Thirsting Souls Bible Teaching

(1Co 7:10) “And unto the married I command, yet not I, but the Lord, Let not the wife depart from her husband:” I have had people say to me, “The Lord wants me to be happy.” No, the Lord wants you, Temple of God, to sacrificially serve Him: (Luk_9:23) “And he said to them all, If any man will come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross daily, and follow me.”

(1Co 7:8) “I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I. (9) But if they cannot contain, let them marry: for it is better to marry than to burn.” Context: to burn with lusts. Why better to remain unmarried? A single person can spend more time in the Lord’s service without guilt or obligation to another. Either way, we are to serve the Lord to the best of our ability.

(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.