Singles, families and the Kingdom of God
Two confessions
I want to begin with two confessions. The first confession is nothing surprising or salacious – it’s simply the fact that I’m preaching about singleness this morning when I myself am a married man. I have very little opportunity to practise some of the things that I’m going to preach this morning. So if you’re listening as a single person and you notice some glaring omissions in my understanding of what the issues are, I hope you’ll be forgiving!
That’s the first confession; the second is related to it, and it’s the fact that much of this sermon is not really my own work – lots of the ideas in this sermon this morning originally belonged to other people, not me, and they reflect countless conversations that I’ve had over the years with friends - my mentor down in Melbourne, Peter Adam, and many, many others, both single and married. I owe a very particular debt this morning to Tim Adeney, who preached a great sermon on singleness a few months ago at Summer Hill, and gave me permission to plagiarise vast tracts of that sermon, which I have done. Most importantly of all, I hope that this sermon is not just a reflection of my own thoughts and ideas and the ideas of my friends – I hope that this sermon this morning is an accurate account of what the word of God says.
I’m hoping also that as we think through this very practical example this morning of how we live out the tension between creation and the kingdom of God – I’m hoping that there will be some relevance and some challenge for all of us, married people included. So let’s get into it!
Singleness and our future destiny (Mark 12:18-25, Rev 21:1-4)
Unlike the last three weeks, the place I want to begin this morning is not the start of the Bible, in Genesis and the creation accounts, but at the other end of the Bible – in the book of Revelation and the things that Jesus says about the end in the gospels. I want to start at the end, not the beginning, and I want to say as the first point this morning, that singleness is the future destiny of all of us.
Now in an earthly, this-worldly sense that’s almost true. We were all single once, and most of us will be single again one day – most of us will live out the last years of our lives as single people. But that’s not what I’m talking about in this point. What I’m talking about in this point is the fact that one day all of us will be single. Jesus is talking with the Sadducees in the first Bible reading that we heard this morning, and he says to them – Mark 12 verse 25: “When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.” I don’t think Jesus is saying that in heaven we will just be faceless, anonymous members of the crowd, unable to even remember or recognise the people that we loved when we were on earth. I don’t think he’s saying that we will be angels, stripped of our humanity, or that we will experience less than the intimacy that we had on earth with the people that were our husbands and wives and brothers and sisters and mothers and fathers. But he is saying that the whole business of marrying and giving in marriage – the sex and the exclusivity and the procreation – all that will no longer be needed in the new creation.
There will be no marriage in heaven for two great reasons. Firstly because the marriage to end all marriages will have taken place. There is a marriage in heaven, but only one marriage - the marriage between Christ and the Church, between the Lamb and his bride. That is in fact what marriage on earth has been a signpost of, a picture of. And like all good signposts, when you arrive you don’t need them. And so once this final great ultimate marriage has taken place, there is no other need for other marriages. It is why we promise ourselves in marriage ‘until death do us part’, and not ‘until all eternity’. Marriage is a gift in creation for this age. It is not for all eternity.
And secondly the future is a place where the earthly markers of nation, tribe, people and language have melted away. Revelation 7:9 - “After this I looked and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and in front of the Lamb.” It’s not that the markers aren’t visible. They are - John can see them. Its just they are no longer significant. They have been trumped. No longer is the world a place where genetics, blood and kinship are the markers and dividers of social life. The future will be a place where we relate not sexually but nevertheless deeply and meaningfully, as part of that great multitude, where blood and kinship no longer exclude and separate us from each other. And celibate singleness bears witness to that future. More than that, celibate singleness starts to live out that future.
This means that singleness within the people of God is a dignified and noble status. In fact in much of Christian history, it was seen as the dignified and noble status. We don’t agree with that. But neither do we want to say the opposite – neither do we want to communicate that message you sometimes hear – that message that isn’t so much said as assumed, that being single is the lesser option, that somehow there is something deficient with you if aren’t married.
