NOTES for Co1 7:32

Married life in Judaism was considered, in effect, a kind of religious duty; in the minds of believers it was connected with fulfilling the command, "be fruitful and multiply," which was given to people at the very beginning, immediately after the creation of the human person and before the fall. Therefore, avoiding married life was considered inappropriate and unworthy of a person seeking to keep God's commandments. Of course, all kinds of things happen in life, and not everyone succeeds in starting a family, but those without families, unless they were without a family through no fault of their own, were viewed as people deserving only sympathy.

This applied equally to priests, Levites, rabbis, and teachers of the Torah. It was considered that no service to God in itself could become an obstacle to family life. As for Paul himself, at the moment of his meeting with the Risen One on the Damascus road, he apparently had not yet married and started a family: he was then a relatively young man who had only just completed his rabbinic education. Or perhaps he had not quite completed it; it is not known exactly whether Paul, then still Saul, was continuing his studies with Gamaliel at that time or not.

But once Saul, the former student of Gamaliel, became Paul and an apostle, he could no longer live his former life. His new life was so filled with journeys and travels, and travels often far from safe, that he considered it better not to have a family at all, so as not to expose his household to all the hardships of his own life. This, as can be seen, is what Paul has in mind when he says that a family man is forced to think about his family, while an unmarried man can devote himself wholly to service, distracted by nothing else and looking back at no one.

But the apostle understands that such a path cannot be universal, that it is conditioned by the specifics of a particular calling and a particular service. Speaking of himself as a person "having the Spirit of God," Paul defends his right, as well as the right of any other person, if God calls him precisely to such a path, to remain without a family. He urges people not to look at the unmarried as unhappy people whose lives have failed, affirming that there can also be a conscious choice of the corresponding path.

Such an affirmation of the dignity of celibacy against the background of traditional disdain for it was absolutely necessary then. But the apostle also draws attention to the fact that in the present time, when the Kingdom has already drawn near according to the Savior's own word, and His return in glory can be expected every day, one must not become attached to family any more than to anything else in this world. There is, after all, family as marriage, as the depth and fullness of relationships which, when speaking of Christians, are rooted in the life of the Kingdom; and there is family as a social and everyday phenomenon. This everyday life and the society that produces it will not enter the Kingdom, but will remain in this world. Therefore, even family life must be lived in such a way that everyday life and society do not prevail over its spiritual component, as Paul reminds us.