Singleness

1 Corinthians 7 is Paul's reply to a letter from the church, and it begins with what the BSB gives as 'It is good to abstain from sexual relations' (7:1). Many commentators think this line is the Corinthians' own slogan, which Paul quotes in order to qualify, as he did with their slogans in chapter 6. If so, the church had two opposite parties: some who thought the body did not matter and indulged it, and some who thought holiness meant withdrawing from marriage altogether, even within marriage. Paul answers both. To the second he says that married couples should not deprive one another (7:5). To both he offers a careful, balanced commendation of the single life that is neither contempt for marriage nor pressure to avoid it.

The anchor is the hinge of that commendation. 'I wish that all men were as I am. But each man has his own gift from God; one has this gift, another has that' (7:7). Paul states a preference, clearly, and then immediately refuses to make it a rule, because God gives differently. The word for gift is charisma, the word Paul uses in chapter 12 for the gifts of the Spirit. The most natural reading is that both marriage and singleness are gifts, and that Paul happens to have the second. He goes on: 'It is good for them to remain unmarried, as I am. But if they cannot control themselves, let them marry' (7:8-9). And lest anyone take that as a grudging concession, he says plainly, 'if you do marry, you have not sinned' (7:28).

Christians read the gift in two ways, and the difference matters pastorally. On one reading, the gift of singleness is a particular capacity, given to some, to live without marriage contentedly and chastely, and verse 9 shows that those who lack it should marry. On the other, the gift is simply the state a person is in: while you are single, singleness is your gift from God, to be received and used, and if you marry, marriage becomes your gift. The second reading leans on 7:17, 'each one should lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him', and is often preferred by those who care for people who are single without having chosen it. The first is often preferred by those who want to protect people from vows they cannot keep. Both are defensible readings of the text, and neither tells a single person that he is lacking.

Paul then gives his reasons. One is 'the present crisis' (7:26), which some scholars, Bruce Winter among them, connect with grain shortages and social unrest known from the region in the period, and which others read as the distress of the last days. Another is that 'the time is short' and 'this world in its present form is passing away' (7:29, 7:31). The third is the one most often quoted: 'The unmarried man is concerned about the work of the Lord, how he can please the Lord. But the married man is concerned about the affairs of this world, how he can please his wife, and his interests are divided' (7:32-34). Paul is not saying the married are less holy. He is describing a simple fact of time and attention. A spouse and children rightly claim them.

Then the sentence that keeps the whole chapter honest: 'I am saying this for your own good, not to restrict you, but in order to promote proper decorum and undivided devotion to the Lord' (7:35). Paul's purpose is freedom, not a new law. When he says that the one who does not marry 'does even better' (7:38), and that a widow is 'happier if she remains as she is' (7:40), he introduces the second with 'In my judgment'. He is giving counsel, as an apostle with the Spirit, and he expects the Corinthians to weigh it, not to obey it as a command binding on every believer.

In the Old Testament, singleness is rare and childlessness is a grief. The first blessing is 'Be fruitful and multiply' (Genesis 1:28), and 'Children are indeed a heritage from the LORD' (Psalm 127:3). The covenant people grew by descent, and a man's name and inheritance were carried by his sons, which is why the law provided for a widow without a son to bear one for her dead husband, 'so that his name will not be blotted out from Israel' (Deuteronomy 25:6). Hannah weeps for a child (1 Samuel 1:10), and Elizabeth, when she conceives in old age, says God has 'taken away my disgrace among the people' (Luke 1:25). A eunuch, who could never father children, was excluded from the assembly altogether (Deuteronomy 23:1).

There are exceptions that point forward. Jeremiah is commanded, 'You must not marry or have sons or daughters in this place' (Jeremiah 16:2), his singleness itself a sign of judgment on the land. And Isaiah, looking ahead to the restoration, gives a promise that overturns the old exclusion: 'let the eunuch not say, I am but a dry tree', for God will give him 'a memorial and a name better than that of sons and daughters' (Isaiah 56:3-5). A place in God's house, and a name that lasts, will no longer depend on children.

In the New Testament that promise is kept. Jesus, the one in whom the line of David reaches its goal, has no wife and no children. He speaks of those who 'live like eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven' (Matthew 19:12). He redefines family around himself: 'whoever does the will of God is My brother and sister and mother' (Mark 3:35). Philip baptises an Ethiopian eunuch, a man who in the old order could not enter the assembly, and he 'went on his way rejoicing' (Acts 8:39). And Jesus teaches that in the age to come those raised from the dead 'will neither marry nor be given in marriage' (Luke 20:35).

