Sexual refusal

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When Paul speaks of marriage, he does not take sex for granted or treat it as unimportant. In response to an apparent Corinthian error that "[i]t is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman" (1 Corinthians 7:1), Paul provides a necessary corrective: that husbands and wives are not to use spiritual pretense to refuse each other sexual access to themselves. Indeed, the word translated "deprive" in 1 Cor 7:5 is a legal term (αποστερειτε, Strongs #650) meaning "to defraud", and the allowance for a sexual fast is given only subject to the mutual consent of the couple, and only as "a concession, not a command". In other words, no married couple should ever feel compelled to abstain from giving to one another sexually on the grounds of any Christian principle or doctrine. (See Greek/1 Corinthians 7:1-6.)

The exhortation here is rooted both in Torah law and in the illustrative role of marriage as a picture of Jesus Christ and His church.


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