<p>7:10- see on 1 Cor. 9:14; 15:10.<br /><em>But to the married I give this instruction; not I, but the Lord- </em>I take this to mean that Paul at this point is repeating the recorded teaching of the Lord Jesus, rather than sharing things separately revealed to him- he begins doing that at :12. We note his deep connection with the Lord Jesus and how saturated his thinking was by the Gospels; I have elsewhere listed all his allusions to the Gospel records, and in the whole Pauline corpus he is alluding to them at least once every three verses. But there is another option in interpretation here. Gal. 2:20 and 1 Cor. 15:10 show Paul using the phrase &ldquo;yet not I but...&rdquo; to differentiate between his natural and spiritual self. Perhaps he does the same in the only other occurrence of the phrase here in 1 Cor. 7:10: &ldquo;And unto the married I command, <em>yet not I</em> the natural Paul, but the Lord the man Christ Jesus in the spiritual Paul, Let not the wife depart from her husband&rdquo;. See on Acts 23:6.</p><p><em>That the wife should not leave her husband- </em>The context so far has been of Paul warning the Corinthians against using church prostitutes and abandoning their marital partners under the guise of wanting to devote themselves completely to the Lord. We see here a window into how the flesh reasons- even marital breakup can be justified by the flesh as a path to greater spiritual service. &quot;Leave&quot; is the same word used by the Lord in teaching that man should not &quot;put asunder&quot; what God has joined together in marriage (Mt. 19:6; Mk. 10:9). The context of those passages clearly places the 'putting asunder' in parallel with divorce.</p>