A better story for singleness

Samuel Johnson, the writer of the first English dictionary, once wrote, “The solitary mortal is certainly luxurious, probably superstitious, and possibly mad.” What was said by Johnson in the eighteenth century might also be uttered by some in the twenty-first, especially within the Church.

Christians, rightly, advocate for marriage and its good for couples and for society. But being single in the church can often seem strange or unusual. A single Christian can be alienated by a church’s emphasis on couples and children, bombarded with questions about why they are still single, or recommended potential partners by well-meaning but insensitive friends.

The Bible tells us that marriage is good, given by God for his purposes. But it also tells us that singleness is good too, as Paul explains to the Corinthians:

When we advocate for the goodness of marriage, we must not forget to advocate for the goodness of singleness as well. God works his purposes out through marriage, and he works his purposes out through singleness too.

The goodness of singleness is important because singleness is on the rise. The number of people who are single in society today is growing, as people marry later in life, and some marriages end sooner. The age range with the highest number of marriages has moved from those in their twenties to those in their thirties. Around one in three households in the UK are made up of people who are single, and an estimated 28 million people are single in England and Wales.

Someone can be single for various reasons. Some are single by default, being open to the possibility of relationships and marriage, but have not yet found themselves the right partner. Others will be single by divorce, having been married but also having experienced the heartbreak of a marriage breakdown. Some will be single by distress, finding themselves on their own because of the death of a spouse. Finally, others will be single by design, having made a conscious choice not to marry. In churches, some will experience same-sex attraction and choose to remain celibate in response.

A growing number of single people makes it all the more important to communicate God’s better story about singleness. So why does the apostle Paul tell the Corinthians that it is good to remain single? His answer is that singleness gives freedom to focus:

Our aim as Christians, whether married or single, is undivided devotion to Jesus Christ. But someone who is married has divided interests; they want to please Jesus, but they also want to please their spouse. A single Christian, on the other hand, has one concern, how they can please the Lord.

This is not to say that singleness is somehow ‘easy’ and marriage is ‘hard’. There are many joys in marriage, and many struggles that come with being single. But marriage brings with it concerns for another person, your wife or your husband. If God then grants you children, they come with a whole range of worries and responsibilities as well.

As a single person, you are able to be single-minded. You have freedom to focus on what pleases the Lord alone. A single person is able to make choices based on their commitment to Jesus without having to be concerned for how that might affect spouses or children. This might mean freedom to serve the Lord in missionary service overseas, choosing less lucrative career options that have better opportunities to glorify God, or simple small day-to-day decisions to honour Jesus.

Please note that this freedom to focus on pleasing God does not mean that single people should be the only ones serving in church! The body of Christ is diminished if we miss out on the input of some parts of the church, such as married people or parents (1 Corinthians 12:27). Single people do not have infinite free time either. If you live alone, you have no-one else to help with the housework, cooking and maintenance of daily life. Freedom to focus on Jesus does not give freedom to cover every need within the church community.

Singleness is good because it gives a whole-hearted, undivided devotion to Jesus. But some might doubt the goodness of singleness because of the potential for loneliness.

We see the problem of being alone identified right back in Genesis chapter two. After God creates Adam and gives him the task of looking after the garden, we read:

God goes on to create Eve as a suitable helper for Adam, giving her to him and setting the blueprint for marriage (Genesis 2:23,24). So if being alone is ‘not good’ and marriage is given as a solution to this problem, how is singleness a good thing?

Although Adam is alone at the start of Genesis 2, the problem of loneliness doesn’t occur until Genesis 3. Sin breaks our relationship with God, and our relationships with one another. Before the Fall, Adam is in a perfect relationship with God; loneliness and all that it entails only enters the world when sin does.

So why does God say “It is not good for the man to be alone”? If Adam was in perfect communion with God, this might seem surprising. But experienced counsellor, Janye V. Clark, explains:

It is not good for us to be alone, but marriage is not the answer to loneliness. Sadly it is quite possible to be lonely even within a marriage. Outside of marriage, we would not expect children, who might not be married for many years, to be lonely. We would not want the elderly who live alone to be lonely (although many are). As Jayne V. Clark comments, “This notion that marriage is the cure for loneliness suggests that one category of people is exempt from loneliness and the rest of us are just stuck with it.”

Marriage is good and important. It is the place for sexual activity and needed for the conceiving and raising of children, fulfilling the creation mandate to ‘be fruitful and increase in number’ and fill the earth (Genesis 1:28). But marriage is not the answer to loneliness — community is.

We are designed by God to live in relationship with him and relationship with others; we are made for community. We can often reduce this community down to its smallest possible form: the nuclear family. But God’s vision of community is more expansive than this. When Jesus’ mother and brothers come looking for him during his teaching ministry, Jesus responds:

Jesus widens our view of family and community. It is more than ‘me and you and a baby too’; it is sharing our lives across generations and stages of life. God’s community encompasses everyone, single or married, young or old.

The place where we see this community worked out is the local church. There we relate to one another whether single, dating, married, divorced, or bereaved. While each local church is far from perfect, and some will have encountered hurt and pain at the hands of other Christians, it ought to be the place where the Spirit of Jesus binds us together into community.

The Australian evangelist, John Chapman, was single throughout his life. As he spoke to his home church on Paul’s words from 1 Corinthians 7, he said:

The Bible tells us that marriage is the God-given context for sexual activity. To be a Christian and single, therefore, means to choose to be celibate until marriage, or for life if marriage does not happen.

Twenty-first century culture views this as strange and peculiar, and a denial of what it means to be human. In fact, things were not much different in the first century. Rabbi Eleazar, writing at the time, said, “Any man who has no wife is no proper man.” Surely if sex and sexuality is part of being human, then choosing to refrain for sexual activity is refusing part of your humanity?

But this is not the case. It is entirely possible to be fully human and single, choosing to refrain from sexual intimacy. We know this because this is the life that Jesus lived.

Jesus was fully God and fully human. In his incarnation Jesus took on all of our humanity, including sexuality, being born as a man and “tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin.” (Hebrews 4:15) He was not a phantom who simply appeared to be human, he was physically human, with human emotions and human needs such as food and sleep. He was also single. He did not marry and did not engage in sexual activity.

Jesus shows us that we can express our full humanity as a single person or as someone who is married. Marriage does not define whether we are complete or not. As pastor and author, Sam Allberry writes: “This reality is reflected in the life of Jesus himself. The most fully human and complete person ever to live on this earth did so as someone who was single”.

Singleness, and celibacy along with it, is just as good as marriage because marriage is only temporary. The marriages we enjoy here and now will not continue when Jesus returns:

Marriage is temporary because marriage points us to a perfect marriage. When the apostle Paul talks about marriage to the Ephesians, he tells them: “This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church.” (Ephesians 5:32) Marriage is a picture of Jesus and his people, and that is the true and perfect marriage to which every other marriage points.

At the end of the Bible, Jesus shows the apostle John what is happening now and when Christ returns. The imagery that he uses to describe his coming is that of a wedding:

The people of God await that final day when Jesus comes to his bride, the Church. This is the marriage and relationship that we are waiting for. Whether we are single or married at the present moment, we were made for that perfect marriage with our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

Both marriage and singleness point us toward that heavenly wedding feast. As Sam Allberry notes, “If marriage shows us the shape of the gospel, singleness shows us its sufficiency”. Marriage is a picture of Jesus and the Church; singleness is a witness to that relationship being the one that truly matters.

Sam Allberry writes that Jesus called himself “the bridegroom” and that profoundly shapes our view of singleness: