What does 1 Corinthians 7:10 mean?

Verses 10 and 11 deal with divorce, but Paul's point here is not to address all divorce for all reasons. Prior verses have dealt with a mistaken view held by some of the believers at Corinth. Namely, that Christians should not have sex, even if they were married, and that the most spiritual Christian life is one of celibate and/or unmarried devotion to Christ. Perhaps this was a response to the pervasive sexual immorality in wider Corinthian culture. Perhaps it borrowed these ideas from other moral philosophies and teachings of the day.

In any case, this may have created some problems in the church. If this was a common misconception, some might have stopped having sex with their spouses.

Worse, others might have thought that in order to attain some higher level of spirituality, they would have to divorce their spouses.

Paul has clearly and firmly rejected these ideas. He addressed the issue of sex in marriage earlier (1 Corinthians 7:2–5). Now he states unequivocally that women should not separate from—or divorce—their husbands, especially for this reason. He will say the same for husbands in the following verse.