Catholic Commentary
Widows: Freedom to Remarry, but Greater Happiness in Remaining
39A wife is bound by law for as long as her husband lives; but if the husband is dead, she is free to be married to whomever she desires, only in the Lord.40But she is happier if she stays as she is, in my judgment, and I think that I also have God’s Spirit.
1 Corinthians 7:39–40 teaches that a married woman remains bound to her husband by divine law during his lifetime, but upon his death she becomes free to remarry, provided she marries within the Christian faith. Paul additionally advises that remaining unmarried as a widow brings greater spiritual blessedness, though he presents this as pastoral counsel rather than binding commandment.
Death dissolves the marriage bond completely—a widow is truly free to remarry, yet consecrated widowhood offers a beatitude that even freedom cannot match.
1 Corinthians 7:39 — "Bound by law for as long as her husband lives"
Paul opens with a compact legal-theological axiom that recapitulates the teaching he gave earlier in the chapter (7:10–11) and in Romans 7:2–3. The Greek verb dedetai ("is bound") is the same root used in Jesus' teaching on binding and loosing and echoes the covenantal language of betrothal in Jewish law. The bond Paul describes is not merely a social contract but a nomos — a governing principle with the force of divine law (cf. Gen 2:24, quoted by Jesus in Matt 19:6). This is not a new Pauline invention; Paul is transmitting a received tradition about the nature of the marital bond itself.
The clause "if the husband is dead" (ean de apothanē ho anēr) uses the aorist subjunctive to describe a real and completed event. Death genuinely dissolves the bond: the wife is eleutherā, "free" — a strong word connoting emancipation from legal obligation. Paul's insistence on this freedom is pastorally significant: he is not placing a burden of perpetual widowhood on the woman. She has full liberty to remarry.
The qualification "only in the Lord" (monon en Kyriō) is weighty and compact. At minimum it means that a remarriage must be to a fellow Christian — a requirement that carries significant pastoral weight in Corinth's religiously mixed population. But patristic and later Catholic tradition rightly discerns a deeper resonance: every Christian marriage is to be undertaken as a sacramental reality, ordered not merely by affection or social custom but by the lordship of Christ. St. John Chrysostom comments that "in the Lord" means the marriage must be contracted "with sobriety and chastity, not with wantonness and excess" (Homily 19 on 1 Corinthians). The phrase is a hermeneutical key: it subordinates all human freedom in marriage to the transforming reality of life in Christ.
1 Corinthians 7:40 — "She is happier if she stays as she is"
The word Paul uses for "happier" is makariotēra — the comparative form of makarios, the same root as the Beatitudes in Matthew 5. This is not a claim of mere psychological contentment but of beatitude, a participation in the blessedness that flows from union with God. Paul is not disparaging the widow's freedom to remarry (he has just insisted on it) but is offering a spiritual evaluation: widowhood freely embraced is a higher path of beatitude. The comparison is not between a good and a bad choice, but between two goods — with consecrated widowhood being the greater.
"In my judgment" (kata tēn emēn gnōmēn) echoes verse 25, where Paul distinguished his own counsel from direct dominical command. This epistolary humility is not a weakening of the claim but a precise theological calibration: Paul is not legislating but spiritually advising. Yet he immediately adds — almost wryly — "and I think that I also have the Spirit of God." The Greek dokō de kagō Pneuma Theou echein is ironic in tone, likely a response to Corinthian spiritualists who claimed superior pneumatic authority. Paul asserts apostolic confidence: this counsel, though given in freedom, is Spirit-illumined. He is not merely offering a personal preference; he is exercising the charismatic and apostolic discernment the Spirit grants him for the building up of the Church.
Typological and spiritual senses
The bound wife as a type of the Church bound to Christ, and the widow as a figure of the soul awaiting its Spouse, run through patristic interpretation. St. Ambrose and St. Augustine both read the widow who remains as a figure of the soul that does not return to the "Egypt" of worldly attachment after having been set free. The "in the Lord" qualification foreshadows the Augustinian maxim that the heart is restless until it rests in God — every human love finds its deepest meaning only when ordered to its divine source.
Marriage's Indissolubility and Death's Dissolving Power
Catholic doctrine teaches that a valid, ratified, and consummated sacramental marriage is dissolved only by death (CCC 1638, 2382). Verse 39 provides one of Scripture's clearest apostolic warrants for this teaching. The Council of Trent explicitly cited this verse (Decree on the Sacrament of Matrimony, Canon 2) in defining that the marriage bond endures until the death of one spouse. Crucially, death does dissolve the bond — a teaching sometimes obscured by popular piety — so that Catholic widows who remarry do so without moral impediment, provided the conditions of a valid marriage are met.
The Vocation of Consecrated Widowhood
Paul's counsel in verse 40 provides the scriptural foundation for the ancient ordo viduarum — the Order of Widows — recognized in the early Church as a distinct ecclesial vocation (see 1 Tim 5:9–10). The Catechism explicitly lists widows alongside virgins as those who "give themselves wholly to God" and embody the Church's spousal relationship with Christ (CCC 922–924). John Paul II's Familiaris Consortio (§16) echoes Paul's language of comparative beatitude, recognizing that virginity and consecrated widowhood "signify the eschatological character of marriage," pointing forward to the Kingdom where they neither marry nor are given in marriage (Matt 22:30).
"In the Lord" as Sacramental Form
The Fathers, especially Tertullian (Ad Uxorem), insisted that "only in the Lord" meant Christian spouses must marry within the faith community and with liturgical solemnity. This became a seed of the developed Catholic theology of matrimony as a sacrament: the ministers are the spouses themselves, but the form must be ecclesial, coram Ecclesia, expressing that the bond exists within and for the Body of Christ. St. Thomas Aquinas would later develop this in terms of marriage's res et sacramentum — the interior reality signified — as the union of Christ and the Church (Eph 5:32).
Apostolic Authority and the Spirit
Paul's self-correction — "I think I also have the Spirit of God" — is cited by St. Basil and St. Augustine as a model of apostolic teaching authority: confident but not coercive, Spirit-given but pastorally calibrated to the freedom of the recipient. This anticipates the Catholic understanding of the Magisterium's moral guidance as an authoritative but differentiated exercise: not every judgment carries the same dogmatic weight, yet all are worthy of the obsequium religiosum of a well-formed conscience.
For contemporary Catholics, these two verses offer several points of concrete spiritual engagement.
For widows and widowers: Paul's affirmation of freedom to remarry is a word of genuine pastoral liberation — particularly for those who carry guilt or social pressure about dating after spousal loss. The Church confirms: remarriage after the death of a spouse is entirely legitimate and good. At the same time, Paul's makariotēra — "happier," in the beatitudinal sense — invites every widow to ask honestly whether God may be calling them to something more: not deprivation, but a deeper, undivided attentiveness to the Lord. The ancient Order of Widows, revived in modern form in dioceses around the world, offers a structured way to live this vocation.
For those preparing for marriage: "Only in the Lord" is a searching question for any Catholic entering marriage: Is this relationship truly ordered to Christ? Does it draw both spouses toward holiness, or away from it? This is not a restriction on love but love's deepest clarification.
For all the baptized: Paul's assertion that he has the Spirit of God speaks to the dignity of every Christian conscience formed by faith, Scripture, and the Church's teaching — confident, humble, and open to the Spirit's guidance in concrete life decisions.