Some scholars believe Paul may have been a widower.
Couples who are both believers.
In reference to married Christians, Paul teaches that reconciliation is always preferable to separation or divorce and should be actively sought.
Christians married to non-believers. It is evident that some of the married couples in Corinth had wed before either of them had become Christians, and subsequently the believing spouses probably wondered whether their marriage was legitimate in the eyes of God.
The unbeliever is not saved by marriage to a Christian. Each person, whether spouse or child, must make a personal decision to accept and follow Christ to receive salvation and God’s promises.
The word used here seems to be borrowed from the language of OT ritual. There were many things that could render a person ceremonially unclean. All these things would disqualify a person from participating in worship, and required cleansing rituals to correct.
Probably peace between the spouses, hopefully leading to restoration and salvation (v 16).
Paul may be speaking figuratively of abandoning all of one’s Jewish heritage and culture; however, there was a procedure in ancient medicine for reversing circumcision.
A faction of Jewish Christians (often called “Judaizers”) hounded Paul and insisted that Gentile believers must be circumcised.
In practice, even if both a slave and his master became Christians, the slave would remain so unless he were freed (cf Onesimus and Philemon); he could not claim that his freedom in Christ applied to his civil status as a slave. But it would have been wrong for others to treat a slave differently from anyone else in church services.
This essentially is an exception to the rule of v 20.
Lit released from a wife.
Paul may be referring to the appointed time of the return of Christ, or he may have been focusing on the briefness of human life, or both of these.
In ancient times marriages were usually arranged by a girl’s father or the head of the family.
I.e. has reached her child-bearing years.
