Two Good Roads
1 Corinthians 7:36-38 - "If anyone thinks that he is not behaving properly toward his betrothed, if his passions are strong, and it has to be, let him do as he wishes: let them marry; it is no sin. But whoever is firmly established in his heart, being under no necessity but having his desire under control, and has determined this in his heart, to keep her as his betrothed, he will do well. So then he who marries his betrothed does well, and he who refrains from marriage will do even better."
Imagine taking a walk with a friend who second-guesses every turn. You reach a fork in the trail. Both paths look perfectly good, but he studies them as if one might lead to paradise and the other to disaster. Finally, you choose one. Then, for the rest of the walk, he wonders aloud whether the other path would have been better. Robert Frost had a friend like that. His name was Edward Thomas.
When the two men walked through the English countryside, Thomas struggled over which path to take and then regretted whichever path they left behind. So Frost wrote him a poem as a gentle tease: “The Road Not Taken.” Most people remember its famous ending: “I took the one less traveled by / And that has made all the difference.” It sounds like Frost is telling us to reject the popular road and bravely blaze our own trail. But earlier in the poem, he tells us that the two roads had been worn “really about the same.” Both were covered with fresh leaves. Neither was obviously better. Sometimes the agony isn’t that we might choose the wrong road. Sometimes the agony is simply that we can’t choose both.
That gives us a way into Paul’s words. In these verses, Paul plants a signpost at a fork and writes good on both arrows. Now, the Greek here is famously difficult. Some translations understand Paul to be addressing a father deciding whether to give his unmarried daughter in marriage. The ESV understands him to be addressing an engaged man deciding whether to marry his betrothed. I’m following the ESV here, but Paul’s pastoral conclusion lands in essentially the same place either way: marriage is no sin, while remaining unmarried may carry a strategic advantage in view of the present distress and the freedom it provides for undivided service.
On the ESV’s reading, betrothal was a serious public and familial commitment. Much more than a casual modern dating relationship. Marry, he says, and you do well. Remain unmarried, and under these particular circumstances, you may do even better. One road carries a strategic advantage for undivided service, but neither road is sinful. You don’t have to make one road bad in order to choose the other. And buried in the middle of the passage sits this neat phrase: “being under no necessity.” Paul describes someone who isn’t being driven by compulsion, who has authority over his own will, and who has reached a settled decision in his heart. Compulsion has lost its vote.
I know that feeling, too. In Fall of 2013, I was offered a youth pastor position at a church in Toms River. It was a church with a rich history, it provided real ministry opportunity, and a paycheck at a moment when I genuinely needed one. At the time, nothing was open at Bayside. Even so, I said no. I realized I would have been grabbing a calling the way a drowning man grabs a rope — under necessity, trying to provide — and then baptizing it as obedience.
Not long after I declined, an assistant pastor role opened here, and in 2014 I started down the road I am still walking today. I don’t tell that story as a formula. God nowhere promises that the second door will open quickly, or at all. I tell it because the freedom Paul describes is real. A heart settled before Christ can decline a good road without panic and take a good road without needing it to be destiny.
That freedom is exactly what our decision-weary age simply can’t manufacture. We stand at forks running simulations, grieving in advance for the life behind the door we don't pick, sighing like Robert Frost's friend before we’ve even chosen. The engaged man in Corinth owed his fiancee something better than an endless engagement, and we owe our own decisions the same mercy: make them before God, and get on with it.
In Christ, there really are forks where neither road is sinful. That doesn’t mean every road is equally wise or that the consequences will be identical, but it does mean we can trust a Father who will remain faithful whichever good road we take.
Transformed Thinking: Where am I demanding a guarantee that neither good road offers?
Transformed Feelings: Ask God to trade the fear of choosing wrong for the settled peace of a heart He holds.
Transformed Actions: Take the first concrete step today on the good decision you’ve been deferring: the call, the email, the date on the calendar.
Prayer: “Lord, thank You that You guide real people through real choices and that You hold my life in Your hands. Thank You for forks where both arrows read good. Give me wisdom, settle my heart, and keep me close as I walk the road You lay before me. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
-PK