Advantages of Being Single;
1 Corinthians 7:25-40
The main idea of the whole
section from verse 25 to the end of the chapter is that there is an advantage
to being single, but it is not an advantage that makes one spiritually
superior. What Paul is saying is that your single status and your married
status is not indicative of spirituality. You should
be just as spiritual and just as effective serving the Lord if you are single
or if you are married, but if you are married there are going to be other
issues in life, other priorities, other responsibilities that may keep you from
serving the Lord than if you were single. But don’t think, therefore, that you
should stay single simply to serve the Lord because that is only for those who
have been so gifted.
1 Corinthians 7:25 NASB “Now concerning virgins I have
no command of the Lord, but I give an opinion as one who by the mercy of the
Lord is [has made] trustworthy.” The verse begins in the Greek
with PERI DE [peri de] which literally means
“now concerning.” It is a clear reference to the fact that he is changing the
subject or he is addressing a new question. There were two questions related to
this celibacy issue. One was, is it legitimate to stay celibate within marriage
in order to be more spiritual? Then the second question had to do with just
staying single without getting married and whether that was more spiritual. So
he changes the subject to answer the second question related to staying single
as somehow being more spiritual.
When Paul says, “I have no
commandment from the Lord,” there are those who go to this passage and say that
here Paul is going to give his opinion, he doesn’t have anything directly from
the Lord so the next several verses are just expressing Paul’s opinion and it
is not a mandate from the Lord. That, of course, is a violation of what the
Scriptures teach regarding inerrancy. Notice this section from v. 25 to v. 40
brings up the same issue of inspiration and his authority. In v. 40 at the very
end he says, “I think that I also have the Spirit of God.” The point that he is
making is that his judgment isn’t just an informed opinion, it isn’t based on
his wide experience as an apostle having travelled around the ancient world and
visited many churches and observing many problems and many marriages. What he
is pointing out is that the Lord did not address specific issues during the
time of the Messianic age, during the time of the incarnation. The Lord did not
cover everything in those three years of His public ministry. He taught on many
subjects but there were many subjects that the disciples were not ready to hear
and many subjects that they weren’t prepared for, and those subjects would be
addressed in the apostolic period through the writings of the apostles.
Remember that all of the
writings of the New Testament are inspired, that is, breathed out by God. In
our definition of inspiration we state: God the Holy Spirit so supernaturally
directed the human writers of Scripture that without waiving their human intelligence,
vocabulary, individuality, literary style, personality, personal feelings, or
any other human factor, His complete and coherent message to mankind was
recorded with perfect accuracy in the original languages of Scripture, the very
words bearing the authority of divine authorship.
When we give that
definition we emphasise the fact that the member of the Trinity that was
primarily responsible for the giving of Scripture, for revelation, is God the
Holy Spirit. Somehow he overrode the writers of Scripture in such a way that he
could direct them to write that which he intended to have written. He could
guarantee that it was free from any error, but in the process it is not a
dictation theory. He doesn’t dictate what they are to write.
As Paul addresses this
subject he is going to give six reasons for someone to remain single. He is not
saying it is wrong to marry or that it is wrong to remain single; one is not
superior to the other in any spiritual sense. However, there are practical
values to being single because it allows one to serve the Lord in a more
dedicated manner. So he gives six reasons and this is the basic outline of these
verses from 25 to 40. He says that it is better to remain single because of the
pressure of persecution and adversity in the cosmic system—covered in vv.
25-27. In v. 28 he says it is also better to remain single because of the
problems of additional responsibility. Third, because of the
temporary nature of this life, vv. 29-31. Fourth, there are pressures of
priority, vv. 32-35. Fifth, because of the faithfulness of
fathers toward daughters, vv. 36-38. Then because of
the seriousness of marriage, vv.39, 40.
In the first section, vv.
25-27, his point is that single status has great benefit when you are in the
midst of some great catastrophe or pressure. If you were living in Poland in
1939 it would be better to be single than to be married with children because
in the midst of the war that was about to come, because if you were married you
would be distracted, would have the cares of wife and children, and this would
be a tremendous burden of responsibility. This is the idea here. He recognizes
that during this age, especially at that particular time there would be
persecutions, adversity from the government towards Christians. So it would be
less troublesome to be single than to be married.
