Historically speaking, singleness, in the modern world, is a novelty. Like many other young people, I moved out of my parent’s house at 18 years old and lived the next several years as a single man until I got married. This is the expectation in the modern world: Men and women leave their parents’ houses and go live on their own somewhere until they reach full adulthood. Yet, this was unheard of in the ancient world, where people were born into a household, lived in a household, married into a household, or given in marriage to another household (Gen. 2:24) and so on. Being disconnected from household life was very rare, and if it happened it was a crisis; people without households were extremely vulnerable.
While modernity is quite different in many respects than ancient times, one thing remains: The potential for loneliness of modern singleness looms large and cannot be fully cured by church life. A local church is a meta-household, built upon the strength of the individual households. Most churches have a number of prominent families whose commitment sustains and stabilizes the whole church. Singles must participate in church life by working alongside households. The household is a stabilizing force that anchors people in a community, and the church is built upon the natural strength of believing households. Local churches would do well to provide pathways for single Christians to more fully integrate into healthy and strong households within the church with the aim of building their own households
Modern Culture and the Church’s Mandate
The culture has a tendency to highlight all the ways marriage can go wrong and by extension praise all the ways singleness, hook-up culture, etc. can ‘go right’. To combat this, the modern church must promote and celebrate the ways marriage and family can ‘go right’. The biblical vision is a far better vision of sexuality than the world has because we worship the God who created it and wrote the playbook on how people ought to live. Recent studies have shown that Christian marriages who hold traditional beliefs about gender roles are happier than all the others.
God knows what He’s doing! People who get married and order their marriages according to biblical norms tend to be happier and more fulfilled, and thus fulfill God’s mandate to the church.
Yet one writer observes that some American pastors paint a bleak, “anti-marriage” picture of marriage. He cites several examples of well-known pastors and authors telling marital horror stories that make people think twice before considering [1] marriage.In response to this, one man comments, “I have personally never heard a positive, public exhortation to the young to pursue marriage, in any church or college ministry, ever.”
Churches and pastors are often foolish when they neglect teaching about marriage in favor of pandering to singles, or worse, the culture. Instead, pastors and churches should love their single church members enough to present a vision that highlights the beauty, glory, joy, and the blessing we receive as we trust God to follow His design for marriage. ‘But what about the Apostle Paul?!’ One may object.
Misunderstanding Paul’s Singleness
Before we proceed further, we need to discuss a big misunderstanding about the apostle Paul. When I speak to Christians about singleness, Paul’s singleness often bubbles up to the surface. The claim is that Paul teaches the superiority of singleness, based on 1 Corinthians 7.
Here’s how the logic goes. The first misunderstanding–First, we are not commanded in Scripture to get married. I disagree. God created the sexes for procreation, which was both an expectation and explicit command in Genesis 1:28–29: “And God blessed them. And God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth.’” The redemption of Christ does not negate this command.
Second, Paul acknowledges that marriage can be a potential distraction from the things of God. He says, The married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided. And the unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit. But the married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband (1 Cor. 7:33–34). Based on this text, some have suggested that being single is spiritually superior. This is an unnecessary conclusion, however. Paul is drawing attention to the simple fact that married people have additional responsibilities to one another that need to be fulfilled. As such, Paul teaches elsewhere that husbands and wives (and everyone else, too!) should pursue all of their earthly responsibilities with a wholehearted devotion to the Lord (1 Cor. 10:31; Eph. 5:22–24).
Third misunderstanding—marriage is a risk. They reason, some marriages are simply so horrible that both spouses wish they had never gotten married. Yet the potential pain of obedience is never a legitimate excuse for disobedience. Yes, we live in a fallen world. But the fact remains that marriage is the normative vocation for nearly all Christians, and the primary theater of Christian sanctification.
Fourth—since the church is the family of God, it has replaced the natural family as the central institution in the Christian life. This is a false dichotomy and frankly, it is a naive, idealistic view of the church. The church was not intended to be a replacement for the natural family.
The natural family, on the other hand, is internally ordered toward a divine purpose. God ordered the household with father, mother, brothers, and sisters—other blood relations— living and working together. The household also has a built-in authority structure that gives it cohesion. All family members have a shared ancestry that binds them together with cords not easily broken. This underlying structure holds people in its grip much more powerfully than voluntary church commitments. The structure, when working properly, is designed to promote health and flourishing among all its members.
