7:1 In this chapter, Paul is going to speak to us about relationships. Paul is an apostle, his complete focus is on spreading, inspiring and upholding the word and intention of God. Paul wishes for us to be as focused, as devoted, and as selfless as the world and humanity often need us to be. However, Paul also realizes that it is unrealistic to expect us to refrain from creating relationships with each other and because of that, he has some advice for us.
Note also that in Paul's time, it would be nearly impossible for a travelling apostle to have a relationship and a family; the nature of their work keeps them away and constantly travelling, it is time-consuming and it is dangerous as well.
7:2 The institution of marriage becomes a subject he wishes to cover. Remember that Paul's perspective is made up of the principles God wishes for us to implement in our lives: truth, sincerity, unity, patience, compassion. Therefore Paul encourages those of us entering relationships to be able to use those words to describe how we love each other.
Paul's advice is for us to cultivate our relationship with another person, to respect the union. Why? Because Paul was taught by God's love, love the center of all things, and he therefore takes relationships between people seriously. Once we choose a person, we should be compassionately choose them every day. Having been chosen, they are ours, uniquely. Our blessing, our responsibility.
7:3 Marriage is an institution of affection rendered by respect and joy at the person's existence, at the privilege of having them under our wing.
7:4 Paul wants us to understand the solidity and gravity of marriage: we share ourselves with another person; our souls intermingle and become responsible for each other.
7:5 Marriage is understood to be the gift of body and soul between two people. Paul's advice is to meditate on that fact. Rather than remain separate because of a religious rule or cultural taboo, Paul advises us to reflect on our relationship before we truly and physically give ourselves to each other. Why? To give us the space and perspective to fully accept the privilege but also responsibility of loving and having another. He wishes for us to have the time and clarity to love that person's soul: how they express themselves, the sound of their laugh, their sense of humor, their weaknesses... he wants us to love their soul before and more than their body. United souls are the core of marriage.
7:6 Paul's advice is a suggestion, a recommendation given in the hope and effort to help us cultivate and keep our love. Here is an example of the common sense wisdom within this book. Guidelines and recommendations are not given by God because He's an authoritarian but because He's a father and wants to light our way. He wants us to avoid bad and broken relationships. He gives us advice, through Paul on how to ensure we have entered a relationship we wish to be committed to before we commit to it.
If the body were not a component to a relationship, God wants us to be with someone who would still light our world up. True love is spiritual, it has little and even nothing to do with tangibility. It's inexplicable, indescribable, uncountable, infinite. When we find someone who can nourish our souls, they become deserving of our bodies. We can trust them. They can trust us.
7:7 Paul's wish is for everyone to be an apostle; focused entirely on articulating the word of God... yet he understands that God has many diverse paths and plans for His children. Paul's purpose as an apostle is not more or less important than perhaps a mother's relationship to her child, or a husband to a wife, or a teacher to a student. Meaning that even though Paul was not personally interested in marriage did not mean that it was something God was against.
7:8-9 Essentially, follow your soul. If you believe in marriage, devote yourself passionately to it. If you believe in apostleship, devote yourself to that. No matter which path in life you choose, ensure that it is natural to you, compassionate, purposeful. Do not live contrary to your truth because you will fail.
7:10-11 These verses are not angry commands. Paul is encouraging husband and wife in every marriage to remain with each other, to always support and love one another. He does not want the husband to abandon the wife or the wife to abandon the husband because it causes pain. Once a commitment is established, he wishes for us to nourish it. To never abandon it.
Divorce is not a sin, it is a pain. God does not want His children to be in pain. Moreover, He wants us to respect and love each other enough to never abandon a relationship we voluntarily entered. To be mutually compassionate and communicative through turbulence.
