The Value of Singleness for Christians according to 1 Corinthians 7

Most Christians probably tend to think that the default situation of people when they grow up is to be married. Most Christians view marriage as being an institution of great value that is to be protected and promoted. But not much is said in the Christian church generally about the value of singleness.

The Apostle Paul teaches in 1 Cor 7 that celibacy is good for those who have that gift. He says in 1 Cor 7:1 that celibacy is actually good: “it is good for a man not to touch a woman.” The word touch here is a euphemism for sexual relations. Abstaining from sexual relations in order to live as a celibate person is good if God has given you that gift.

In fact, in 1 Cor 7:25–35, Paul argues that virgins (i.e., young unmarried people) should not get married unless they really have to. The preferred option is actually to stay celibate, unless of course the virgin in question does not have that gift. The default situation for Christians who are unmarried is to stay in their current state (see 1 Cor 7:17, 24), which is the state of singleness. If a person, having considered the gift that God has given to him or her, wants to get married, then there is no shame in getting married. It is not a sin to marry someone who is of the opposite sex who is eligible for marriage (1 Cor 7:28). In fact, if a person does not have the gift of celibacy, then that person should get married, “for it is better to marry than to burn [with passion]” (1 Cor 7:9).

But it is interesting how marriage is not the preferred option as far as Paul is concerned. Even though most people grow up to have an active sex drive, Paul provides three reasons as to why celibacy is the default and preferred option.

The first reason is mentioned in 1 Cor 7:26. Paul says that in the light of “the present suffering … it is good for a man to stay as he is.” It is not obvious what the expression the present suffering refers to, but it is presumably related to what Paul says in 1 Cor 7:29 about the time being short. Paul also speaks in 1 Cor 7:28 about trouble or difficulty that married people have in this world (literally: in relation to the flesh). Life in a fallen world means that marriage is not easy at the best of times. There is the pain of conflict in the relationship between husband and wife. No matter how united a married couple may be, there will be times when they hurt each other. There is also the pain of childbirth that the majority of women who are married experience. There is also the suffering that comes with worrying about and caring for one’s spouse and children. And in a changeable world, with disasters, droughts, famines, and wars, a parent’s ordinary cares and concerns can easily be multiplied. These are the normal difficulties of married life. In addition, if the expression the present suffering is to be linked with the shortness of the time, Paul’s concern here also includes the increased possibility of suffering and persecution as a result of the current age in which Christians live, which is the final stage in the history of the world prior to the eternal state. The first coming of Christ has ushered in the end of the age and the birth pains associated with this (see Matt 24:7–8). Being married and having a family in such circumstances has the potential to bring a married person extra pain and suffering.

The second reason why marriage is not the preferred option is because, as Paul states in 1 Cor 7:29, “the time is short.” In other words, the day of judgment is coming. If the time was short back when Paul was writing to the Corinthians, it must be shorter now. According to Paul, the reality of the impending end of the current stage of world history should influence our attitude to marriage and life in general. In relation to marriage, Paul says that if a man has a wife, he should virtually live as if he did not have one (1 Cor 7:29), “for the form of this world is passing away” (1 Cor 7:31). This means that even if a person is married, one day soon that person’s relationship with his or her spouse will change, the presumption being that marriage no longer applies in the world to come. So the closer that the end of the world is, and the more that a person is aware of that, the less relevant marriage effectively will be. And it may be for some of God’s people that the knowledge of the shortness of the remaining time will be sufficient to keep them happily celibate.

The third reason for not getting married has to do with how devoted a person can be to serving God. Paul wants Christians to be free to serve God to the maximum of their ability. When you are single, you have a greater degree of freedom in how you can serve God. But once married, things change. A married person has to think about the things of this world in addition to the things of God (1 Cor 7:33–34). Instead of simply considering what you can do for God today, once married, you have to consider what your spouse and family need. If you are married, you need to spend a lot of time interacting with and understanding your husband or wife; and when you have children, you spend a lot of time and energy in providing for the family. So being married can affect how we serve God. On the whole, being married means that a person does not have the freedom to serve God in a full-on sense in the way that a single person can.

So, according to Paul, celibacy is the preferred state for a Christian. At the same time, however, it is true that not everyone has the gift of celibacy. That is why Paul says in 1 Cor 7:35 that his teaching on celibacy as being the preferred option is for our benefit and not designed to be burdensome. What Paul desires is that every Christian should be serving God according to his or her gifts. The ideal is celibacy, which allows the person in question to be devoted to the Lord without distraction; but if you do not have the gift of celibacy, and you try to follow a celibate lifestyle as the preferred option, you will not succeed. In fact, trying to live as a celibate person while having sexual desires is a recipe for distraction and potential failure in one’s service of God. In the end, therefore, it comes down to each person’s gifting in relation to marriage and celibacy; but while acknowledging this, the value and benefits of singleness should also be taught by the Christian church alongside the value and benefits of marriage.

The Tragedy of Whitney Houston’s Christian Life

On 11 February 2012 Whitney Houston passed away in a Beverly Hills hotel room. I must admit that I was saddened by the news, partly because Whitney came to fame during the period when I was growing up, and so she was someone whose music I knew, but mainly because Whitney was a singer who claimed to be a Christian. Her life turned into a great tragedy. Starting off with many hopes and dreams, it seems that she mixed with the wrong crowd, and she suffered greatly as a result. Whitney started off a Christian, but many are wondering now if she finished one. In the end it is God’s prerogative to determine each person’s eternal destiny, but we can say that Whitney definitely gave in in a significant way to the efforts of the world to reeducate her.

