the end, they would become identified as husband and wife.
Today we would call that a common law marriage. So, the church would have had to face people who were common law married, who had no legal papers to identify their marriage. And again, the New Testament doesn’t say anything about what they ought to do other than to maintain the sanctity of the marriage that exists under whatever it exists. There was another way, coemptio en manum, which was marriage by sale.
This happened where the father sold his girl to the husband. If the guy would come across with the right price, he could have the daughter. And depending upon the girl, the price would vary. I suppose it could be anywhere from a couple dozen sheep to a lame chicken. But it would have a lot to do with the particular girl, and maybe sometimes the father would have to make adjustments. So, this was worked out financially.
But the noblest marriage was called confarreatio, a coming together on a high level. This was the classy marriage. And the entire marriage ceremony, as we know it today in the Christian church, comes from this pagan Roman marriage. It does not come from Hebrew custom in the Old Testament. It’s entirely the Roman pagan’s ceremony. The Roman Catholic Church simply picked up the standard Roman ceremony.
And when the Reformation came, nobody changed it. It had become tradition and it is pretty much the same today. In fact, the Hebrew wedding lasted normally seven days. So, we’re way far from the Hebrew customary wedding. But this one was a one-afternoon or a one-evening thing. The two families came together; they picked out a maid of honor, and a best man. The couple joined their right hands and they recited vows.
And after the vows, there were prayers offered. That’s the standard procedure, only they offered the prayers to Jupiter and Juno. Flowers were customary, and a bridal wreath was really the beginning of what we know today as the bridal bouquet. The bride always wore a veil, which was lifted. There was a ring, and that’s where the idea of the wedding ring began, and it was always put on the same ring finger.
People discovered that a nerve ran from the middle of this finger right to the heart. And since that nerve was connected to the heart, that’s the place where the ring ought to go. That whole thing was the Roman system of marriage. When all of that was over, they went to another place, and believe it or not, they had a cake. That’s right. So, now you know where the whole wedding custom came from.
But add to that were the really great problems. The moral character within marriage had been destroyed so that divorce was very rampant. There are records of people who had been married as many as 29 times. They counted their years by their wives. There was immorality; and homosexuality and concubinage. Men used their wives to clean house, cook meals, and then they had other women for their pleasure.
Marriage began to suffer. Vows were violated. Women demanded to live their own lives, and the husbands were happy to let them out. And men began to discard their women as fast as women began to leave. And they would discard their women for speaking to the wrong person in public, for doing something without asking their permission. They would divorce a woman to get a richer one. Cicero did that.
In the midst of all of this, some would suggest that the best way out is never to get married. And they began to elevate that through the idea of celibacy becoming a spiritually elite people. You had denied yourself the flesh. You had laid aside all of those things and totally devoted yourself to Jesus Christ. And there was a prevailing view in the Corinthian church, that celibacy was the highest form of Christian life.
That idea of celibacy being a high-level of spiritual devotion is still with us. It is in the Roman Catholic Church. And priests and nuns don’t marry for that reason. They wear a wedding ring often as a symbol of their marriage to Jesus Christ. That’s a high-level devotion. They say that makes them superior spiritually to the rest of us who are married. 1 Timothy 4 says people are talking about forbidding to marry.
Now, I want you to look at four key ideas that appear in the first seven verses, and they deal with the problem of whether to be celibate or married. You don’t know whether to get married or not to get married. You’re either single and haven’t found anybody interested, or you’re married and you’re stuck. You don’t know whether it’s right to remarry or whatever. So, may the Spirit of God pinpoint some things to you.
Number one, celibacy is good. Verse 1, “Now concerning the things about which you wrote unto me, it is good for a man not to touch a woman.” Now, that sounds a little picky. Well, if you take that as a literal statement, Adam and Eve would have been the last people that ever lived on the face of the earth. It’s not talking about that. The concept “touching a woman” is a euphemism for sexual intercourse. That’s what it means.
I can show that to you simply from several Old Testament passages. In Ruth 2 about Ruth and Boaz. Boaz had that desire to keep Ruth pure. Ruth 2:9 says, “See which field they are harvesting, and follow them. Haven’t I ordered the young men not to touch you?” In Proverbs 6:29, “So it is with the one who sleeps with another man’s wife; no one who touches her will go unpunished.” So touching means sexual intercourse.
