Singleness: Free to Serve the Lord

Introduction

There are many benefits to marriage and family. Marriage pictures Christ and the Church as a loving husband cares for and love his wife while the wife submits lovingly to her husband. Family is a small version of the church in which the father pastors the family as an under-shepherd, instructing his children, disciplining them, and encouraging them in the ways of the Lord. However, Paul’s view may trouble some. Paul clearly views the single life as better than the married life, and this is for one main reason: a single person has the time and energy to pursue a singleness of mind. For most, marriage is the way God would have us go through life, but there is a higher calling for those who have either never been married or those who have been widowed, and that is this singleness of mind. We must be careful to note that singleness does not necessarily mean you are living up to this calling, for Paul calls single people to be single in their mind towards Christ, while the married person has many responsibilities towards their family. Both are able to pursue a meaningful and rewarding life in pursuing Christ, but in singleness there is a unique opportunity that the Apostle and the Holy Spirit inspiring him would lead us to follow. That is, the single-minded pursuit of holiness.

Paul’s Desire for Christians

In verse 32, Paul makes his intentions for the Corinthian Church known: he wants them to be free from care, or as the ESV translates it, from anxiety. We’ve seen before in Matthew 6 how anxiety is a neutral word in Scripture that can either be negative (ie anxiety) or positive (ie care). We will stick with the rather neutral word care since Paul isn’t denoting a negative anxiety, but rather a care for the things in this world versus a care for heavenly things.

When Paul says he wants us free from care, he does not mean all care, for it is clear in our text that he wants us to be “anxious about the things of the Lord”. We should also note that Paul is not saying all worldly care is bad, but rather he desires to minimize it in our lives. For Paul, the Christian life should be as simple a life as possible. Christians should not seek additional cares and worries in this life by making their life complicated. Christians should not seek riches, popularity, influence, or other things that the world pursues because they add stresses and cares to life that impact our care for the things of God. If I care too much about my financial situation and getting more money than I need to live, I will not have the time or capacity to care for the things of God.

Contrast: The Married Life Vs. The Single Life

This brings us into the main theme of our text. When he talks about singleness and the unmarried life, he is not trying to “lay any restraint” on us. He is not making a rule, but rather applying a principle of what we care about. It is with this principle that he compares the unmarried person to the married person.

Interests Divided

We have talked extensively about the benefits and beauty of marriage. There is no doubt that marriage is for most people at some point in their lives. Paul warns against sexual immorality that may result when someone who doesn’t have their bodily passions under control sets out to live the single life. Jesus speaks of eunuchs for the Kingdom of God in Matthew 19 that should bear that calling if they are able to. However, we cannot deny Paul’s teaching that marriage is not for everyone, and that some are called to a life of celibacy, singleness in purity, for the sake of the Kingdom of God.

When Paul teaches on marriage, he tells us that there are real expectations and responsibilities that both spouses have in the relationship. These are accompanied with many blessings, but also with many cares. These cares are not evil, in fact they are commanded of those who are married. A husband has to care for his wife, that is a command from the Scriptures. If a husband were to say, “I’m not going to care for my wife, I’m going to serve the Lord instead.” He would be no better than the Pharisees who ignored the command to honour their father and mother in order to serve God. The same goes for the wife, who is not to ignore her duty to respect her husband. The point is not that caring for your husband or you wife is an evil thing, it is a good and necessary thing if you are married. But Paul’s point is that it is not the best, most ideal situation in the Christian life. For Paul, we are in a war and the more attention one can have for the cause of the Kingdom of God the better. This seems to be why Paul himself never married; so he could be more intensely focused on the ministry, although this was not true of all the Apostles, for the Apostle Peter we know was married and as such would have had to make time and energy in order to fulfill his responsibilities to his wife and perhaps children, although we aren’t told of any. Paul expected Elders and Deacons to have wives in most cases as we see in 1 Tim 3, which is contrary to the Roman Catholic view that Priests must be single. Paul warns against those who forbid marriage in 1 Tim 4:3, so it is important the Paul is neither forbidding marriage nor saying that we should ignore the responsibilities that we have in married life. However, these responsibilities will bring cares into our lives that will divide us. In verse 34 we see that “his interests are divided.” Part of a married man must be devoted to his wife, and part of a married woman must be devoted to her husband, and both must be devoted to their children as well as being devoted to the work of the Lord. This is a good and fine way to live, and there is great reward with this lifestyle, but Paul tells us there is an even more preferable way to live, and that is complete devotion to the Lord.