7:12-14 Here is advice specific to Paul's opinion: to love each other for who the person is. Faith around the world and between people varies. As living testimonies, how we live is an example to humanity of the values we believe it should uphold. If we enter a relationship with a person, who we are should become a part of their perspective of the world. Therefore, despite differences, two people in a relationship can influence each other. We can grow from each other: both from each other's weaknesses and strengths. And as their family grows, two parents focused on each other and spiritual growth is healthy and productive for their children.
7:15 Unfortunately, humans are not always mutually focused on maintaining unification. Even if one person is devoted, the other may not be... we are not to feel guilt or shame because of another person. Be peaceful. Be focused on spiritual growth and be subsequently able to rebound from the consequences of others who are not.
7:16 We are influential whether we realize it or not. If we are focused, purposeful, intently compassionate, we impact the lives of those around us. We may not notice the subtle changes in the people and environment around us, but who we are matters to what and who is around us. We are often oblivious to our impact on the world but it is there and it is prominent.
7:17 "But as God has distributed to each one, as the Lord has called each one, so let him walk...
God is not oblivious to our individual impacts on the world. We are given the gifts and the environments, the opportunities and the people, the talents and shortcomings to do the most good when we become purposeful. Whether we unite or contradict each other, we are in each other's lives for a reason. Let each of God's children walk their specific path but more, let each child awaken to the path they are walking. For there is guidance and comfort within the cobblestones.
Within a marriage or any relationship, the hope between two people should be the constant solidification of their union, but even when it is not, God wants us to accept our paths as well as theirs (even if they diverge). To grow and consistently rebound against challenge.
7:18-19 Paul stresses this very important fact which is so often forgotten: guidelines are not given out of desire for control or implementation of punishment. Guidelines are given for our benefit.
The example in this verse: circumcision was a health and sanitary guideline. Not a random, senseless, punishable rule.
God's guidelines are the training wheels which keep us from scraping ourselves up before we learn to ride. He helps us to live smartly; He gives us the defense of His wisdom against vulnerability, ignorance, naivete. Much of life is new to us, we learn through experience but before we have experience, we can trust Him to lead us, to teach us what we do not yet see.
Do not get so caught up in rules and cultural norms that you miss the common sense within yourself, your environment, the situation. God guides, He does not punish. When we ignore His guidance, we ignore His wisdom and we consequently suffer because we chose the difficult way.
7:20 Be purposeful. You are here for a reason, equipped with a purpose. When you become focused, you will be able to remain on the carefully laid path God has given you. Remain on it, it is where you are meant to be. It is where you are safe. It is where you will achieve.
7:21 Our journey to and with God and spirituality is special and unique. No matter who or what you were before you confronted your spirituality is irrelevant to the love God has for you. Perhaps you were a slave to your own selfishness or greed, maybe you were a slave to some other desire or corruption, but through your relationship with God, you escaped those chains. If God has made you free, has loosed your body, soul and mind from confusion, depression, apathy, use your new freedom! If he gave you clarity and strength use it purposefully, push it and yourself forward.
7:22 God rescues us from ourselves, from weakness or even darkness in our own minds and bodies and lives and we become free children. Spiritually independent, invulnerable to what we were victims to before. And quite beautifully, we become His. His instruments, the vessels through which He delivers love and compassion and patience and goodness to humanity.
7:23-24 God has arranged this earth as an elaborate school for us. The cost of our freedom was for Him to release us from His home. Here on earth we are vulnerable but He gave us this opportunity because He wanted us to have free will. On our own volition, we can seek and find Him and cuddle back up on His love and protection. Yet on another's own volition, they can choose not to... which creates suffering in the world. God wants us to utilize this earth, this schooling, so that the price He paid was not for nothing. Grow in spirituality, choose Him, become instrumental among humanity. The price He paid was to let us go for a time, we were safe but we had not personally chosen Him... He wanted us to be able to choose.
7:25-28 Despite Paul's personal recommendation of remaining celibate as a focused apostle, marriage is not wrong or advised against. If we choose marriage, we should understand that our choice is for life. If we choose not to marry, we should similarly remained focused on whatever other passion we have. Choose and be focused, purposeful.
