Tuesday, July 8, 2014
I Corinthians 7: As You Were
I Corinthians 7 is a very practical chapter, full of Paul's convictions and advice regarding marriage, divorce and other relationship statuses. Summing it up would be the phrase: Be content to remain as you are. If you're married, don't seek a divorce (that's God's will). If you're single, don't seek to be married (that's Paul suggestion). Whatever state you were in when you became a Christian - slave or free - be satisfied with remaining that way. Yet these prescriptions don't carry the weight of a command, but sound more like a philosophical viewpoint. The important thing, says Paul, is to be heaven-minded as much as possible, remembering that earthly realities are but temporary and transitory things.
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This might have been a little easier for Paul to say way back then, thinking the return of Christ would be very soon. I wonder if he would have said things any differently if he knew it was going to be at least thousands of years.
ReplyDeletePerhaps, but it may also have been irrelevant to a guy like Paul. I like a C.S. Lewis quote I stumbled upon last week: "The world might stop in ten minutes; meanwhile, we are to go on doing our duty. The great thing is to be found at one’s post as a child of God, living each day a though it were our last, but planning as though our world might last a hundred years." That's the ideal, but I imagine most of us focus more on one scenario or the other, rather than holding them in equal tension.
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