FAMILY-oriented churches and Christians often pity singles who seem alone, without spouses or children. This very situation, however, allows Christian singles a unique opportunity to testify to the kingdom of God revealed in Jesus Christ. For the Christian single, Christian identity can take priority over all other allegiances or affiliations, whether biological, organizational or national. Singles do not have the temptation of primarily thinking of ourselves as husbands, wives or parents. Instead our self-identity can be ‘followers of Jesus.’ In this way, Rodney Clapp (in Families at the Crossroads) writes, the committed Christian single life can itself bear witness to the resurrection.
The single Christian ultimately must trust in the resurrection. The married, after all, can fall back on the passage of the name to children, and on being remembered by children. But singles mount the high wire of faith without the net of children and their memory. If singles live on, it will be because there is a resurrection. And if they are remembered, they will be remembered by the family called church.
Singles do not have the temptation of primarily thinking of ourselves as husbands, wives or parents. Instead our self identity can be ‘followers of Jesus.’
The apostle Paul exemplified this. Here is a man who, contrary to Jewish tradition and societal norm, was unmarried. As far as we know from historical records, Paul left no offspring. At his death, Christianity was no more than a fledgling religion with a handful of ragtag followers scattered across the Mediterranean. With no children to carry on his name, what were the chances that anybody would remember Paul after his death?
Though Paul had no physical children, nearly two millennia after his death, millions of Christians throughout church history know him as the apostle to the Gentiles. Millions of Bibles translated into thousands of languages across the globe name Paul as the author of one third of the New Testament. His example as a radical follower of Christ – one who did not choose a life of marriage and children – will continue to motivate the church until the time of Christ’s return.
Of course, such a life is not automatic. Tim Stafford (in Sexual Chaos) writes:
A single person is not necessarily a sign of the kingdom. If he is tangled in his longings and his sense of loss, he is not. But a single person can demonstrate with a remarkable clarity that he knows the reason he was created to love and serve God, and Him only. If that singleness of vision, that purity of heart, possesses him and shows itself in his purposeful service of others and in his preoccupation with prayer and worship, then he makes a radical statement with his life about the kingdom.
‘Single people experience the great joy of being able to devote themselves, with concentration and without distraction, to the work of the Lord.’
In contrast to the married person, who by necessity must be concerned with the needs of spouse and family, Richard Foster (in The Freedom of Simplicity) says that the single person can concentrate with abandon on the advancement of the Kingdom of God…Paul was not against marriage, but he did insist that people should count the cost. No-one should enter the covenant of marriage without understanding the immense amount of time and energy involved in making that relationship work. We need to face the fact that we cannot do many of the kinds of things which Paul did and be married.
A primary advantage of singleness is a mobility that many married people envy. With the responsibilities of a spouse and children comes the idea that it may be best to settle down more or less permanently, in order to provide children with a community to grow up in and a place to call home. Of course it is true that many married people do move across the country frequently due to job changes and transfers. But the married who move must consider the effects of the move on the other members of the family, while a single person may not have as many such concerns.
As John Stott says, the liberty of singleness is that "single people experience the great joy of being able to devote themselves, with concentration and without distraction, to the work of the Lord."
Taken from The Single Issue by Al Hsu IVP |
