If Only I could Stay Single… (1 Corinthians 7.25-40)

Someone in our home group this week asked two very good questions, and I’d like to start with them. He talked about how it seems like everywhere, you land on one of two sides: either you think marriage is dramatically important, and should be a major goal in your life; or, you unconsciously reject the idea of marriage because you don’t want to have to fit in a specific mold. So here’s the first question he asked: Why is the framework of marriage so omnipresent in the Christian subconscious? Why do churches talk about marriage so much, to the pleasure of those who are married, and the frustration of those who aren’t?

Well, a simple answer to that question is that the Bible speaks a lot about marriage. It’s the first institution of order that God set up after creating the world, and it is the framework in which he intends for humanity to do what they must do to survive—that is, have babies and have societies. It’s also, as we’ve seen multiple times in the past, meant to be a living picture of the relationship between Christ and his church. The images of marriage and adultery are very frequently used to represent faithfulness to God and rebellion against God. So we talk about marriage a lot because the Bible talks about marriage a lot.

Here’s the second question, though, and it’s an important one: Is there a reason why we don’t speak that often about voluntary celibacy, of the advantages of remaining single for life? That’s a very good question. Part of the answer is, of course, statistics: most of you are likely to get married at some point in your lives (that’s changing a bit these days, though not for the right reasons). But I think a big part of the reason is that it makes people—it makes pastors—uncomfortable, because we can easily have the feeling that we’re laying a burden on single people.

I’ve never had that problem—I don’t mind encouraging single people to stay single—but I’ll admit I’ve fallen into the trap of not speaking enough about this, for the simple reason that I got married very young, I’ve been married to Loanne for over half my life, so I forget what it was like to be single. Pastors naturally choose illustrations that are personal to them, which means most of my illustrations end up being, unintentionally, about my wife and kids.

I need to apologize for that, because it doesn’t remotely reflect what I believe. The funny thing is that single people often look at this passage with a scowl, because they don’t want to stay single, while married people often look at this passage and say, “He’s totally right.”

So today we want to examine why. Why would remaining single for life be a good thing for a Christian?

Quick note: This message isn’t just for single people, so if you’re married or engaged, please don’t check out on me, because the reasons Paul gives for not getting married are actually the same truths that should change the way we live in either situation.

Last week, Joe ended his message with a simple question. He said a sentence, and he left one word blank, and asked what word we would put in that blank. The sentence was: “If only I could change ___________, then I’d be able to live the life I was meant to have.” What word would we put in that blank?

The point of that exercise was to show us what Paul has been telling us since the beginning of chapter 7: if we belong to Christ, then there is no word that could legitimately go in that blank. Paul said it three times in last week’s passage: In whatever condition each was called to live for Christ, there let him remain with God. Wherever he has put us is where we’re called to live for him, and he gives us everything we need to live for him where we are. It’s not always going to be easy, but God doesn’t call us to do what is easy; he calls us to do what is right. And what is right is to live in obedience to his commands, where we are, because as we saw last week, God’s call on our lives is not for us to a job or to a partner or to a city or to a vocation; his call is that we follow Christ.

That is the reason for everything Paul said at the beginning of chapter 7, in the middle of chapter 7, and here at the end of chapter 7. But in order to really be on board with what he’s saying, we need to understand that God’s goal for the lives of his people isn’t primarily their happiness in this life. We’re promised eternal joys in heaven, and we do get to experience a foretaste of that joy in our lives today. But God’s goal is not to make us happy right now. His goal is bigger. His goal is the glory of his name displayed in the gospel, and proclaimed in the lives of his people.

If that is God’s goal, it should be the goal of his people too. And if it is our goal, then it will also reorient our priorities.

I think that’s one of the reasons Paul does what he does here. In today’s text, he comes back to the subject of marriage and singleness, that we saw two weeks ago. I think he comes back to it here because, a) the Corinthians had asked him about it, and b) there are few situations in which we are tempted to maintain the right priorities, to follow our own desires and our own ideas, than the situation of our marital status: whether we spend our lives with a spouse, or without one. At least 80% of the pastoral meetings I have are focused on this subject of marriage and singleness.

So in this text, Paul is being a pastor. He even says so in v. 25:

25 Now concerning the betrothed, I have no command from the Lord, but I give my judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy.