Caring for the Things of the Lord

This gets us to the point of our text where singleness is examined. There is a special calling for single people that is unique to the New Testament. In the OT, the calling to fill the earth and subdue it was literally fulfilled in bearing children and expanding humanity, especially the people of God. God’s people were marked at birth with circumcision and so the primary way that you expanded the Kingdom of God was through bearing children, and thus marrying. But in the NT this changes. The primary way we are to expand the Kingdom of God is not through having lots of children, but by serving God wholeheartedly and bringing his Gospel to the ends of the earth. To walk in holiness and exemplify the grace that God gives us that makes us holy and worthy to partake in the divine nature. This is our cause, and what we strive for us Christians, and so being single not only is a perfectly legitimate way to fulfill this command, it is in some ways a preferable state in which to do so.

The idea that Paul poses is that the single person has less necessary obligations in this world to fulfill, and thus they are able to be less divided in their minds. While the wife seeks to please her husband, as she should do, and the husband seeks to please his wife and he should, the single person is free from this obligations to pursue one thing: Jesus Christ and the glory that will be revealed at his coming.

However, something needs to be understood: just because you are single does not mean you are in a better place than someone who is married. All Paul is arguing is that there is more potential for a person to follow Christ more wholeheartedly if they are single, not that this is necessarily the case. If you are single and spend you time putting in as many hours as you can to get as much money as you can, or you are single and spend your free time entertaining yourself, or you are single and addicted to pornography, you are not in a better place than many married people who devote themselves wholeheartedly to the Lord.

So what does wholehearted devotion to the Lord look like?

Holy in Body. In the context, this refers to sexual holiness primarily but also an overall holiness of the body. God cares what you do with the body he has given to you, and as a single person you are called to use it in a holy manner. Pornography, flirtatiousness, and scandelous sexual relationships fit into this category. To Paul, there are two kinds of states when it comes to relationships: married and unmarried. So if you are dating, you fit into the single category as far as Paul is concerned. Holiness of body for you means that you reserve your body, including your passions, for the Lord. You submit to him and do not come close to the line. You do not sit in the car and make out with your girlfriend or boyfriend and come as close to a sexual experience as you possibly can. The heart of holiness is that your body does not belong to yourself, it is a gift from God and a gift for God. The same goes for the Christian struggling with pornography. I know that the struggle with pornography is an extremely shameful and seemingly undefeatable sin. I know that there are many true brothers and sisters in Christ who struggle daily with this drug, and what porn does to your brain is literally comparable to what cocaine does to your brain, those who struggle with this drug every day feel the need to open their phone or computer and look at what is unholy. Our eyes and mind are part of our body which is to remain holy. Therefore, our approach to pornography should be militant and absolutely without compromise. On the one hand, I understand there are genuine Christians who genuinely struggle with and sometimes fall into the sin of pornography, but on the other hand, you are not called to this. You are not called to use your singleness, and certainly not your married status as it then becomes a sin against your spouse, on pornographic material. Rather than shame those who fall into this sin, I want to tell them that you were not called to this. Your body is called to holiness. The same can be said about many sins in which your body is compromised, but this is so prevelant today that I can say for certain that there are people here to struggle with this sin. I want to say, your goal should be holiness. If you are single and feel the need for sexual release and porn seems to be the only way to express it, your body is called to something better than that kind of fulfillment. It is painful to deny those urges, I know. But denying those urges of the flesh, which are not evil in themselves but cannot be fulfilled in celibacy, and devote your body to holiness.

I should note that holiness in body is more than simply abstaining from sexual immortality. Devotion is not simply abstaining, but abstaining for a purpose. That purpose is the glory of God. This should have us consider everything our body does. How we eat, how we dress, how we express ourselves, everything is meant to be devoted to glorifying God through Christ. We are to offer our bodies, and single people can do so all the more, to God for his uses and glory. That is what holiness means.

Holy in Spirit. This means they are filled with the Holy Spirit by salvation in Jesus Christ and they walk in the way of that Spirit. They are holy in their walk in life. Not only do they have the Spirit in them, they follow the Spirit in a way that they go. They make decisions based on the Spirit, they build habits based on the Spirit and so on. But what is it that the Spirit leads them to? It is into the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, long suffering or patience, kindness, goodness, and self-control. This should characterize the life of every Christian. Single people have the unique possibility to spend more of their energy in pursuing these characteristics. Being single for a Christian means a singular devotion to these characteristics and playing them out in your life. You are single, so you have the ability to spend more time showing love to other Christians while a mother who desires to do the same has the added responsibility to be at home with her husband and children. A single person can spend their singleness disciplining themselves in the Scriptures and applying it to their lifestyle while a husband has to do that with the added responsibility of caring for his family and being with them. That time and energy that married person gets to devote to their family you get to devote to the Lord. So there is a great responsibility in your singleness: to make the most of it. You may be young and single and thinking about marriage in the future, you may be dating, but your time right now is a gift from God to become more holy in your heart and spirit until the day those responsibilities may be put on you.

The Point: persevere in serving the Lord as you are

While Paul does tell us that the unmarried position is to be preferred in some spiritual senses, his main message is that all must persevere in the place they were called to. We see this back in 1 Cor 7:17

1 Corinthians 7:17 ESV

Only let each person lead the life that the Lord has assigned to him, and to which God has called him. This is my rule in all the churches.