The attacks from the world and the church are a little different at this point. The church might suggest that you are inferior if you aren’t married. I suspect it’s done in the form of subterranean suggestion, rather than outright declaration, but it’s still a message that can be implied in a thousand ways. The World’s attack is slightly different. They won’t necessarily attack the fact that you’re single (in fact they may praise it), but they will attack your celibacy, as something to be embarrassed and ashamed of.
Both attacks deny the destiny of humanity - to be in meaningful non-marriage non-sexual relationships for all eternity in the presence of God and of the Lord Jesus. The Christian community needs to be one where both singleness and marriage are welcomed and fostered – and we’ll say more about that later in the talk.
Singleness and our created design (Genesis 2:18, Prov 18:22, Pss 127, 128, 133)
Now if you have followed my reasoning so far, you may find yourself with a number of responses. On the one hand you may wonder why any of us get married, why don’t we just all live out our calling to be signposts to the future, anticipating heaven. Or you may say: well that sounds good, but I don’t find being single easy, in fact I find it unbearably difficult, and if this is foreshadowing the future, then I’m not sure I want that future.
The answer to these queries comes from, I think, understanding creation, and understanding that we are bound to that creation. What I mean is this. When the New Testament got written, Genesis didn’t suddenly get erased. It’s still there, and we still live in the world that it describes.
And while the future has started with the resurrection of Jesus Christ, creation hasn’t yet been transformed. But it hasn’t been denied either. Rather it has been affirmed as good. Jesus himself said of marriage, “what God has joined together, let man not separate”. Similarly Paul: “everything created [and the particular examples he has in mind are marriage and food] is good, and should be received with thanksgiving.” So the future has started, but we still live in an untransformed creation. We live in an overlap era. With overlapping realities. On the one hand we have our destiny, and on the other we have our design. And our design was given at creation.
It was not good for man to be alone, so God made Eve for Adam. Notice what it doesn’t say in Genesis. It doesn’t say: “God saw that it was not good for man to be alone, so he taught Adam how to have a quiet time, and how to commune with him in prayer, and that was enough for him.” No, the Genesis account takes our earthly, human relationships with great seriousness, and the first of those relationships that God creates is marriage. Before He made relationships generally, he made a marriage specifically.
In other words, God made humanity for marriage. We are designed to be married. Marriage and family life is the ordinary expected experience of humans – when God created us he built that into our bodies and our hormones and our emotions. And so while we may be able to appreciate the significance of our future as single people, we do so from the standpoint of having bodies that are still designed for marriage. I suspect that we will all feel this tension to a greater or lesser degree.
Some of us we will feel it to a greater degree. Which means that for some of us long term singleness will be very challenging, likely to involve significant grief and temptation. I suspect there will be some of this in any long term singleness, but for some of us it may well be extreme.
And experiencing some of that pain and struggle as a single Christian is not a sign that your faith is deficient. It’s not a sin to grieve, and it’s not a sin to struggle with temptation. What you do with that grief, and what you do with that temptation is the arena in which you live out your trust in Christ. Trusting in Jesus doesn’t mean sailing above the challenges and struggles of life.
As a basic building block for us to think about singleness, we must, I think, expect that most of us who are single will experience some degree of challenge, grief and temptation. Marriage and children are a good gift from God. To not have them is worthy of grief. Marriage is what our bodies were designed for. To not have it is likely to bring temptation. Together they make singleness a challenge, and for some a very painful challenge, and a challenge which may for some of us get harder with age, not easier.
Of course if you are single and don’t find it particularly challenging, don’t panic, I said ‘to a greater or lesser’ extent. And just as we can expect some to struggle to a greater extent, so some will struggle to a ‘lesser’ extent, perhaps a much lesser extent. In fact some of us may positively love being single. And please don’t feel the slightest embarrassment if that’s you – please don’t feel guilty for not finding it hard enough. But for some of us, singleness will be hard – really hard, and according to the Bible there is good reason for that – and any real and genuine word that we are going to say about singleness needs to acknowledge that.