7:29-31 Paul begins to give us some perspective. Although marriage becomes the core, or a core of our personal lives, we have work to do still in broader scopes. The globe and humanity are existing around us, changing and unfolding in diverse ways. Progressing and regressing. Our responsibility in the world extends beyond ourselves and our personal, nuclear lives.
Our purpose here is intricate. Minute as well as grand. We are meant to uphold justice on all scales, in our family, in our community, in our town and city, in our region, in our nation, in our globe. A marriage should strengthen, inspire and further enable a person to be able to do their life's work while here.
7:32-35 As an unmarried apostle, Paul's entire focus is on spirituality. Paul does not want us to forget about our spiritual work outside of our marriage. For two united people can and should work together to use their union to stand taller, stronger, more efficiently, and more able to influence the world and humanity around them.
Do not be selfish. Two people should not be selfish with each other, either. Recognize the strengths within your partner and become a pillar and propeller. Recognize that that person you have chosen has been given a purpose by God, has been given gifts by God to influence not only your life with them but also the life around them. Think broadly! Have perspective, look intently and compassionately out into the world. Love deeply within, but project it. Always. Beyond self. Beyond, always beyond, further, to as many people as you can.
7:36-38 These verses reveal the complications of the time Paul lived. A travelling apostle did not have the time or the means to support both a family and a lifestyle of apostleship. This is not longer the case. Paul is encouraging the then-apostles to choose marriage or apostleship and it letting them know it is okay to choose. Paul personally believes that an unmarried woman is capable of much achievement and therefore is happy when she chooses not to marry. We know that both women and men are capable of much, married or unmarried as long as they are focused with God on compassion and purpose.
7:39-40 Finally, Paul's advice speaks of the context of his time. Women were bound to their husbands, socially and financially. Paul wanted to give freedom to women who had lost their husbands. He wanted women to respected for their choice either to remarry or to remain single, to not be gossiped about for going against what outsiders believed she should do.
This is pertinent to us in that we should allow people to make their own decision without the vexing prod of our judgement. A person's life is their own business and God's business.
Note also that in Paul's time, it would be nearly impossible for a travelling apostle to have a relationship and a family; the nature of their work keeps them away and constantly travelling, it is time-consuming and it is dangerous as well.
7:2 The institution of marriage becomes a subject he wishes to cover. Remember that Paul's perspective is made up of the principles God wishes for us to implement in our lives: truth, sincerity, unity, patience, compassion. Therefore Paul encourages those of us entering relationships to be able to use those words to describe how we love each other.
Paul's advice is for us to cultivate our relationship with another person, to respect the union. Why? Because Paul was taught by God's love, love the center of all things, and he therefore takes relationships between people seriously. Once we choose a person, we should be compassionately choose them every day. Having been chosen, they are ours, uniquely. Our blessing, our responsibility.
7:3 Marriage is an institution of affection rendered by respect and joy at the person's existence, at the privilege of having them under our wing.
7:4 Paul wants us to understand the solidity and gravity of marriage: we share ourselves with another person; our souls intermingle and become responsible for each other.
7:5 Marriage is understood to be the gift of body and soul between two people. Paul's advice is to meditate on that fact. Rather than remain separate because of a religious rule or cultural taboo, Paul advises us to reflect on our relationship before we truly and physically give ourselves to each other. Why? To give us the space and perspective to fully accept the privilege but also responsibility of loving and having another. He wishes for us to have the time and clarity to love that person's soul: how they express themselves, the sound of their laugh, their sense of humor, their weaknesses... he wants us to love their soul before and more than their body. United souls are the core of marriage.
7:6 Paul's advice is a suggestion, a recommendation given in the hope and effort to help us cultivate and keep our love. Here is an example of the common sense wisdom within this book. Guidelines and recommendations are not given by God because He's an authoritarian but because He's a father and wants to light our way. He wants us to avoid bad and broken relationships. He gives us advice, through Paul on how to ensure we have entered a relationship we wish to be committed to before we commit to it.