1 Corinthians 7:26 NASB
“I think then that this is good in view of the present distress, that it is
good for a man to remain as he is.” There he is emphasizing the
fact that there was persecution. The letter was written during the time of Nero
when there was persecution against Christians and his conclusion is that it is
better during times of calamity, times of stress, to remain single. That way
you have less to concern you without having family responsibilities and being
worried about a wife. He uses the word HOLOS [o(loj] for “good,” which has to do with good of intrinsic
value. But then he is going to balance it out. He is always careful in this
section because he realizes that any time he says one thing there is always an
element in the group that is going to take it to the extreme and run with it in
the wrong direction, so he has to constantly balance things out. The Christian
life is a life based on wisdom. When you are a young believer and you don’t
have much doctrine in your soul and you are still operating on a lot of human
viewpoint and cosmic concepts, and the sin nature is running rampant in your
soul, then most of the choices that you have are choices between good and bad.
But as you mature as a believer the choices aren’t so much between good versus
bad, sin versus obedience to the Lord, the choices are between that which is
good and that which is better. In order to make those decisions you have to
have a certain amount of doctrine in your soul because you have to be able to
perceive what the long-term consequences can be.
1 Corinthians 7:27 NASB “Are you [legally] bound to a wife?
Do not seek to be released. Are you released from a wife? Do not seek a wife.”
Here he uses a unique word for “released,” LUSO [lusw]
and clearly in context it is talking about divorce, even though this is not a
word that is commonly used for divorce. He uses the word here because he is
going to apply it to both those who are single and don’t have a wife yet and
those who are divorced. So it is a broader, more general term, it is not
technically a term for divorce, we get that only from
the context. “Don’t seek to be released,” i.e. don’t seek to be divorce, don’t
think that somehow if get rid of your wife or get rid of your husband you will
be more spiritual and that you can go and serve the Lord more effectively. Don’t
blame your wife, don’t blame your husband for the fact
that you can’t do certain things spiritually. Your service for the Lord is not
going to be determined by your marital status. “Are you released from a wife”? could imply either being single or being divorced. Stay in
your status quo.
1 Corinthians 7:28 NASB “But if you marry [3rd class
condition], you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned.
Yet such will have trouble in this life, and I am trying to spare you.”
If you have a legitimate right to remarry it isn’t a sin. He is emphasizing the
fact that marriage isn’t a sin, singleness isn’t a sin, staying single isn’t
more spiritual, staying married isn’t more spiritual, it has a practical value.
There is nothing wrong with marriage. Then he says that if you are married you
are going to have certain problems that you don’t have if you are single. Your
spouse is going to have adversity in their life that will become your adversity.
If they have health problems, or any number of
problems in life, those responsibilities become your responsibilities. So you
take on additional responsibilities and you can have additional problems. There
is clearly additional joy and happiness as well, this
is not just a negative thing. Paul is saying that there is a certain practical
value to staying single, it is not a spiritual value. “I
am trying to spare you” is what is called a conative present tense, that is, I
am attempting to spare you this trouble and am giving you a little wise advice.
1 Corinthians 7:29 NASB
“But this I say, brethren, the time has been shortened, so that from now on
those who have wives should be as though they had none.” Paul is relating this
to the problem of time management. This is crucial in the lives of many people.
Most people are extremely inefficient in the way they manage their use of time.
We need to define our priorities in terms of spiritual growth, spiritual
maturity and our eternal destiny, and let that determine how we spend our time,
how we organize our time. It may even determine the kinds of jobs or careers
that we have in this life in order to be able to fulfil these obligations. Time
is a crucial issue for every one of us, we only have a
certain amount of time. In fact, in Ephesians 5:16, 17 we are told to redeem
the time. It is very easy to waste a lot of time and we have to take a look at
how we spend our time. That doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be time for
relaxation. We all need time to relax, to unwind, but we have to understand how
to prioritise that and we have to plan our time. If we are going to be
organized and accomplishing anything in life then we need to plan our time and
how we are going to use it in relationship to our priorities. We can’t do
everything. We have to orient our time and our planning to our goals and
objectives.
