Podcast listener Sarah writes in to ask this, "Pastor John, I just got married to a wonderful guy and we just celebrated our first six months of marriage." Congratulations Sarah. "That being said, I'm confused by 1 Corinthians 7 verses 32 to 34. I understand Paul is making the point that you can live a more free life for the Lord if you're single.

But he says this, 'But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband.' That language makes it seem as though pleasing your husband or wife, serving them, loving them, laying your life down for them, is pointless or a lower calling than being a missionary like Paul.

Pastor John, can you help me understand this text better?" I don't know if I can. I will try my hardest, and I totally resonate with how difficult that sounds. Let me read a few verses to just make sure everybody's seeing what Sarah saw and what I see. Paul sees in 1 Corinthians 7 a fragile world liable to come to an end soon, and he says in verse 31, "The present form of this world is passing away." That influences significantly how he thinks and talks here.

So verse 29 goes like this, "From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none. Let those who mourn as though they weren't mourning. Those who rejoice as though they weren't rejoicing. Those who buy as though they had no goods. Those who deal with the world as though they were not dealing with the world, for the present form of this world is passing away.

So be married, mourn, rejoice, buy, deal with the world with a certain detachment because this is a fragile, short-lived world." Those are very striking, strange descriptions of how to live. Live in the world as though you're not in the world. Be married as though you're not married. Cry as though you're not crying.

Be happy as though you're not being happy. That's really strange, and it's just telling us don't sink your roots too deep here in this world, whether it's happy or whether it's sad. That's the backdrop for her verses that she's drawing our attention to. So here comes some instructions then about marriage in this context, and Paul commends his singleness.

He loves being single for ministry, and he talks about its distinct advantages, and they're of course not all advantages. Every single person knows that. So here's where the difficulties come that Sarah's asking about, and I'll read the verses. Verse 26, "I think that in view of the present distress it is good for a person to remain as he is, married or single.

Are you bound to a wife? Don't seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Don't seek a wife. But if you do marry, you have not sinned." Now, pause, exclamation point three times. That's an amazing statement. He's going to commend singleness as what he prefers and what he wishes more people would do, and then he says, "But marrying is not a sin." Now that's a big statement to say, because if you're not sinning, you're pleasing God, and if you're pleasing God, that's glorious, because sin is to displease the Lord.

There's no neutral place here, like halfway between pleasing the Lord and marriage or something. There's no neutral place. If you're not sinning, you are pleasing God. So he's saying to marry is not sin. And then he adds, "Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, literally tribulation in the flesh, and I would spare you that." So it's strange for Paul to say as a single man, because his life was so full of tribulation.

Like he's saying, if you get married, you're gonna have trouble. That's all he knew was trouble. So he has some special ideas in mind here. We need to try to get to the bottom of it. He clearly does not mean singleness is free from tribulation. He was in prison every other week, and shipwrecked, and dangerous here and there.

I mean, his life was just tremendously burdened, and he knew what it was to burn in the flesh. So he's talking about something peculiar about marriage here, which has got Sarah worked up, and me too. He says, "I want you to be free from anxieties." And clearly he means a certain kind of anxiety, because the very next thing he says is, "The unmarried man is anxious for the things of the Lord." Well, you just said you don't want us to be free.

You want us to be free from anxiety, and now you say—and it's the very same word in Greek. So I want him to be anxious for the things of the Lord. So he means a particular kind of anxiety. He's trying to spare us. Now, here's the key phrases, the key words that Sarah brought up.

"The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord." How to please the Lord. "But the married man is anxious about the things of the world." How to please his wife. And he's divided. "And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord." And how to be holy and embody and spirit.

"But the married woman is anxious about things of the world." How to please her husband. And so Sarah said this made her her efforts to please her husband sound pointless or lower in a calling than a missionary like Paul, and I admit it does sound like that. But I would say it sounds so bad that we know it can't be what Paul means in the way she's taking it.

So let me try to illustrate. Two times Paul contrasts things of the Lord with the things of the world. If you're not married, you focus on the things of the Lord. If you are married, you have to think about the things of the world. And so he says for the married person in verse 34 that he or she is divided.

Now that's a really puzzling contrast. Things of the Lord, in the single life, things of the world in the married life. That's the first one. I'm gonna come back and try to show that those are so bizarre that they can't mean what on the face of them they seem to mean.

Here's the second one. The unmarried man aims to please the Lord, the married man aims to please his wife. Third strange thing. Even more puzzling. I mean this is really jarring. The unmarried woman aims to be holy in body and spirit, but the married woman aims to please her husband.

