Lord’s charge, holiness in mixed marriage, circumcision paradigm (1 Cor 7)

of prayers and of holy childbearing and of all things in which Christians must share, he says that marriage is not alien to God. I charge, then—not I but the Lord—that a wife not be separated from a husband. The primary point is this: a yoking that has already been bound must not be loosed. But if she is also separated—for many causes of separation can arise; for example if fornication happens to the wife, it is a sin to keep the wife who has fornicated. If then she is also separated and some cause of separation arises, let her remain unmarried or be reconciled to the husband. Likewise I also want a husband to be such that he not send away a wife. To the rest I say, I not the Lord. To those who have married I do not legislate, but the Lord; to those not married but unequally yoked with unbelievers I do not have a law to give from God; for they are not even worthy of God’s laws; but let them hear us. And I will use what is written in the law to make the matters of the place understood. The laws according to Moses—some are God’s, and some are Moses’. And knowing this difference of God’s laws and Moses’ laws, the Lord said concerning those legislated by God: For God said, Honor father and mother; and concerning those by Moses: Moses, because of your hardness of heart, allowed you to dismiss your wives (Matthew 19:8). If you keep the matters of the book of divorce you will find the law written not from a command of the Lord. Moses then, serving God, gave second laws beside the laws of God; Paul, serving the gospel, gave second laws to those of the church after the laws from God through Jesus Christ. And it is good to hear laws from the Lord rather than to hear laws of Paul the apostle. For even if he is holy, still he has laws far lesser than the laws of the Lord.

For the unbelieving husband is made holy in the wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy in the brother (1 Corinthians 7:14). As a kind of blending happens of the two, husband and wife, into one flesh, as of wine and water; and as the believer imparts holiness to the Gentile spouse, or the reverse—the believing woman to the unbelieving husband—so also the unbeliever imparts pollution to the believing wife, or the unbelieving wife to the believing husband. Why then does he say the unbeliever is made holy by receiving something from the believer, and is not also profaned by receiving something from the unbelieving part? For each, conversing from the abundance of the heart with the other, either imparts or receives, and in time the one entirely conquers the other. And what need, he says, of such a contest and danger? For either he will succeed or fail, and either he will lose his soul as well or, after much toil, scarcely be able to gain. Therefore it is good, before a person is forestalled, carefully to look not only at this but also at what is coming, and having looked either not to marry or, marrying, to marry in the Lord. For a wife is bound as long as her husband lives; but if the husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord (1 Corinthians 7:39). We do not hear the “only in the Lord,” but we read “she is free to be married to whom she wishes,” and we no longer set beside it “only in the Lord.” And yet even there, when he said “only in the Lord,” he again checked the word saying she is more blessed if she remains so, according to my judgment. So the apostle, having said the more auspicious thing—“For she is made holy”—left us to understand the other.

Was anyone called circumcised? Let him not become uncircumcised. Was anyone called in uncircumcision? Let him not be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but keeping God’s commandments. Let each remain in the calling in which he was called (1 Corinthians 7:18–20). It will seem that he has unseasonably cast beside the word about marriage and chastity, since no inquiry had arisen about those from circumcision who believe not needing to draw the foreskin, and again those in uncircumcision not needing to be circumcised, and about “Were you called a slave? Do not be concerned,” and what follows. Perhaps then he took slavery and freedom as a paradigm of the married and the unmarried, calling circumcised the one who has put away the wife and uncircumcised the one who has married? For as the two will become one flesh and wife and husband are one flesh, and the circumcised has put away the things of the flesh, so the one who has put away the wife has as it were circumcised his own flesh; so also he calls a slave; for since he says also elsewhere the brother or the sister is not enslaved in such things, as if the married are slaves, through