Communal living arrangements, on the other hand, lack a cohesive structure and often promote egalitarian living. For better or worse, natural families are more invested in one another because they share a common history and common blood. Christian communal arrangements have no such cohesion.
A Bit More on Paul’s Singleness
Despite these things, Paul’s singleness still prevails in the minds of many as it’s presented as a kind of mystical fascination. Many believe that any desire for marriage must be driven by a base desire for sex. Is this true? Paul’s most extended teaching on the matter is found in 1 Corinthians 7. In verses 6–9, he says this:
Now as a concession, not a command, I say this. I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single, as I am. But if they cannot exercise self control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.
Is he arguing that singleness is the preferred state for Christians? This cannot be the case for at least three reasons: First, it would contradict other Scriptures upholding the goodness of marriage. Marriage is not merely an outlet for sexual pleasure, but it is the fundamental institution upon which society is built. God did not create Eve merely for Adam’s sexual pleasure, but He created her as a co-worker in the Creation Mandate (Gen. 1:28). Paul also assumes marriage and children in his list of qualifications for eldership (1 Tim. 3:2–4; Titus 1:6). The new covenant blessing of the gospel does not replace God’s prior blessings of marriage but adds to and expands them.
Second, it would not make logical or practical sense for singleness to be the norm for Christians. If singleness were widely adopted in this way, the church would be robbed of its children, which are its most fertile and receptive mission field (Acts 2:39).
Third, the context of Paul’s comments in 1 Corinthians 7 include some unknown, extenuating circumstance that made the prospect of marriage more complicated and difficult at that time. In verses 26–28, he says, “I think that in view of the present distress it is good for a person to remain as he is. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you do marry, you have not sinned, and if a betrothed woman marries, she has not sinned. Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that.” We do not know what the exact nature of the “present distress” was. Some have speculated a severe famine, outbreak of persecution, or similar trial. Whatever it was, Paul thinks it important enough to consider whether or not to get married. In short, singleness is not a spiritually superior state, though unusual circumstances may prompt one to delay marriage for a time.
Before I close, I want to make one thing especially clear. Some people who sincerely desire marriage and family experience their singleness as some sort of personal failure. That’s not necessarily the case. For those who desire marriage and have reasonably pursued it, but remain single, their singleness should not be considered a special calling from God, but a trial to faithfully endure. In other words, though singleness should not be normalized in the church, I am not saying that it is necessarily wrong or sinful. Everyone is born single. It’s a life stage that everyone experiences, and one cannot fully control his or her marital options. From my experience, most single Christians very much want to be married, but circumstances have prevented them. Their hearts are obedient, but they have not found the right mate yet. As time goes on, the pain grows, along with the fear of never getting married. They may feel shame that is only exacerbated by well-meaning friends and family who play matchmaker without permission. Single men and women in the church need to find the continual reassurance of God’s love and grace, to know that they are wanted and valued, and have a meaningful place in the body of Christ.
Overall Paul didn’t celebrate singleness and the modern church shouldn’t either. When speaking of younger widows, he didn’t jump with joy at their singleness; he exhorted them towards marriage (1 Tim. 5:14). Why? Because marriage is good and should be pursued with the same degree of focus.
Five Things Singles Should Consider
Four things in closing: First, make the most of your singleness. There are real advantages to being single, and you can make the most of them while trusting God for a spouse.
Second, have faith that God is a good Father who gives good gifts to his children. In other words, reject the lie that being single is just as good as being married. It isn’t. Getting married doesn’t solve all your problems, and often creates even more, but this is the typical path of sanctification for God’s people. Trust God to give you a godly spouse and take appropriate action towards that end.
Third, pursue the virtues of fatherhood or motherhood as necessary steps of preparation for marriage. A good husband or wife is the sort of person who would make a good father or mother. In other words, aim higher than mere marriage alone.
Fourth, urge churches and pastors to honor and celebrate the goodness of marriage. Churches can also start or support groups and events to give singles maximal opportunities to meet one another socially all with the aim towards marriage and building a household.
Lastly, Some fill their single years with travel, career advancement, and hobbies. Others, however, use their singleness to serve the kingdom of God in greater ways. Singles have more time, more money, and more emotional and mental capacity to devote to the kingdom, don’t waste it. In other words, singles do have a choice to make on how they will live single. Their singleness can be no more than a season of career building and leisure, or it can be a time of potent impact for Christ. Choose wisely.