Paul isn’t giving commandments here; he’s giving pastoral counsel. Being married and being single are both morally neutral situations, provided we go about them the way God wants us to. But Paul has been in the ministry a long time, and he is a single man filled with the Spirit of God. He has a very well-informed opinion on this topic, and he’s saying that even if this subject is morally neutral, we should take what he says very seriously.

So Paul is going to make a case for staying single, for life. He’s going to give several very practical reasons for doing so, and he’s going to give a foundational statement that explains why he feels so strongly about this. But as we’ll see, his statement actually applies to all situations, not just singleness.

So we’ll start with Paul’s practical counsel first. He’s going to give four practical reasons why those who aren’t married or engaged should stay single.

Marriage Brings Worldly Troubles (v. 26-28).

26 I think that in view of the present distress it is good for a person to remain as he is.

Very quickly—there’s a bit of debate over what Paul is talking about when he mentions “this present distress.” Some suggest it refers to a famine that was hitting Corinth at the time, or some kind of sickness that was making the rounds. And those things may be partially true. However, the context of a famine or of an illness doesn’t really change much; it doesn’t add much weight to his argument. So in light of what we see in the following verses, I think Paul is speaking mainly of the very simple difficulties of living the Christian life in the “present form of this world”, as he says in v. 31—that is, this period of time between Christ’s first coming and his second coming. We’ll come back to this subject in a few minutes.

V. 26 again:

26 I think that in view of the present distress it is good for a person to remain as he is. 27 Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife. 28 But if you do marry, you have not sinned, and if a betrothed woman marries, she has not sinned.

So essentially, Paul is saying here the exact same thing he’s been saying since the beginning of this chapter: live faithfully for God, wherever you happen to be. If you’re married, stay married, and obey God faithfully in the context of your marriage. If you’re single, don’t be in a hurry to get married; obey God faithfully in the context of your single life. In either case, in terms of our holiness, in terms of our relationship with God, one is just as good as the other. Married or single, we can serve God faithfully.

But there is a big “but” that Paul wants to make very clear. At the end of v. 28, he says this:

Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that.

Now of course, everyone will have worldly troubles—that is, troubles that are related to our day-to-day life in this world. Everyone needs a place to live. Everyone needs to eat. Everyone has to deal with the world around them. Everyone has to manage their relationships with their parents, their brothers and sisters, their neighbors, their colleagues.

But Paul says that when you get married, those troubles will increase.

When I met Loanne, I wasn’t looking to get married, but I did have a romanticized view of marriage. Here’s what I mean by that: I didn’t think that marriage would be easy, and I didn’t think that marriage would be perfect. But I did think that marriage would bring me something I was missing—the love of a wife for the rest of my life. This was true. I’d never had the love of a wife, and I got that. My mistake was in imagining that having a wife that loved me would enable me to better face the challenges of my life, that my wife’s love for me would give me something extra, that would make it easier to live the life God called me to live.

And nearly every single person who wants to get married makes that same mistake, even if you don’t think you do. You may look at your life today and say, “I have a huge amount of ‘worldly troubles’, and having a spouse would help me manage those things.” That’s completely true: I cannot overstate how much Loanne has helped me with a lot of the problems I brought into our marriage, and (I hope) vice versa.

Here’s the thing, though: for all the things we’re able to help each other with, we’ve both brought in ten more problems that we can’t help each other with, and that we now share. The number of practical, everyday problems you have to deal with greatly increases when you get married, and that’s before you add children to the mix!

Being married definitely brings you things you don’t have today. But those things don’t make life easier; they don’t give you what you need to living the life God has called you to live.

And this is a very important distinction to make. Paul has a very specific goal in mind. His main priority is not our happiness, it’s not procreation, and it’s not companionship. When God said in Genesis 2 that “it is not good for man to be alone,” he was speaking about man in general—he was speaking about humanity, which would be far less populous without men and women together. He wasn’t speaking about every individual man.

God’s goal for every individual man and woman is that we live faithfully and wholeheartedly for Christ. That is the goal; that is the priority. And if we belong to Christ, that becomes—or should become—our number-one priority as well.

So marriage is good, yes…but it may be counterproductive. It’s going to make this goal of living joyfully and wholeheartedly for Christ more difficult, rather than easier, because it’s going to bring in a whole host of worldly troubles. The reason for this is very practical and very simple, and it brings us to our second argument in favor of singleness:

Marriage Brings a Divided Mind (v. 32-35).