The reason underneath all this is that the people of God now grow differently. Israel grew by birth; the church grows by new birth. John's Gospel says that those who receive Christ become 'children born not of blood, nor of the desire or will of man, but born of God' (John 1:13). Barry Danylak's study Redeeming Singleness (2010) traces this theme through the whole Bible, and the logic is widely recognised: if the kingdom is no longer carried by family lines, then a single person or a childless couple has lost nothing that the kingdom requires. Their name is written in heaven, and their spiritual children may be many. Paul calls Timothy his true child in the faith (1 Timothy 1:2), and he greets the mother of Rufus, 'who has been a mother to me as well' (Romans 16:13).

This does not demote marriage. Marriage remains a creation gift, and children remain a blessing. But it does mean that neither is necessary for a full Christian life. A single believer is not waiting for real life to begin. He or she is already a full member of the family that will last for ever, and the single life is itself a witness that the kingdom has come and that this world in its present form is passing away.

The early church took Paul's commendation seriously, and then took it further. From the third and fourth centuries, men and women withdrew to the deserts of Egypt and Syria to pray. Athanasius's Life of Antony, written soon after Antony's death in 356, made the monk a model for the whole church. Gregory of Nyssa's Life of Macrina describes his elder sister leading a community of women in prayer, study and care for the poor, and in his dialogue On the Soul and the Resurrection Gregory presents her as his own teacher in theology. For many women in particular, the consecrated single life offered education, leadership and freedom from a marriage arranged without their consent.

The honour sometimes turned into contempt for marriage. Around 390 a monk named Jovinian taught that virgins, widows and married women who had been baptised were of equal merit. He was condemned by synods in Rome and Milan, and Jerome replied with Against Jovinian (393), a work so dismissive of marriage that some of Jerome's own friends tried to withdraw copies from circulation. Augustine wrote On the Good of Marriage and On Holy Virginity (both around 401) partly to find a better path: virginity consecrated to God is the higher calling, he held, but marriage is a true good and not merely a lesser evil. That balance, a higher and a good, became the settled teaching of the Western church for a thousand years.

The Reformers attacked what the system had become. They saw compulsory celibacy for priests producing hidden sin and scandal, and vows taken by young people who could not keep them. The Augsburg Confession of 1530 defended the marriage of priests in its twenty-third article and criticised monastic vows in its twenty-seventh, and Protestant clergy married as a matter of conviction. The Council of Trent replied in 1563 with a canon condemning anyone who said that marriage is to be placed above virginity or celibacy, or that it is not better to remain in virginity than to marry. The Catholic Church continues to require celibacy of priests in its Latin rite, while Eastern Catholic and Orthodox churches ordain married men as priests and choose their bishops from the celibate monks.

Protestant churches gained much by honouring marriage and lost something too. With the monasteries closed, many Protestant lands had no recognised place for the single adult, and the pastor's family became the model of Christian life. But single Protestants found ways to serve. The deaconess movement, beginning with the house Theodor Fliedner founded at Kaiserswerth in Germany in 1836, trained single women for nursing and care of the poor. Many of the missionaries who planted churches in Africa and Asia were single women: Mary Slessor in Calabar in what is now Nigeria, Amy Carmichael in South India, Lottie Moon in China. John Stott, one of the most influential evangelical leaders of the twentieth century, never married and spoke openly about his singleness as a calling. The church's history is full of single people whose work would not have been possible with a family.

Christians agree that marriage and singleness are both honourable and both gifts of God, and that neither should be forced on anyone. They differ on at least three questions, and each position has serious defenders.

First, is consecrated celibacy a higher calling than marriage? The Catholic and Orthodox churches answer yes, in a specific sense: not that celibate people are holier, but that a life given wholly to God, without the divided interests of 7:33-34, is objectively a more direct sign of the kingdom to come, in which there is no marriage. They point to 1 Corinthians 7:38, where the one who does not marry 'does even better', to Jesus' words in Matthew 19:12 and the call to leave everything, and to the witness of the saints. John Paul II, in his catechesis on the theology of the body, spoke of celibacy for the kingdom as a calling that anticipates the resurrection, while insisting that marriage is equally a path to holiness. Most Protestant churches answer that neither calling is higher. They read 7:7 as presenting two gifts from the same giver, note that 'better' in 7:38 is tied to the present crisis and to Paul's judgment rather than to a ranking of persons, and point to Hebrews 13:4 and to the warning against those who 'prohibit marriage' (1 Timothy 4:3). Both sides agree that a calling is measured by faithfulness to it, not by its rank.

