Charles Ellicott Commentary 1 Corinthians 7:32

"But I would have you to be free from cares. He that is unmarried is careful for the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord:" — 1 Corinthians 7:32 (ASV)

But I would have you without carefulness.—These words seem to revisit the form of expression in 1 Corinthians 7:28. I want to spare you trouble; I also wish to have you free from anxious care. That is my reason for advising you this way. And here the Apostle returns to the subject immediately under consideration and shows how what he has been saying relates to it. This element of anxious care must be kept in mind when considering whether marriage is desirable or not.

There are some important variations in the readings of these verses (1 Corinthians 7:32–34) in the Greek manuscripts. The emendations required in the Greek text, from which the Authorized Version is translated, are, I think, as follows: Omit the period after 1 Corinthians 7:33, connecting it with 1 Corinthians 7:34 by inserting the word 'and'. Insert 'and' in 1 Corinthians 7:34 before 'a wife,' and the word 'unmarried' after 'a wife'. The whole passage will then read as follows (rendering the Greek verb as it is in 1 Corinthians 1:13, 'divided,' and not, as in the English version here, 'a difference between'): The unmarried man cares for the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord. But the married man cares for the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and is divided in his interests (that is, distracted). Also the wife that is unmarried (that is, a widow or divorced woman), and the unmarried virgin (that is, the young woman who is free from any marriage contract), cares for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and spirit. But she who is married cares for the things of the world, how she may please her husband.

The whole force of the passage is that married persons have, in the fulfillment of their obligations to each other, an additional interest and concern from which the unmarried are free. It must always be distinctly kept in mind that this advice was given solely under the impression that the end of all earthly things was impending, and that the great trial and desolation was beginning to darken over the world.

The Apostle who wrote these words of warning himself expressly condemns those who applied them as if they involved general moral obligations, and not as suited only to temporary requirements (1 Timothy 4:1; 1 Timothy 4:3).

At this time, he himself had a strong personal inclination for a celibate life; yet he could still enjoy and show a preference for the companionship of those who were evidently of a different mind—he stayed and worked with Aquila and Priscilla his wife, at Corinth (Acts 18:3).

We can still imagine circumstances arising in individual cases where the principle the Apostle enforced would apply. A man might feel it his duty to devote his life to some missionary enterprise, in which marriage would hamper his movements and impede his usefulness. Such an exceptional case would therefore only establish the general rule.

“It may not be out of place to recall,” writes Stanley in his Exposition of St. Paul’s View of Celibacy, “a celebrated instance of a similarly emphatic preference for celibacy on precisely similar grounds—not of abstract right, but of special expediency—in the well-known speech of our great Protestant Queen, when she declared that England was her husband and all Englishmen her children, and that she desired no higher character or fairer remembrance of her to be transmitted to posterity than this inscription engraved upon her tombstone: ‘Here lies Elizabeth, who lived and died a maiden queen.’”