Even though our worldly troubles do not make it impossible to live for Christ (what we’ve been seeing for two weeks now), they do make it harder to stay entirely focused on Christ. People who hear Jesus say, “My yoke is easy and my burden is light” and who respond with a skeptical “Really?” are probably being pulled in several different directions. Most older Christians can tell you that there is more joy in Christ when he has all of our attention, when he really is the sun in the solar system of our lives.

That’s where Paul is going; that’s what he wants for us. He wants joyful, wholehearted service to Christ, not halfway, pulled-in-ten-different-directions service to Christ.

V. 32:

32 I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. 33 But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, 34 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. 35 I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.

Paul says one or two things here that I personally find really surprising.

Here’s the first thing, and it should be a wake-up call to a lot of single folks out there. In these verses Paul assumes that all men and women are “anxious”, or preoccupied, by something—and that’s always true, of everyone. But here’s his assumption about single folks, and it’s surprising: he’s assuming here that the single people to whom he’s speaking are preoccupied by the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. V. 32: “The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord.” V. 34: “The unmarried or betrothed woman is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit.”

It doesn’t take a genius to know that this isn’t always the case—which tells us something. It tells us that he’s speaking to an ideal; he’s not saying what all unmarried Christians are like, but what they should be like. If you’re unmarried, your main preoccupation in life should be how to please the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit.

That’s the first thing.

The second thing is that he also makes an assumption about married men and women. He says (v. 33): “The married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, 34 and his interests are divided.” And v. 34: “The married woman is anxious about worldly things, how to please her husband.”

It seems obvious, but here’s what’s surprising: Paul never suggests that it’s wrong for the married man or woman to be preoccupied by their relationship. He never suggests this is a bad thing. It is, in fact, the way it’s meant to be—if the goal of marriage is to present to the world a living picture of the relationship between Christ and his church, then that relationship should be taken very seriously. It’s not a bad thing.

However—and this is what Paul is getting at—this serious and good relationship does bring significant challenges to focus. It brings a divided mind.

People might hear that as idolatry, and marriage can certainly become that—but that’s not what Paul’s saying. He’s talking about the very normal reality that when you get married, that person becomes more important for you than anyone else you have ever or will ever know. No one has more power over you than your spouse. No one has more influence over you than your spouse.

If any of you criticize me, it probably won’t be pleasant, but I can take it; my skin is pretty thick. There’s enough distance there for me to think rationally about what you’re saying. But if Loanne tosses that same criticism my way—especially if she puts just a hint of zing in her tone of voice—she can break me. You guys can complement me, or say you appreciate me, and it feels good. But if we come home and Loanne says she loved my sermon today—I’m soaring. When she expresses appreciation for me, I feel like Superman. No one else can do that.

So because she is more important to me than anyone else, a considerable portion of my time and energy is spent trying to make her happy, trying to love her well, trying to build her up. Again, that’s as it should be—but it’s still a fact. Because I have her, there will be times when I’ll have to say no to you; our relationship places limits on the service I can give you. Because I have her, if she’s going through a problem, she’s going to become my primary focus, instead of you.

That’s the case for every married couple…and then you start having kids, and your mind gets exponentially more crowded.

This is the sort of thing Paul is talking about. It’s hard enough in any life to maintain good order and an undivided devotion to the Lord, as he says in v. 35. And it gets even harder when there are two of you. It’s not a bad thing—on the contrary. But it is more difficult.

Here’s his third argument in favor of singleness:

We are free…but called to be wise (v. 36-38)

36 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. 37 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. 38 So then he who marries his betrothed does well, and he who refrains from marriage will do even better.
39 A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord. 40 Yet in my judgment she is happier if she remains as she is. And I think that I too have the Spirit of God.

Just a quick note here: people debate over male/female power dynamics in these verses, because in v. 36-38 he speaks to the man, and in v. 39-40 he speaks to the woman. There’s a bit of truth to that, because the man was the one with the power to validate or invalidate an engagement of marriage; the woman did have less power.

But I’m not going to get into the weeds on that subject, because Paul isn’t encouraging those kinds of power dynamics in these verses, he’s simply speaking to the reality of their situation at that time in history. And ultimately it doesn’t matter—what Paul says here absolutely applies to both the man and the woman in any given relationship. So we’re going to use what he says to the man and the woman interchangeably.

