<p>7:5- see on Mt. 23:25; Rom. 5:12.</p><p><em>Do not deprive one another, unless it is for an agreed time, so that you may give yourselves to prayer and then come together again- </em>&quot;Deprive&quot; is literally &quot;defraud&quot; and continues the metaphor of sex as debt which was introduced in :3. Paul says that sex might be foregone for an agreed period in order to enable total devotion to prayer and by implication, personal connection with the Lord Jesus. This is a very high standard to speak of. We must ask how long we spend each day in communion with the Lord Jesus, how many minutes we are in prayer for, and whether foregoing marital sex would enhance our prayer life. For many of us, the answer would have to be that such sexual 'fasting' would not enhance our contact with the Lord Jesus because we are just not on that spiritual level. But what is interesting is that Paul speaks of this high level of spiritual devotion in the same context as warning against the usage of prostitutes rather than marital partners, and has commented that the Corinthians were generally unspiritual (3:1) and lacking basic fruits of the Spirit. Perhaps Paul is here addressing a very spiritual minority within the church- in which case we are challenged by the way that they coexisted along with the less spiritual in the same church environment. Or it may be that there was a heady mix of the heights of spiritual devotion and the depths of moral failure which existed amongst the Corinthians. Such mixture would be typical of human nature and the kinds of juxtaposition and tension between flesh and spirit which we find within ourselves and see constantly in others. The spiritually minded alcoholic, the sister with a heart of gold who has affairs... these are all so frequently encountered within church life.</p><p>There is an allusion to Mt. 17:21. Give yourselves to prayer and fasting with the passion and intensity required to perform a miracle. Paul assumes that prayer will be such a major component in the lives of married believers that they may well chose to temporarily abstain from sexual relationships in order to find a greater intensity in prayer. This speaks of quite some emphasis on prayer; not just a few minutes at the end of each day saying often the same words.</p><p><em>That Satan does not tempt you because of your lack of self-control</em>- The temptation in view was that of desiring sexual expression, and that is a deeply internal process. The 'satan' or adversary would therefore refer to the lusts of the human mind. Paul speaks as if their lack of self-control is a given, it exists amongst them. He doesn't argue that they should have sexual marital relationships <em>in case</em> they might lack self-control and fall into sin. He states that they lack self-control- for they were lacking the Spirit (3:1). So we get the picture of believers who lacked self-control who were on the other hand very zealous to connect with the Lord Jesus in prayer and would even forego sex in order to focus upon their prayer life. This mixture of flesh and spirit is within each of us and within every church. But the lid is taken off here by Paul, we see the internal workings within the minds and church lives of the Corinthians- because in essence the same conflicts will be seen in all who have not totally surrendered to the ministry of the Spirit.</p>