Marriage, Singleness and life in the last days (Matt 19:10-12, Mark 8:29-30, 1 Cor 7:17-35)
Well so far we’ve talked about the end – about the new creation, and about the days to come when there will be no marriage in heaven, and when the exclusivity and the boundaries and the blood ties of this age will be no longer. And then secondly we’ve talked about the beginning, and about the way God designed us in creation for marriage and family and children, and about the consequent temptations and griefs that can accompany singleness.
But those two things are not the only words that the Bible has to say on this subject we’re thinking about this morning. It’s not just that we stand between creation and new creation, like everyone who’s ever lived since Adam and Eve. No – we live at a more particular point in the history of the world. We live this side of Jesus; we live in an age when the coming kingdom has invaded the present age and erupted in the middle of this creation; we live in what the Bible calls ‘the last days’, and that has big implications for how we view and experience singleness and marriage.
When Jesus came preaching at the beginning of Mark’s gospel, his message was this: “The time is fulfilled; the kingdom of God is at hand.” And by his life and death and resurrection he inaugurated that kingdom, and he marked the beginning of the last days. When you read the gospels you start to get a picture of how life is different this side of the coming of Jesus - how life is different when you live in the last days. Let me highlight four aspects of that:
In the first place, the last days are days of anticipation. They’re days in which the future realities of the new creation begin to be anticipated within the community of Jesus’ disciples. So Jesus says in Mark chapter 3, looking at the circle of his disciples: “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.” The community of Jesus’ disciples, with its family like relationships of love and belonging that cut across all the old divisions – the community of Jesus’ disciples is meant to be a kind of partial, imperfect anticipation of that great multitude in heaven.
Secondly, the last days according to Jesus are days of division, that cut across the loyalties of the old age, including family. In particular, they are days in which there is a vast gulf and division between those who belong to Jesus and those who do not. So Jesus says in Matthew 10: ““Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. 35 For I have come to turn“‘a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law — 36 a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.’”
Thirdly, the last days are days of mission, in which the gospel goes out with urgency to the ends of the earth, and people say good-bye to home and comfort and go out to proclaim the kingdom.
And fourthly, in Matthew 24, Jesus talks about the brevity of the last days. Aspects of life in the last days will be very hard, but we are to take comfort in the fact that it will not last for ever. The end is near.
Singleness in the light of the Kingdom (Matt 19:10-12, Mark 10:29-30, 1 Cor 7:17-35)
All four of these aspects of life in the last days have big implications for how we view singleness and marriage as disciples of Jesus. So Jesus talks in Matthew 19 – having just affirmed the goodness and the permanence of marriage in the strongest possible terms – he goes on to say that there will be some people whom God will enable to renounce marriage for the sake of the kingdom. And similarly in Luke 18:29, he talks about people who have sacrificed “home or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God.”
I don’t think Jesus is talking about abandoning your husband or your wife or your kids to go off and preach the gospel – given that he is so emphatic in the Matthew 19 passage that you must never tear apart what God has joined together. But I think he is talking about people who have made decisions for the sake of Jesus that have cost them their earthly families – people whose parents or spouse have abandoned them because they chose to follow Jesus; people who have said no to relationships with non-Christians, sometimes remaining single as a consequence; people who have gone as missionaries to difficult places and have sacrificed any real likelihood of marriage and family life. And he says in Mark 10, in the parallel passage: “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel 30 will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields — and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life.” Jesus is saying, if the fact that you are single is at least partly the consequence of your faithfulness to Jesus – if it’s a difficult, costly consequence of decisions that you have made for the sake of the kingdom, then it is not a waste; God will richly reward your faithfulness.
And then in 1 Corinthians 7, in the passage that was read for us earlier, Paul talks in quite similar terms about the way that living in the last days transforms the way that we view both singleness and marriage.
Let me show you from that passage and elsewhere in Paul’s letters, four different aspects of how Paul lived as a single man in the light of the kingdom of God – four aspects of Paul’s example.
