006:020 And you are not your own, for you have been redeemed at
infinite cost. Therefore glorify God in your bodies.
007:001 I now deal with the subjects mentioned in your letter.
It is well for a man to abstain altogether from marriage.
007:002 But because there is so much fornication every man should have
a wife of his own, and every woman should have a husband.
007:003 Let a man pay his wife her due, and let a woman also pay
her husband his.
007:004 A married woman is not mistress of her own person:
her husband has certain rights. In the same way a married man
is not master of his own person: his wife has certain rights.
007:005 Do not refuse one another, unless perhaps it is just for a time
and by mutual consent, so that you may devote yourselves
to prayer and may then associate again; lest the Adversary
begin to tempt you because of your deficiency in self-control.
007:006 Thus much in the way of concession, not of command.
007:007 Yet I would that everybody lived as I do; but each of us
has his own special gift from God--one in one direction
and one in another.
007:008 But I tell the unmarried, and women who are widows, that it
is well for them to remain as I am.
007:009 If, however, they cannot maintain self-control, by all means let
them marry; for marriage is better than the fever of passion.
007:010 But to those already married my instructions are--yet not mine,
but the Lord's--that a wife is not to leave her husband;
007:011 or if she has already left him, let her either remain as she
is or be reconciled to him; and that a husband is not to send
away his wife.
007:012 To the rest it is I who speak--not the Lord. If a brother has
a wife who is an unbeliever, and she consents to live with him,