Contemporary interpretation of 1 Cor 7:1-9 regularly speaks of marital sex as prophylaxis against sexual immorality, whereby the sexual needs of a spouse must be satisfied so as to prevent sexual immorality (7:2) and a loss of self-control (7:5, 9). This reading often assumes that Paul is both beginning a new literary unit in 7:1 and speaking to a different Corinthian subgroup than that addressed in 6:12-20. As such, the contextual influence of 1 Cor 6:12-20 becomes subtly muted.
However, an anthropological tension emerges from such receptions. In 6:13a, Paul denies that the believer’s experience of sexual desire is a hunger or appetite that must be satiated like food. On the contrary, the moral identity and moral agency of the believer is determined by union with Christ (6:13b) and the presence of the Holy Spirit (6:19). Christians can use their sexual bodies “for the Lord” because of divine ownership and consequent empowerment. Yet in the subsequent discussion in 7:1-9, the moral agency of some believers is construed as sufficiently weak and vulnerable that it requires the preventative measure of sexual satisfaction, with little or no sense of divine empowerment or transformed moral capacity.
This paper argues that 1 Cor 7:1-9 should be read in literary and thematic continuity with 1 Cor 6:12-20. The common rhetorical situation is an audience which has disconnected sex from marriage, both in terms of failing to limit sex to marriage (6:12-20; 7:8-9) and devaluing the practice of sex within marriage (7:1-7). In response, Paul presents marriage as the necessary site of sexual practice, which offers one mode of bringing bodily honour to God (6:20), through acts of mutual giving and mutual obligation (7:2-5). But if it is true that sexual desire is not equivalent to our hunger for food (6:13a), then the exhortations of chapter 7 are driven by the logic of marriage more than the amelioration of appetites. To quote the evangelical ethicist Andrew Cameron: it is “…a marriage, not an individual, [that] has sexual ‘needs’” (Joined-Up Life, 243). This reading necessitates revisiting the translation and interpretation of key terms such as ὀφειλὴν (7:3), ἀποστερεῖτε (7:5), and πυροῦσθαι (v.9), each of which have often been understood in an “appetitive” manner.
The paper then connects 1 Cor 6:12-7:9 to Paul’s broader account of transformed lives in Christ. Specifically, it draws upon the work of John Barclay, Susan Eastman, and Grant Macaskill regarding Paul’s vision of Christian moral identity and moral agency. The result is an interpretation that not only creates richer alignment between chapters 6 and 7 but also integrates with other Pauline teaching on the possibilities for self-controlled sexual conduct (e.g. 1 Thess 4:3-8). This enables a more nuanced appreciation for the way 1 Cor 7:1-9 should contribute to Pauline ethics, and in particular, Paul’s expectation for the moral capacities of both married and unmarried believers.