(1Co 7:7) “For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that.” We shall soon see that for one to remain unmarried is as much a gift from God as to be married. It is not God’s will for every person to be married. He has a purpose for every life. Thank God for the present position you find yourself in.

(1Co 7:6) “But I speak this by permission, and not of commandment.” Some would read such a statement and conclude: “Not all of the Bible is from the Holy Spirit.” But I would respond, “Here we have evidence of the Lord using what is in a person’s heart, put there by the Holy Spirit”: (Php_2:13) “For it is God which worketh in you both TO WILL [caps mine] (desire) and to do of his good pleasure.”  

(1Co 7:5) “Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.”  Fasting is the denial of self as a show of sincerity before God. He comes first rather than self. In reality it is to be an extension of the way we seek to live every day before Him.

(1Co 7:4) “The wife hath not power of her own body, but the husband: and likewise also the husband hath not power of his own body, but the wife.” As Ephesians Chapter 5 speaks of the husband and wife being one, as Christ is one with the church, so here we have the opportunity to be in submission to another. This practice teaches us to submit to Christ Jesus. We own not ourselves any longer.

(1Co 7:3) “Let the husband render unto the wife due benevolence: and likewise also the wife unto the husband.”  Context: “…to avoid fornication (1 Cor 7:2). The withholding of one causes the other to sin against them in heart’s desire (“out of the heart proceed….adulteries, fornication” [Matt 15:19]).

(1Co 7:1) “Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman. (2) Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.”  The Lord made us. He knows this is one of the basic impulses of being human. It is not wrong to bring another into union of ourselves and the Lord (marriage), as long as that person is saved (1 Cor 7:39d “…. only in the Lord.”  

(1Co 7:1) “Now concerning the things whereof ye wrote unto me: It is good for a man not to touch a woman.”  We are not on a new subject, but a continuation of thought:  (1Co 6:20) “For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.”  Focus of service, purpose, is the point. It is hard for us to divide ourselves between the physical and the spiritual.

(1Co 6:20) “For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God’s.”  If you are truly saved, you belong to God. Each of us needs to be working at putting self’s will in subjection to God’s will. We are even told in the Book of James, (4:15) “For that ye ought to say, If the Lord will, we shall live, and do this, or that.”

(1Co 6:19) “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?” Your body has been purchased by God. The cost was the body of His Son – His life’s blood. The same happened in Egypt when the Lord delivered them through what was in reality the blood of the cross, pictured by a Passover Lamb (Numbers 3:13).