1 Corinthians 7:35
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What does 1 Corinthians 7:35 mean?
And this I speak for your own profit
The apostle suggests, that in giving the advice he did to
unmarried persons to abide single, he had nothing else in view
than their temporal and spiritual advantage; that they might be
better able to meet and grapple with persecution for the sake of
the Gospel; that they might be more free from the cares and
encumbrances of life, and more at liberty to serve the Lord;
whereby not only his glory, but their spiritual good, might be
promoted; not that he thought that marriage was unlawful, or that
the single life was a more honest, and a more chaste way of
living, or that it was absolutely necessary, and an incumbent
duty upon them to remain single, nor would he be so understood:
all that he had said was by way of advice; he had very faithfully
laid before them the advantages and disadvantages of both states,
and now leaves them to their full liberty to do as they pleased
to take his advice, or not:
not that I may cast a snare on you;
as fowlers on birds: had he enjoined virginity as necessary, and
insisted upon it, that it was absolutely their duty to live a
single life; this would have been laying an obligation upon them,
and an ensnaring and entangling of them: hereby some might have
engaged in a single life, who had not the gift of continence, and
so might have been drawn into the sin of fornication, or into
unnatural lust, and such impurities as would be very scandalous
unto, and highly reflect upon, the Gospel of Christ. But the
apostle delivered himself on the subject with no such view, and
in such a manner as is plain he meant not to ensnare any:
but for that which is comely, and that you may attend upon
the Lord
without distraction:
all he aimed at, by advising them to a single life, was that they
might more orderly and constantly, and without distraction of
mind, through the cares of the world, wait upon the Lord, and
serve him; which, in his opinion, was choosing the good part with
Mary; whilst others, like Martha, were troubled, divided, and
distracted with many things.
