Did Paul just say that we shouldn’t get married? Seriously?
At first glance this probably doesn’t make much sense to you. In fact, when I was a younger man I would have either skipped this chapter, or stopped reading the Bible altogether (if it’s going to say crazy things like this).
But before we pass judgment, let’s consider Paul’s circumstances:
The church is being persecuted on every front. Christians in Israel are being tortured and martyred. Wherever Paul goes there is physical resistance to the message. Paul goes on missions trips that last several years at a time. Eventually he is carted off to Rome where he languishes in prison for years before being killed. Is that any environment to raise a family? What if there were children involved? Is it responsible to bring children into the world that you know you won’t be around to raise? Who will teach them about Jesus? If they don’t learn and accept Christ, you have participated in creating lives that will spend eternity in torture. Who wants that?
Secondly, Paul is convinced that Jesus is returning very soon. The advice Paul gives (and it comes from him, not the Lord) is to remain unmarried, because he believes these are the last days. Most interpreters of the Bible agree that you can see Rome in John’s Revelation. It wouldn’t be a stretch for 1st century believers to adopt the idea that they were the generation that would see the return of the Lord.
I believe that had Paul known what we know now, he would have responded differently. However, since not even the Son knows the day of his return, there’s no way Paul could have known it. And maybe (thinking outside the box here) the Holy Spirit wouldn’t stop him from writing it, since no one knows the time or day. It could have happened in Paul’s day. It could happen in our day.
There are several really important concepts here:
1. When you are married, your body belongs to the other person. Withholding sex from your partner violates scripture. I don’t think I want to delve into that, but consider this: when has withholding intimacy ever produced long lasting desirable results?
2. Getting married isn’t a sin. But some people have the spiritual gift of being single. Since it is better to have a gift than not have one, then it stands to reason that being single (without lust) is equal to being married. Carrying the thought a step further, the unmarried person can do things the married person cannot…so the unmarried person has more than the married person does.
Of course, we can also say that a married couple can accomplish much as well. What I am saying is that when we are gifted by the Holy Spirit to do so, one person can accomplish what it generally takes 2 people to do.
3. Stay married. Paul concedes that you may need to allow an unbeliever to leave, but I think he is implying that you are not to remarry. I could be wrong here, but I think he is only allowing separation. I say that because he doesn’t want people to marry in the first place, so I can’t see him agreeing to “trying a second time”. After all, he encourages widows to remain single…and he doesn’t say “older widows”. There could have been younger women who were widowed.
I mention this only because I want to underscore the importance of picking the right person the first time. Too often we enter marriage thinking “if it doesn’t work out, we can always break up an marry someone else”. If we treated marriage with the finality that God intended, we would be less likely to marry, and we would spend much more time making sure “this is the one”.
4. Children are made holy (New Living Translation) by the presence of the believing spouse. I am not sure how far this goes…there’s only one way to enter heaven, and that’s by personally accepting Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior. You can’t enter heaven because your mom or dad was a godly person. But the presence of a godly person in the home is of great value in some spiritual sense. I have seen homes where the believer left…the believer didn’t have huge problems…but the kids didn’t fare so well. They were now in a home without godly influence. No one got them up for church, no one told them Bible stories and encouraged them to seek out Jesus. In fact, the opposite happened, since mom and dad were fighting. If mom wanted the kids in church, dad did whatever he could to make sure they weren’t there. In the end, the children paid a steep price. Maybe that’s something to consider.
5. Getting married isn’t a sin. If God hasn’t called you to be single, then finding the right person is cause for celebration, even if we are in the last days, even if your life will be difficult. There are children born to Christian families in third world countries where (if it were us) we might not have considered having children. Marriage is a cause for celebration…Children are a cause for celebration. In God’s plan, you need both of them to receive the real blessing…. Grandchildren.
We’ll leave it at that.
Celebrating marriage,
PR