In v. 36, Paul wants to be clear that he affirms the full liberty of each person to do what they wish in the matter of marriage and singleness. V. 36: let him do as he wishes: let them marry—it is no sin. This comes back to what Paul said earlier about not having a command from the Lord—being married or remain single is a morally neutral subject. In both cases, this isn’t a question of sin.

It’s more a question of wisdom and efficiency.

If a couple wants to get married, that’s great—it’s fine. They’re not sinning. But if a single person is able to keep his sexual appetites under control and not marry, then that’s a good thing for him to do, for all the reasons we saw earlier. Both marriage and singleness are good—but, Paul says, singleness affords you more opportunities to serve the kingdom of God. It helps you keep your mind undivided, entirely focused on the Lord, and gives you the time to dedicate to his kingdom.

The other domain of wisdom Paul addresses here is the simple heaviness of the commitment of marriage. A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives (and vice versa). If he dies, then she can get married again, as long as it is to another Christian, “only in the Lord.” But it would be better, simpler, clearer, if she remained unmarried.

In other words, marriage is not a small thing. Marriage is for life. Once you’re in it, you’re in it until death, either yours or your spouse’s. The simple weight of that commitment should be enough to help us see that the church needs people who can remain unencumbered, and totally focused on serving the kingdom.

It’s possible to do so whether you’re married or not, and we need both; but Paul is speaking from experience when he affirms that it’s easier to do this when you’re single.

Living for What Lasts (v. 29-31)

I hope you can see the freedom that Paul has granted us here. If you’re single and you want to get married, that’s fine. If you’re married, that’s great too. There is no obligation for a Christian to be in one situation or the other. And there are great advantages to both: Paul is speaking here mainly of the advantages of remaining single, but he speaks elsewhere (notably in Ephesians 5, for example) of the advantages of marriage.

Sometimes that kind of freedom makes us uncomfortable, because we’re in a specific situation today, and we don’t know whether or not we should go in one direction or another.

That’s why I think it’s vital to remember what Paul says in v. 29-31, which is sort of a guiding line for everything he’s said during this whole chapter.

29 This is what I mean, brothers: the appointed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none, 30 and those who mourn as though they were not mourning, and those who rejoice as though they were not rejoicing, and those who buy as though they had no goods, 31 and those who deal with the world as though they had no dealings with it. For the present form of this world is passing away.

If we need a north star to navigate the situations of our life, this is it. None of the situations in which we find ourselves will last longer than our lives. The only situation that will last is the eternal kingdom of God. And the present form of this world is passing away.

So how should we live, in whatever situation we find ourselves? We should live for what lasts.

If we marry, we’ll build our marriage on the knowledge that this marriage is temporary—only as long as we’re alive in this world—and that our marriage comes with a call.

If we remain single, we’ll do it with the knowledge that our singleness is temporary—a bridegroom is waiting for us, and we will live united to our perfect spouse, our perfect King, forever.

If we’re grieving, we’ll endure our grief with the knowledge that this grief temporary, and joy is ahead of us.

If we’re happy, we’ll rejoice with the knowledge that whatever joy we feel today is nothing compared to the joy waiting for us.

If we gain material wealth and resources, we’ll think hard about how we spend our money, armed with the knowledge that a greater treasure and a greater pleasure than we can even imagine is waiting for us in Christ.

When we deal with the world around us, we’ll do it with the knowledge that this world, in its present form, will not be here much longer.

In every situation, we’ll live with the knowledge that this situation is temporary, and that our real situation, our permanent and eternal situation, is far greater, far more substantial, far more promising.

This is not theological fluff; I’m not trying to just make you feel better with churchy words. The truth Paul lays out in v. 31—that the present form of this world is passing away—should influence every single priority of our lives.

Think of it this way… How often do we look for fulfillment in other things than God himself? If you’re looking for fulfillment in your marriage, or in a future marriage, you will be sorely disappointed. If you’re looking for fulfillment in your kids, you will be disappointed. If you’re looking for fulfillment in your freedom as a single person, you will be disappointed. If you’re looking for fulfillment in your job, you will be disappointed. If you’re looking for fulfillment in your friendships, you will be disappointed.

None of these things are bad, but if they are what you’re looking for to be fulfilled, you’ll always be disappointed, because you weren’t made to find fulfillment in these things. You were made to find fulfillment in him alone.

So whatever your situation is, serve God faithfully where you are. Because where you are is where he is, and he is the source of your eternal joy.