1 Corinthians 7:30 NASB
“and those who weep, as though they did not weep; and those who rejoice, as
though they did not rejoice; and those who buy, as though they did not possess;
[31] and those who use the world, as
though they did not make full use of it; for the form of this world is passing
away.” In these two verses Paul recognizes the fact that there are
certain legitimate functions in life that we have to set aside sometimes in
light of spiritual priorities and in light of wise principles of time
management. The first one he mentions is in the area of sorrow and grief. It
may be legitimate to take that time to grieve, to take that time to sorrow, but
you set that aside because there is a higher priority in terms of serving the
Lord. The second one he mentions is rejoicing, and that is happiness, the
pursuit of pleasure, the pursuit of entertainment and the enjoyment of life. What
happens in our culture today is that when people lose their focus on doctrine
as the source of stability and happiness that they tend to replace that with a
frantic search for happiness where they look to entertainment and all kinds of
other distractions in order to anaesthetize the basic emptiness and pain in
their lives. So they pursue pleasure and hobbies and various means of
relaxation so that they don’t have to ever stop and think about the ultimate
realities of life. That doesn’t mean that it is wrong in and of itself to be
involved in playing golf or to be involved in rebuilding cars or to be involved
in various sports hobbies. But if that is a distraction from higher priorities
then it does become a problem. So what Paul is saying is that even though you
go through life and there are many legitimate things that you can spend your
time and money on they become illegitimate when it is a distraction to your
spiritual life.
The third area he talks
about is just economics, the pursuit of business, buying and selling. The problem
for some people is the pursuit of their business, their career,
that becomes such an overriding priority in their life that they really
don’t have time to focus on spiritual life or spiritual priorities. So the purpose of their business ultimately becomes and end in itself
and not recognizing that one of the goals of business is simply to provide food,
shelter and clothing for the family and also financial resources for support of
the Lord’s work. Once business takes over as an end in itself then it is not
long before doctrine becomes a victim in that person’s life and disappears as a
priority in that person’s life.
1 Corinthians 7:32 NASB “But I want you to be free
from concern. One who is unmarried is concerned about the things of the Lord,
how he may please the Lord; [33] but one who is married is
concerned about the things of the world, how he may please his wife” Husbands,
that needs to be part of your priority: thinking about how you can please your
wife. This needs to be something that characterizes a husband’s thinking.
There is a difference
between a wife and a virgin: [34] “and {his interests} are divided. The woman
who is unmarried, and the virgin, is concerned about the things of the Lord,
that she may be holy both in body and spirit; but one who is married is
concerned about the things of the world, how she may please her husband.”
The word “holy” means to be set apart for the service of the Lord, so in other
words, spending your time to serving the Lord as opposed to spending the time taking
care of other responsibilities. The unmarried woman has more time to be serving
the Lord, she has the option of being involved in a
variety of different functions, supporting ministries at the local church,
prayer, whatever it may be. The one who is married has to spend time thinking
about her husband and taking care of her husband, understanding his strengths
and his weaknesses, and supporting him. Remember the role of a wife is to be a
helper and assistant to the husband in terms of their team responsibilities
before the Lord in advancing in their ministry together, whatever that may be. Whatever
the man is called by vocation and by spiritual calling to do by his spiritual
gift the wife is to be a support for him and an assistant for him. So the
husband and the wife are concerned about their spouse, taking care of their
spouse and pleasing their spouse, and that takes time away from serving the
Lord. So Paul’s emphasis here is not on the fact that being married or being
single is in and of itself more spiritual, it is just practical. [35] “This I
say for your own benefit; not to put a restraint upon you, but to promote what
is appropriate and {to secure} undistracted devotion
to the Lord.”
In verses 36-38 the
emphasis is on the responsibility of fathers in oversight for their daughters. [36]
“But if any man thinks that he is acting
unbecomingly toward his virgin {daughter,} if she is past her youth, and if it
must be so, let him do what he wishes, he does not sin; let her marry.”
It is not a sin to allow her to get married. Remember, marriage and celibacy
are not ends in and of themselves and do not involve inherently, spiritually
superior positions. That is the background for understanding this. [37] “But he
who stands firm in his heart, being under no constraint, but has authority over
his own will, and has decided this in his own heart, to keep his own virgin
{daughter,} he will do well.” In v. 36 it is the father who allows
the daughter to marry, in v. 37 this is the father who is keeping his daughter
single. She needs to stay single and if that is her decision as well then he
needs to protect her and provide for that. [38] “So then both he who gives his
own virgin {daughter} in marriage does well, and he who does not give her in
marriage will do better.” That is a poor translation. It really
emphasizes the fact that he has chosen well in that decision also. So whether
they stay single or whether they get married it is not an inherently spiritual
decision but it has to do with priorities and ultimate value.
Paul’s final point is that
staying single is superior because marriage is a permanent position. We have
already recognized that there are legitimate reasons for separation and
divorce, but those are viewed biblically as exceptions. The Scriptures view
marriage as a permanent status.
1 Corinthians 7:39 NASB “A wife is bound as long as her
husband lives; but if her husband is dead, she is free to be married to whom
she wishes, only in the Lord. [40] But in my opinion she is
happier if she remains as she is; and I think that I also have the Spirit of
God.”