“Defraud ye not one the other, except it be with consent for a time, that ye may give yourselves to fasting and prayer; and come together again, that Satan tempt you not for your incontinency.”
Do not deprive each other except perhaps by mutual consent and for a time, so that you may devote yourselves to prayer. Then come together again so that Satan will not tempt you because of your lack of self-control. — Sexual abstinence is permitted only when mutually agreed, temporary, and spiritually purposeful (devotion to prayer). The exception proves the rule: normal sexual relation is the default. The warning that Satan tempts through deprivation acknowledges both Satan's reality and the intensity of sexual desire. The return formula (palin homou ginesthe = come together again) is imperative, not optional, protecting the marriage against both infidelity and contempt.
Church Fathers on 1 Corinthians 7:5
“Defraud ye not one the other, except it be by consent.” What then can this mean? “Let not the wife,” says he, “exercise continence, if the husband be unwilling; nor yet the husband without the wife's consent.” Why so? Because great evils spring from this sort of continence. For adulteries and fornications and the ruin of families have often arisen from hence. For if when men have their own wives they commit fornication, much more if you defraud them of this consolation. And…
Nicene & Post-Nicene / Ante-Nicene Fathers translations · public domain
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