Freewill Gifts, Mixed Marriages, and Circumcision

…some to make freewill offerings, that is, to bring gifts to God. These freewill offerings were the things beyond what the law required, given as the fruits of a good and God-loving generosity. It was not permitted to neglect the sacrifices ordained in the law, but God counted worthy of praise those who added to them gifts of their own, from their own free choice. We say that something of this kind has been arranged now as well. For Christ did not forbid anyone who so chooses to take part in the union the law allows; but nothing would keep us from achieving the greater thing, if we are eager to lay claim to glory as our final portion.

Paul therefore does very well to say to the unmarried and the widows, “It is good for them if they remain as I am” (1 Corinthians 7:8), but, “To the married I give charge, not I but the Lord,” and so on (1 Corinthians 7:10). He brings forward his own case as a pattern of the chosen and undistracted life (compare 1 Corinthians 7:35), plainly ranking the unmarried state above the other. So if anyone has put off the yoke of the law, let him remain, he says, in self-control; for in this way he will inherit the kingdom of heaven. And the One who awards the crowns will confirm it, saying, “Thus says the Lord to the eunuchs: As many as keep my Sabbaths, and choose the things that I will, and hold fast to my covenant, to them I will give in my house and within my wall a renowned place, better than sons and daughters; I will give them an everlasting name, and it shall not fail” (Isaiah 56:4–5).

So the reward of self-control is worth the winning. But those already bound by marriage he does not permit to leave the wife once joined to them, so that the message of salvation may not fill the world under heaven with turmoil. For Christ, the Savior of us all, does not approve of this practice, even though the law, by way of concession, allowed the people of old to do it “because of their hardness of heart” (Matthew 19:8), as the Savior himself says.

That those in Christ are steadier and stronger than the people of old, anyone who wishes can easily see from this as well. The law forbade the children of Israel to associate with foreigners and to be bound to them in marriage (compare Deuteronomy 7:3); but to us Paul says, “If any brother has a wife who is an unbeliever,” and so on (1 Corinthians 7:12). For their mind was unsound and unsteady, but we are not so; for we have been anointed with the Holy Spirit for adoption as sons, and Christ has come to dwell in us. Standing so firmly, then, toward every good thing, we are in no way afraid any longer to live with one of the unbelievers. Rather, we are confident that we will draw them as in a net into godliness, and that we will not become the prey of the ignorance that is in them. We bless those who have not yet believed rather than being defiled by them.

For “the unbelieving husband,” he says, “has been made holy in his wife,” and so “your children too are holy” (1 Corinthians 7:14), since the holiness in those who believe surely overcomes the filth of those who have not yet believed. “But if the unbeliever separates,” he says, “let him separate; in such cases the brother or the sister is not enslaved” (1 Corinthians 7:15). Let the defiled one go away, if he so decides, from the one who makes him holy, and take the loss that comes with it as the wages of his own choice. But the one who follows the divine commandments is wholly blameless; for he will be blessed as obedient by Christ, the Savior of us all.

“Was anyone called when already circumcised? Let him not remove the marks of circumcision. Was anyone called while uncircumcised? Let him not be circumcised” (1 Corinthians 7:18).

Some of those from the circumcision, it seems, were reasoning among themselves: “How shall we be acceptable and honor the life in Christ, when we already have circumcision? Perhaps we shall have to draw the foreskin forward, that is, to go back to uncircumcision and do violence to the nature of the flesh.” But those who came from pagan error, learning perhaps from those who still honored the shadow in the law that circumcision is a precious thing and one kept by all the saints, although the faith…