If the body were not a component to a relationship, God wants us to be with someone who would still light our world up. True love is spiritual, it has little and even nothing to do with tangibility. It's inexplicable, indescribable, uncountable, infinite. When we find someone who can nourish our souls, they become deserving of our bodies. We can trust them. They can trust us.
7:7 Paul's wish is for everyone to be an apostle; focused entirely on articulating the word of God... yet he understands that God has many diverse paths and plans for His children. Paul's purpose as an apostle is not more or less important than perhaps a mother's relationship to her child, or a husband to a wife, or a teacher to a student. Meaning that even though Paul was not personally interested in marriage did not mean that it was something God was against.
7:8-9 Essentially, follow your soul. If you believe in marriage, devote yourself passionately to it. If you believe in apostleship, devote yourself to that. No matter which path in life you choose, ensure that it is natural to you, compassionate, purposeful. Do not live contrary to your truth because you will fail.
7:10-11 These verses are not angry commands. Paul is encouraging husband and wife in every marriage to remain with each other, to always support and love one another. He does not want the husband to abandon the wife or the wife to abandon the husband because it causes pain. Once a commitment is established, he wishes for us to nourish it. To never abandon it.
Divorce is not a sin, it is a pain. God does not want His children to be in pain. Moreover, He wants us to respect and love each other enough to never abandon a relationship we voluntarily entered. To be mutually compassionate and communicative through turbulence.
7:12-14 Here is advice specific to Paul's opinion: to love each other for who the person is. Faith around the world and between people varies. As living testimonies, how we live is an example to humanity of the values we believe it should uphold. If we enter a relationship with a person, who we are should become a part of their perspective of the world. Therefore, despite differences, two people in a relationship can influence each other. We can grow from each other: both from each other's weaknesses and strengths. And as their family grows, two parents focused on each other and spiritual growth is healthy and productive for their children.
7:15 Unfortunately, humans are not always mutually focused on maintaining unification. Even if one person is devoted, the other may not be... we are not to feel guilt or shame because of another person. Be peaceful. Be focused on spiritual growth and be subsequently able to rebound from the consequences of others who are not.
7:16 We are influential whether we realize it or not. If we are focused, purposeful, intently compassionate, we impact the lives of those around us. We may not notice the subtle changes in the people and environment around us, but who we are matters to what and who is around us. We are often oblivious to our impact on the world but it is there and it is prominent.
7:17 "But as God has distributed to each one, as the Lord has called each one, so let him walk...
God is not oblivious to our individual impacts on the world. We are given the gifts and the environments, the opportunities and the people, the talents and shortcomings to do the most good when we become purposeful. Whether we unite or contradict each other, we are in each other's lives for a reason. Let each of God's children walk their specific path but more, let each child awaken to the path they are walking. For there is guidance and comfort within the cobblestones.
Within a marriage or any relationship, the hope between two people should be the constant solidification of their union, but even when it is not, God wants us to accept our paths as well as theirs (even if they diverge). To grow and consistently rebound against challenge.
7:18-19 Paul stresses this very important fact which is so often forgotten: guidelines are not given out of desire for control or implementation of punishment. Guidelines are given for our benefit.
The example in this verse: circumcision was a health and sanitary guideline. Not a random, senseless, punishable rule.
God's guidelines are the training wheels which keep us from scraping ourselves up before we learn to ride. He helps us to live smartly; He gives us the defense of His wisdom against vulnerability, ignorance, naivete. Much of life is new to us, we learn through experience but before we have experience, we can trust Him to lead us, to teach us what we do not yet see.
Do not get so caught up in rules and cultural norms that you miss the common sense within yourself, your environment, the situation. God guides, He does not punish. When we ignore His guidance, we ignore His wisdom and we consequently suffer because we chose the difficult way.