You say, "What?" You know, just, "What?" How can you contrast those two? Now I would say that those three contrasts on the face of it are so contrary to what Paul teaches elsewhere even in this letter, that we know they don't mean what they seem to mean at first.

For example, I'm thinking 1st Corinthians 10 31 where he says, "Whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God." So you're married, you're having sex, or changing the oil, or fixing the faucet, or whatever you're doing, do it to the glory of God and you'll be holy.

So we know he can't mean that marriage is all this worldly, second-class stuff, and the real holiness and real pleasing the Lord is found outside marriage. Does he really mean in a marriage that we only deal with the things of the world and the things of the Lord are for single people?

And of course the answer is, "No way does Paul think that. His teachings are full of implications about how the children and husbands and wives treat each other as concerns of the Lord. Does he really want us to think that the effort to please the Lord is only possible in singleness, and in marriage all the dynamics are different?

We don't please the Lord there, we please each other there. He can't mean that because he said it's not a sin to marry, and it would be a sin to marry if we didn't try to please the Lord while we were married. That's what sin means, is not pleasing the Lord.

So I'm leaving behind the sphere where I please the Lord when I get married and now I'm just gonna please my wife. He cannot mean that. And when he says a woman tries to be holy in body and spirit as a single woman but please her husband, as opposed to be holy, he can't mean that either, that she stops being holy when she gets married.

So what does he mean? Like, here we are now, okay Sarah, you're asking the right question, I'm with you. What does he mean? Here's my effort. By things of the Lord he means the ministry outside of the family of spreading the gospel in risky evangelism, caring for the destitute, comforting the hurting saints, exhorting the wayward, and many other ministry-oriented things.

He has in mind a focused, more formal, official ministry effort of evangelism and nurture. He does not mean, when he says things of the Lord, he does not mean fixing the leaky faucet at home to the glory of God. He's not including that. Or mending the dresser where the dog chewed off the edge of it, or getting home for dinner when you promised.

These are all things that he would know can be done to the glory of God, but he's not including them in the things of the Lord. Those are the things of the world in his vocabulary. Not evil, not evil, just not what he means by things of the Lord.

When he contrasts pleasing the spouse with pleasing the Lord, I think he means there is a life of simpler pursuit of how to minister to the lost and the hurting that does not have to be complicated with the demands of family. Of course, you can please the Lord by playing with your children, or fixing that faucet, or mending that dresser, but Paul is saying simply, the unmarried can be more focused on all the demands of ministry without the complicating demands of family.

And that's true, I felt it so much during my pastoral days. What if I am in a heavy counseling session, and I promised to be home for supper at 530? This happened regularly. What if I am--and now what? I've got to--I want to please my wife, and I'm in the midst of this thing of the Lord.

What do I do? What if I'm playing with my kids at night, and an emergency phone call comes, and somebody's terribly desperate, either suicidal, or somebody's been rushed to the hospital? I've got a conflict there that I wouldn't have if I didn't have to be concerned with my kids that night.

What if a late-night crisis has made me so exhausted, I don't have any energy for the job I promised to do the next morning, and Paul would like us to be spared the complexity, the dividedness, if we are single and we can just flat-out serve all those ministerial things?

He's contrasting things of the Lord with a ministry life with what happens if it's complicated by the demands of the family. And when he says that a woman aims at holiness in body and mind as single, but tries to please the husband when married, I think he means she loses the simplicity of devoting more time to the Word and prayer, and must fit those things in to a much more demanding life.

In other words, there can be a more focused sense of pursuing the strategies, the disciplines of holiness, and I've talked with many married women, "How do you find time with all these kids to read the Word and to pray?" And she just aches for more spiritual time alone with God.

But here's where we end up. Paul is recruiting radical devotion to the Lord that is uncomplicated by the practical demands of marriage. This is no getting around it. Paul wants a lot of people to be single because of the nature of the demands of ministry and the press of the time.

And when he steps back and hears a question like Sarah's, "Hey, what about those of us who believe God is calling us to marriage?" And in marriage, Paul has a glorious answer, glorious truths to tell about the meaning and the ministry of marriage. But that's not here in 1 Corinthians 7, except you don't sin.

You got to go to Ephesians 5 for that, and when you go there, it is glorious. Amen, it is glorious. Thank you, Pastor John, for that comprehensive response, and thank you, Sarah, for the exceptional question. We need your exceptional questions, and you can send them to us via email at AskPastorJohn@DesiringGod.org.

Well, there is a fear that haunts humanity, and it's the fear of death. This fear is universally enslaving, and it's also a fear that Jesus Christ came to conquer and defeat on behalf of sinners like you and me. Tomorrow, Pastor John will explain how. I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

I'll see you tomorrow.