- gift (1 Cor 7:7)
In the first place, 1 Corinthians 7:7, there’s the way that Paul viewed his singleness as a gift from God. When Pau talks in 1 Corinthians 7 about the ‘gift’ of singleness, I don’t think he’s talking about some special, God-given ability to be painlessly single; I don’t think he’s talking about an ‘ability’ at all. I think he’s talking simply about the fact that he is single. And he views that fact, that circumstance of life, as something given to him by God. And he goes on to say: if you’re circumcised or uncircumcised, or slave or free, or married or single, you need to view your circumstances in the same way. Some circumstances – like slavery – are particularly painful and difficult ones, and if you have the chance to gain your freedom, by all means do so. But in the mean time, Paul says about his singleness, I receive it as a gift from God, and I make the most of the opportunities that it gives me to serve him with singleminded devotion. I thank God that I don’t have all the complexity and responsibilities of family life, and I use my freedom to serve others.
- refreshment (Rom 15:32, 1 Thess 2:17, 3:6, 1 Cor 16:7, 2 Tim 1:4, 16)
Having said that, secondly, it’s not as if Paul despises the value of human relationships, or lives in denial of his need for refreshment and encouragement and friendship. He’s an intinerant missionary, but he still has a whole network of close, passionate relationships with people that he deeply loves. So when he writes his letters he frequently talks about his desire – in fact his longing - to be with the people that he is writing to – not simply because he wants to do some ministry for them, but because he misses them and he wants to see them, and he wants to be refreshed by their company. So he says in 1 Thessalonians 2: “Brothers, when we were torn away from you for a short time (in person, not in thought), out of our intense longing we made every effort to see you.” Or chapter 3 verse 6: “Timothy has just now come to us from you and has brought good news about your faith and love. He has told us that you always have pleasant memories of us and that you long to see us, just as we also long to see you.” 1 Corinthians 16 verse 5: “After I go through Macedonia, I will come to you — for I will be going through Macedonia. 6 Perhaps I will stay with you awhile, or even spend the winter, so that you can help me on my journey, wherever I go. 7 I do not want to see you now and make only a passing visit; I hope to spend some time with you, if the Lord permits.” Or 2 Timothy 1:4 “Recalling your tears, I long to see you, so that I may be filled with joy.”
Paul knows that his singleness gives him oppportunities to serve others and to serve God that he wouldn’t have if he was married. He thanks God for those opportunities, and he lives for the gospel of Jesus. But at the same time, and as part of that, he also knows the preciousness and the value of human relationships in and of themselves, and he makes them a priority in how he plans his life.
- family (Rom 16:13, 1 Tim 1:2. Titus 1:4)
And then thirdly, within that wider circle of Christian brothers and sisters, there are the particular relationships he has where the family language that he uses seems to be even more focused. So, for example, in Romans 16:13 he talks about “Rufus, chosen in the Lord, and his mother, who has been a mother to me, too.” And in 1 Timothy and Titus he writes to both of them as his ‘true sons in the faith’.
There is a big implication here for how we do church family, isn’t there. There’s a general implication about the inclusiveness of the big group, and the way that we express the fact that church is not just a place for families but a place that is itself a family – there’s that general implication, but there’s also implications for the particular relationships that those of us who are in families can have with the single friends that we have here at church. Those of us who are married must not retreat into a little ghetto of married friends and our kids’ friends’ parents as the only people that we have fellowship and friendship with.
- learned contentment (Phil 4:11-12)
And then finally, Philippians 4, there are those famous verses that Paul writes about his learned contentment – not something painless and easy, not something automatic and instantaneous, but something learned through the years and the decades of trusting Christ and serving him. “I have learned to be content whatever the circumstances. 12 I know what it is to be in need, and I know what it is to have plenty. I have learned the secret of being content in any and every situation, whether well fed or hungry, whether living in plenty or in want. 13 I can do everything through him who gives me strength.”
Marriage and family in the last days (1 Cor 7:29-31)
Let’s pray.