Let them marry in the Greek is in the aorist imperative, indicating a strong command. “Get married,” Paul says, for it is better to marry than to burn. The term means “to be inflamed,” and is best understood as referring to strong passion (cf. Rom. 1:27). A person cannot live a happy life, much less serve the Lord, if he is continually burning with sexual desire—even if the desire never results in actual immorality. And in a society such as Corinth’s, or ours, in which immorality is so prevalent and accepted, it is especially difficult not to succumb to temptation.

Doesn’t advising that it “is better to marry than to burn with passion” (v. 9) give us a sub-Christian view of marriage? My New Testament professor during seminary days had a wonderful marriage of many years and delightful children whom he dearly loved. In the process of leading us to an understanding of a certain passage he often used illustrations either out of the wonderful Christian home in which he had been reared or from the experiences within his own family. When he came to this chapter in 1 Corinthians, he upset some of the students by saying rather critically of Paul, “There are a lot better things which can be said about marriage than that it’s not a sin.” All that we know from the Scriptures, beginning in Genesis and going through the Bible, tells us that the professor was right. Then how do we deal with what Paul wrote in this chapter?

God Himself declared at creation that “it is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him” (Gen. 2:18). All people need companionship and God ordained marriage to be, among other things, the most fulfilling and common means of companionship. God allowed for singleness and did not require marriage for everyone under the Old Covenant, but Jewish tradition not only looked on marriage as the ideal state but looked on singleness as disobedience of God’s command to “be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth” (Gen. 1:28).

It is possible that, as a result of this, some of the Jewish Christians in Corinth were pressuring single Gentile believers to become married. Some of the Gentiles, on the other hand, perhaps because of past experiences they had had, were inclined to remain single. As the Jews had done with marriage, those Gentiles, reacting to the sexual sin of their past, came to look on celibacy not only as the ideal state but the only truly godly state. Paul acknowledges that singleness is good, honorable, and excellent, but he does not support the claim that it is a more spiritual state or that it is more acceptable to God than marriage.

That celibacy is wrong for those who are married should be an obvious truth, but it was not obvious to some of the Corinthian believers. Because of their erroneous belief in the spiritual superiority of total sexual abstinence, some members in the church practiced it even within marriage. Some overzealous husbands apparently had decided to set themselves apart wholly for God. In doing so, however, they neglected or even denied their responsibilities to their wives, especially in the area of sexual relations.

The apostle made no exception to the instruction that the husband fulfill his duty to his wife, and likewise also the wife to her husband. God holds all marriage to be sacred and He holds sexual relations between husband and wife not only to be sacred but proper and even obligatory. Paul makes it clear that physical relations within marriage are not simply a privilege and a pleasure but a responsibility. Husbands and wives have a duty to give sexual satisfaction to each other. There is no distinction between men and women. The husband has no more rights in this regard than the wife.

God may give us a strong burden about a person or a ministry, a burden that requires our undivided attention and concentrated prayer. Grief or serious illness, for example, may lead to this. Or we may fall into a particularly harmful sin and need to withdraw for awhile to get straightened out with the Lord.

After the covenant at Sinai had been given, the Lord planned to come down and manifest Himself before Israel “in a thick cloud, in order that the people may hear when I speak with [Moses].” In preparation for His coming, the people were to consecrate themselves by washing their clothes and by abstaining from sexual intercourse for three days (Ex. 19:9–15).

Sexual expression within marriage is not an option or an extra. It is certainly not, as it has sometimes been considered, a necessary evil in which spiritual Christians engage only to procreate children. It is far more than a physical act. God created it to be the expression and experience of love on the deepest human level and to be a beautiful and powerful bond between husband and wife.