Now, the reason it’s so urgent that he say this is because of the Jews in the church. The Jews used to teach that if you didn’t have a wife, you were a sinner. Seven kinds of people couldn’t get to heaven; they had a list. Number one on the list, a Jew who has no wife. Number two, a wife who has no children. The Jews said, “God said be fruitful and multiply, and if you don’t, you’re disobedient to the commands of God.”
Paul is starting out by saying, “It’s good to be single. Nothing wrong with that at all.” Verse 2, “But because sexual immorality is so common, each man should have sexual relations with his own wife, and each woman should have sexual relations with her own husband.” Those are commands from God. And Paul says, “Everybody should get married. Why? “On account of sexual immorality.”
The Bible says there are six biblical reasons for marriage. Number one, procreation. Genesis 1:28 says to be fruitful and multiply. That’s one reason to get married, to have children. Secondly, pleasure. God designed marriage just to enjoy physical pleasure? Marriage is honorable, marriage is enjoyable. Proverbs 5 talks about the satisfaction that a husband finds in the physical body of his wife and vice versa.
Thirdly, marriage is provision. God wants a man to provide what a woman needs. “The woman is the weaker vessel” it says in 1 Peter 3. And God knows that a man can support the weakness of a woman. God wants the man to provide for the woman, to nourish her, Ephesians 5 says, to cherish her, to strengthen her, to give her something to lean on, to fortify her. It’s also a partnership. Marriage is for partnership.
Fourth, marriage is a picture. Ephesians 5 says it is a symbol to the world of God’s relationship to His Church. And lastly, marriage is for purity, to keep us from committing fornication. Those are the reasons the Bible gives, and Paul isn’t only simplifying everything to this; he’s just dealing with one aspect. So, marriage is the norm. Celibacy is good, but let’s face it, celibacy is also tempting.
Verse 3, “A husband should fulfill his marital duty to his wife, and likewise a wife to her husband.” You are a debtor, men, to your wife. Ladies, you are a debtor to your husband. Even if he’s a non-Christian, you owe him a debt. You are to pay your debts to one another, fulfilling your duty to one another. And what is the debt? I think he’s talking about physical, sexual relationships. Being a Christian doesn’t change that.
In fact, the book of Song of Solomon has a whole book written just on the physical part of marriage. Song of Solomon gives us magnificent lyrics in praise of the physical desire of marriage. I mean she is really excited about this guy, and he about her. But that’s how it ought to be. God designed marriage to be the physical expression of love. Mutual sexual love in marriage is God’s design.
Verse 4, “A wife does not have the right over her own body, but her husband does. In the same way, a husband does not have the right over his own body, but his wife does.” Because you have released the authority over your body to your partner. And it’s a present tense, here – lifelong. And you can quote this verse to each other in its fullness and know that God supports that desire that you have for one another.
Verse 5, “Do not deprive one another—except when you agree for a time, to devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again; otherwise, Satan may tempt you because of your lack of self-control.” Marriage, then, is a permanent surrender of everything I am to my partner. I am hers in absolutely the fullest and truest sense. And then he makes an application, “Stop depriving each other of the physical relationship.”
Unless there is mutual consent for a set time. You lose the desire and the craving for the physical, and you become lost in the struggling of the spiritual in seeking out the will and the revelation of God’s plan. And that becomes the consuming thing. There may be times in your life when you fall into sin, and you go through a time of purification, and your heart needs to be given over totally to the Lord.
Verse 6, “I say this as a concession, not as a command.” Paul is saying, “I’m simply laying this out as the norm because I’m aware of your human needs.” And the only reason you should not get married and fulfill that is verse 7, “I wish that all people were as I am. But each has his own gift from God, one person has this gift, another has that.” While marriage is not a command, it is stressed as the norm because of the problem of staying pure.
You know, to be single means you can do certain things that you otherwise couldn’t do, and God needs single people. Thank God, if you’re single and have no desire for marriage. That’s a gift of God. Use it. If you’re married, you’ve got the gravy n life. Live it up. Enjoy it. One has one, one has another one. So, he lays the principle. Celibacy is good; marriage is good. It just depends on which God designs for you. Let’s pray.