7:20 Be purposeful. You are here for a reason, equipped with a purpose. When you become focused, you will be able to remain on the carefully laid path God has given you. Remain on it, it is where you are meant to be. It is where you are safe. It is where you will achieve.
7:21 Our journey to and with God and spirituality is special and unique. No matter who or what you were before you confronted your spirituality is irrelevant to the love God has for you. Perhaps you were a slave to your own selfishness or greed, maybe you were a slave to some other desire or corruption, but through your relationship with God, you escaped those chains. If God has made you free, has loosed your body, soul and mind from confusion, depression, apathy, use your new freedom! If he gave you clarity and strength use it purposefully, push it and yourself forward.
7:22 God rescues us from ourselves, from weakness or even darkness in our own minds and bodies and lives and we become free children. Spiritually independent, invulnerable to what we were victims to before. And quite beautifully, we become His. His instruments, the vessels through which He delivers love and compassion and patience and goodness to humanity.
7:23-24 God has arranged this earth as an elaborate school for us. The cost of our freedom was for Him to release us from His home. Here on earth we are vulnerable but He gave us this opportunity because He wanted us to have free will. On our own volition, we can seek and find Him and cuddle back up on His love and protection. Yet on another's own volition, they can choose not to... which creates suffering in the world. God wants us to utilize this earth, this schooling, so that the price He paid was not for nothing. Grow in spirituality, choose Him, become instrumental among humanity. The price He paid was to let us go for a time, we were safe but we had not personally chosen Him... He wanted us to be able to choose.
7:25-28 Despite Paul's personal recommendation of remaining celibate as a focused apostle, marriage is not wrong or advised against. If we choose marriage, we should understand that our choice is for life. If we choose not to marry, we should similarly remained focused on whatever other passion we have. Choose and be focused, purposeful.
7:29-31 Paul begins to give us some perspective. Although marriage becomes the core, or a core of our personal lives, we have work to do still in broader scopes. The globe and humanity are existing around us, changing and unfolding in diverse ways. Progressing and regressing. Our responsibility in the world extends beyond ourselves and our personal, nuclear lives.
Our purpose here is intricate. Minute as well as grand. We are meant to uphold justice on all scales, in our family, in our community, in our town and city, in our region, in our nation, in our globe. A marriage should strengthen, inspire and further enable a person to be able to do their life's work while here.
7:32-35 As an unmarried apostle, Paul's entire focus is on spirituality. Paul does not want us to forget about our spiritual work outside of our marriage. For two united people can and should work together to use their union to stand taller, stronger, more efficiently, and more able to influence the world and humanity around them.
Do not be selfish. Two people should not be selfish with each other, either. Recognize the strengths within your partner and become a pillar and propeller. Recognize that that person you have chosen has been given a purpose by God, has been given gifts by God to influence not only your life with them but also the life around them. Think broadly! Have perspective, look intently and compassionately out into the world. Love deeply within, but project it. Always. Beyond self. Beyond, always beyond, further, to as many people as you can.
7:36-38 These verses reveal the complications of the time Paul lived. A travelling apostle did not have the time or the means to support both a family and a lifestyle of apostleship. This is not longer the case. Paul is encouraging the then-apostles to choose marriage or apostleship and it letting them know it is okay to choose. Paul personally believes that an unmarried woman is capable of much achievement and therefore is happy when she chooses not to marry. We know that both women and men are capable of much, married or unmarried as long as they are focused with God on compassion and purpose.
7:39-40 Finally, Paul's advice speaks of the context of his time. Women were bound to their husbands, socially and financially. Paul wanted to give freedom to women who had lost their husbands. He wanted women to respected for their choice either to remarry or to remain single, to not be gossiped about for going against what outsiders believed she should do.
This is pertinent to us in that we should allow people to make their own decision without the vexing prod of our judgement. A person's life is their own business and God's business.
