The thing you need to keep in mind about sex, Paul says, is that “the time is short” (I Corinthians 7:29). The NRSV puts this as “the time has become limited,” but that’s providing more verb than the Greek text really warrants. The NRSV’s reading does reflect the conviction of many commentators, however, as they take this text as an indication of Paul’s (mistaken) conviction that he would see the return of Jesus within his lifetime. Yet as we saw in II Thessalonians a couple of days ago, Paul recognized that it was not at all sure when the end of all things would be. And here in I Corinthians as well, the passage’s application is not bound to a particular expectation of how or when the world will end.

In fact, whether in Paul’s era or our own, none of us can know whether there are just a few minutes or many centuries left on the clock for the world as a whole. There is something that we do know for sure, though: each of us as an individual has only a limited amount of time in this world. And more specifically, we each have only a limited amount of time in which we can serve as an ambassador for Christ. So Paul proposes that because we want to do the best we can with the Christian mission of our lives, we need to think carefully about our choices. Thus, those who are single can readily devote their time day by day to the service of the Kingdom of God, but those who are married will need to devote much of their time to the needs of their family (7:32-35).

It’s hard for us to get that, though, because Paul expresses a perspective that is so different from how our culture thinks. Within our contemporary worldview, everyone presumes that sex and marriage are there to make us happy, and culture continually prompts us to think our personal happiness has to be our first concern. It’s only after that presupposition that we consider how we will live as Christians. But suppose we insist, along with Paul, that the primary question that must be answered is about how we will devote our brief lives to our calling as disciples of the Lord. For a person considering marriage, this comes out as a very pointed question: “The time is short: my life on this earth is limited. So will I be a more effective missionary as a single person or as a married person?” (7:8-9, 7:17, 7:36-38, 7:39-40).

It’s also common to disparage Paul’s instructions regarding marriage as hopelessly out of date and misogynistic. But if we recognize that Paul’s chief concern is for the missionary character of the life of the Christian, that provides a particular context for all the other things Paul says: about sexual sins (5:9, 6:9, 6:15-18), about happy egalitarian sex within marriage (7:3-5, 32-34), about divorce (7:10-13). These issues are all secondary to this primary question: how will my life be most effective as a missionary for Jesus: as a single person, or as a married person?

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What will we do with this brief time that you have entrusted to us, Lord? It’s so easy to presume we should spend it on ourselves and our own happiness; yet you have given us the opportunity to make a difference, to change the world as ambassadors of your gospel. Give us the courage, we pray, to seek first your kingdom, now and always.

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