Second, may a single person lead the church? Most churches across traditions say yes without hesitation, since Paul and Jesus were single. A minority of Protestants have argued that the requirement that an overseer be 'the husband of but one wife' (1 Timothy 3:2), with the instruction to manage his own household well (3:4-5), means that elders should normally be married men with families, because the household is where the capacity to lead the church is tested. Most interpreters reply that the phrase concerns faithfulness, not marital status, and that a rule which would have disqualified Paul cannot be what Paul meant. Notice that this question bears on the debate in the Homiletics lesson Who May Preach?, which this lesson does not reopen.

Third, what of people who are single without having chosen it? Many single Christians long to marry and have not found a believing spouse. Many widows and widowers did not choose their state. In some regions, women in churches greatly outnumber men, which means that if believers are to marry believers (1 Corinthians 7:39), many women will not marry. Some teachers say that such people have the gift of singleness for now, as section 1 described, and are called to receive it. Others say that the gift language applies to those who embrace the calling, and that the involuntarily single need, first, to be allowed to grieve, and second, the full support of the church, without being told their longing is a lack of faith. Both groups agree that the church must not tell a single believer to marry an unbeliever as the cure for loneliness.

In much of the world a person is not considered a full adult until he or she has married and had children. An unmarried man of thirty may be thought irresponsible; an unmarried woman of thirty may be pitied, gossiped about or pressured by her whole family. A childless couple may be blamed, often the wife alone. Widows may lose their standing, and in some places their homes. Divorced members may be quietly pushed to the edges of church life. The church did not invent these pressures, but it often adds its own weight to them, by treating the married family as the only unit of membership and by asking single people, every week, when they will marry.

The gospel answers each of these. A single adult is not incomplete: Jesus was single and was the complete human being. A childless couple is not cursed: their place in the kingdom has never depended on descendants. The widow is honoured: 'Honor the widows who are truly widows' (1 Timothy 5:3), and Anna the prophetess, widowed after seven years of marriage, 'never left the temple, but worshiped night and day, fasting and praying' (Luke 2:37). Philip had 'four unmarried daughters who prophesied' (Acts 21:9). And at the cross, Jesus gave his mother into the care of a disciple who was not her son: 'from that hour, this disciple took her into his home' (John 19:27). The church is a household where people who have no family are given family.

In practice, that means at least these things. Single members should hold real responsibility in the church, not only the tasks no one else wants. They should be welcomed into homes and at tables, especially at festivals and holidays, which are often the loneliest days. Preaching should use examples from single life, not only from marriage and parenting. Church events should not assume that every adult comes as half of a couple. And single people should be protected from pressure, from jokes, and from well-meaning matchmaking they have not asked for. The Pastoral Care lesson Caring for Marriages and Families gives a pastor's first steps; this section asks the whole church to change its habits.

Singleness also has its own call to chastity, which the first lesson of this module described as a virtue for everyone. A church that asks single people to live chastely must also give them what makes that possible: friendship, belonging, accountability, purpose, and honest teaching about desire without shame. It must also be a place where the married learn from the single. Paul's argument in 7:32-35 is not only about single people. It is a reminder to every believer that the claims of family, however good, are not the deepest claim on a Christian's life, and that the time is short.

Take a new page in your casebook and title it Singleness. Copy 1 Corinthians 7:7 from the BSB at the top. Under it, write the two readings of the gift from section 1 in one sentence each, and then note which one your church usually assumes.

Now write a composite case from your own setting about a single person in a marriage-centred community: perhaps a woman in her thirties whose family is pressing her to marry a man who does not share her faith, or a widower who has stopped coming to church, or a young man who cannot afford the bride price and has been told he cannot lead until he marries. Write it in a paragraph, without names or any detail that would identify a real person.

Under the case, write what scripture says, using at least three texts from sections 1 and 2. Then write what the people around this person are saying to them, and where those words agree with scripture and where they do not. Then write one thing your church could change in its habits, from the list in section 5 or of your own making, that would help a person in this situation feel at home.

Finally, write down one single member of your church, by role rather than name, whom you will invite to share a meal or to take on a real responsibility this month. Keep the name in your head, not in your notebook.