So whether married on unmarried, the charge is the same: live a godly life in all your ability in the place where you are. Paul’s aim is not to argue whether your state could be better or not, but to say to those who do not have a husband or a wife that you are in a special place in life. Maybe someday you will marry, maybe not. Maybe you are widowed or unfortunately divorced, and you no longer are married. This applies because you are now more free in a certain way to serve the Lord. Again, the message here is use your singleness wisely by being free to serve the Lord. If you get the opportunity, and you want to, you are free to marry, as Paul tells us in verse 38. But don’t let a moment between now and then be wasted!

Let yourself not only live but thrive spiritually. Christians have this ability that the world does not have: that we can be not only comfortable and patient in a situation we don’t like, perhaps those who wish to marry but have not found a partner yet, and yet thrive. That is because we aren’t looking to make our experience in this life better, we are looking to make the riches of heaven better. We aren’t living in hope of one day improving our earthly circumstances but rather we looking forward to a day when our circumstances will be all bliss in perfect union with Christ. Every Christian has a wedding day to look forward to, and if there is another wedding in this life in between those events or not will in the end be of little consequence. Marriages end in death, they do not carry onto the next life and Christ clearly says in Mark 12:25. Adoniram Judson, the first missionary to Myanmar (then Burma), married three times because two of his wives died on the mission field, and he is not married to none of them. Why is this? Because in heaven there will be oneness with the Father and with Christ so sweet and so close it is likened to a wedding in Revelation 19:9. The fulfillment of marriage is the churches union with Christ. This is what we are looking forward to. Therefore, being single means spending time in preparation for that wedding day in a more focused way. For you were not created to be as you are, you were created to be united with Christ in glory and immortality. You were called to a bridegroom that will love and cherish you as the best husband and the best King.

Unfortunately, this is not the way we often think. Whether married or single, our situation in life often consumes us and we are unable to see beyond what this mere shadow of life shows us. We lose our contentment in Christ and pursue greedily after other things. Some people who are single can idolize marriage and then get married and realize they aren’t any happier, because happiness for the Christian is not based on whether you are married or not, but on whether your soul is betrothed to Christ.

Embracing a Holy Singleness

What will a lifestyle defined by this holy character we have been studying look like in your life? I cannot speak to every individual situation, so this is something you are going to have to ponder yourself. One thing I can say; it will not be easy. Your flesh will work against it every step of the way. In this there is no difference between the married and unmarried. Pray for the grace and clarity to know in what way God is calling you to use your singleness for his glory. Perhaps it will look like devoting yourself to ministry. If you are older and single, there is a special opportunity for your to teach younger Christians how to walk in holiness and build up your own character so that you have something that is worth following for those younger than you in the faith. Paul told Titus that the older woman should teach the younger women how to live disciplined, holy lives. This may be said for men too. Are you doing that? Are you seeking out younger Christians, young wives, young husbands, young singles to mentor and teach? Are you devoting your time to prayer and the word to seek greater holiness for yourself? Have you thought about what God would have you spend your life doing? Perhaps some of you are called to be missionaries and evangelists and you are afraid to take that step. Perhaps some of you are called to lead a group of younger women in prayer every and accountability every week. Perhaps some of you are called to pick up the phone and call the young men in our church to pray with them and instruct them in their fathering and being a husband. Perhaps God is calling you to be in more intentional prayer for our missionaries and the work they do. Perhaps some of you are letting the opportunity slip by and concerning yourselves with the cares of this world rather than what you have been called to as a single man or woman.

Conclusion

Wherever you are, married or unmarried, childless or a parent, you are where God wants you to be as long as you are in Christ. He has called you to himself and to a journey in which he will walk beside you and, by his Holy Spirit, will make you more and more holy as you walk humbly with your God. Don’t long for another situation that God not put you in; he has lessons to teach you here and all the grace you need for that position. There are special gifts for each stage of life, for every circumstance, and the patience we are called to is a sweet contentedness in the grace that is being revealed more and more, day by day. In the meantime, seek the gifts that are unique to your situation. If married, seek the blessings of balancing home life with personal holiness, and do it all in the Lord for the sake of his glory. If single, recognize the special circumstance you are in and the potential you have to grow in holiness now. A holy life is worth seeking, but it is not something you will attain yourself. Only a close walk in the grace of Christ will get you there. Through his blood you are made righteous by faith in God’s sight, and through his Spirit you will be made holy if you endure to the end. Take hold of this life and, like a warrior, push forward to the prize that is in Christ Jesus. Seek what is above in heaven with him, the Throne which we will share with him, the glory we will partake in, the wedding feast in which we together as the church will be the bride. Hold fast and do as much as you can for the sake of holiness, for that day is sure to arrive very soon.