It is a choice that every Christian has to make. Am I going to live out Christian truth? Am I going to live out my faith? Or am I going to join the crowd, and give in to the world? It is a choice that every single Christian has to make every day: to follow the cross or to follow the crowd?

The tragedy of Whitney Houston was that of a young Christian girl growing up and coming under the influence of the world, leading to mental and ultimately physical destruction. She started off proud of the fact that she was a Christian, that she grew up in the church, singing gospel songs. She wanted to sing in order to praise God for his gift of music. She once said, “God gave me a voice to sing with”; and sing she did!

Yet many Christians found it hard to believe that in the early 90s she got involved with Bobby Brown, an R&B singer and part-time rapper, who at the time did not have a good reputation. Brown had started out singing with the R&B boy band New Edition, but he was reportedly voted out of the band because the other members were concerned about his lewd and disorderly antics on stage.

Something of Brown’s attitude to life can be captured in his hit single My Prerogative, which was written by Bobby in 1988, reportedly in response to being booted off from New Edition: “They say I’m crazy. I really don’t care. That’s my prerogative! They say I’m nasty, but I don’t give a damn. Getting girls is how I live!”

About a year after these words were penned, Whitney met Brown at the Soul Train Music Awards. Eventually in 1992 they got married. The result? Over time Whitney slid deeper into drugs. In her interview with Oprah in 2009 Whitney confirmed that she and Bobby used to regularly smoke marijuana laced with cocaine. There were reports of incidents of domestic violence, and Whitney became increasingly erratic in her behavior. All of this took a toll on her voice, and basically destroyed her career as a singer.

Thanks in large part to the influence of her husband, Whitney was drawn away from God and into the dark side. It seems to me that she lost sight of the supremacy of the kingdom of God, and of her need to seek first God’s kingdom and his righteousness. She basically allowed herself to be reeducated by the world, and paid a terrible price. This is also something that Whitney’s saw happening. In the interview with Oprah, Whitney talked about a time when her mum came to her house with the police, trying to rescue her daughter. She said to Whitney, “I’m not losing you to the world. I’m not losing you to Satan … I want my daughter back.”

Whether at the end of her life, Whitney genuinely turned back to God, only God ultimately knows. The evidence suggests that Whitney was still doing drugs up until the time of her death; and the official cause of her death has been determined as probably being an overdose of “a narcotic substance [probably cocaine], prescription medications, over-the-counter medications and alcohol.” But even if Whitney was right with the Lord when she died, we definitely have to say that she was mangled by the world, and never fully recovered. Her life was a tragedy, but it also stands as a warning about what can happen to Christians if we allow ourselves to be reeducated by the world.

The simple fact of the matter is that all Christians are living in the world, which means that it is very easy to be tempted by the world, and to forget that the ultimate reality is the kingdom of God. To what extent is what happened to Whitney happening to other Christian people today? Following Whitney’s death, it is legitimate to ask: Am I slowly being lost to Satan? Am I paying more attention to the crowd, to the fashion, music, and way of life of the world, rather than following in the way of the cross? Have I gotten mixed up with the wrong crowd, seeking to fit in with the world, somehow forgetting what it means to live as a Christian?

We can go through some of the marks of compromise with the world: Following your friends to parties where all sorts of ungodliness goes on because you reckon that that’s what’s cool; using language however disguised that uses God’s name in vain, or that is full of “f this, f that” and other expletives just because your friends talk that way; paying more attention to the messages of the world communicated through music and movies and videos than to God and his word; thinking that romantic love is a matter of doing stuff with your boyfriend or girlfriend without ever thinking about the importance of commitment as expressed through marriage; getting romantically involved with whomever, regardless of whether they have the same beliefs as you. How can a Christian ever be one flesh with someone who does not care about the kingdom of God?

I wonder: how many times in her marriage to Bobby did she regret getting involved with him? Imagine if Whitney had met someone for whom the kingdom of God was important. It is possible that her life and the length of her career could have been very different to what we know today. In talking to Oprah about her decision to divorce Bobby, Whitney said: “I wasn’t going to be in an unholy matrimony. I wasn’t going to be living with a man who decided that he wasn’t going to live the same way I did, or thought about marriage and me the same way... being loyal, being dedicated, being true, being faithful … all those things. I wasn’t going to live with someone like that.” Sadly, this realization of incompatibility between her values and those of Bobby came eighteen years too late. It makes me wonder: if only she had seen earlier the incompatibility between the kingdom of God and Bobby’s belief in his own prerogative.

Christians need to remember that the kingdom of God will replace all human empires, and rule the world forever. God’s kingdom is the ultimate reality. We should not despise this truth by the way we live our lives. As Jesus taught us: “Seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness” (Matt 6:33).

In the words of one of Whitney’s last songs: “As I lay me down, Heaven hear me now. I’m lost without a cause, after giving it my all. Winter storms have come, and darkened my sun. After all that I’ve been through, who can I turn to? I look to you. I look to you. After all my strength is gone, in you I can be strong.” I hope that these words were close to her heart on the day that her earthly life slipped away.

A Prayer of Covenant Renewal

If our covenant relationship with God is like a marriage, then perhaps it’s time to renew our marriage vows. Here is a suggested prayer of covenant renewal based on the traditional Christian vows of marriage:

“Lord Jesus, I take you anew this day, to be my Savior and Lord, to have and to hold from this day forth, for better for worse, for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love, cherish, and obey, till death does depart, and I am raised up to live with you in glory forever more. Amen.”