Advantages of Being Single
Tom Shrader works through 1 Corinthians 7:25-40, clarifying that Paul does not elevate singleness over marriage morally but highlights its practical freedoms: fewer divided loyalties, less material entanglement, and greater capacity for focused service. Drawing on Jim Elliot's diary and the brevity of time, Shrader challenges both singles and married believers to resist the accumulating weight of material complexity and to keep eternity in view. He closes by addressing Paul's guidance on widows remarrying and a father's role in a daughter's betrothal, tying everything back to the call for undistracted devotion to the Lord.
“Time is short and the world's passing away — don't lose sight of that. It's still a brief period of time that you're here, and it's going by so quickly.”
— Tom Shrader
Series: Life Management
Recorded: 2001 at East Valley Bible Church
Duration: 42 min
Themes: singleness, marriage, devotion, simplicity, eternity, service, contentment, priorities, single adult, widow, young adult, considering marriage, feeling called to singleness, navigating materialism, parent of daughter, struggling with life purpose
Scripture: 1 Corinthians 7:25-40, 1 Corinthians 1:1, Ephesians 5, 2 Corinthians 4, 2 Corinthians 11
Theological Themes: apostolic authority, gift of singleness, celibacy, biblical marriage, undivided devotion, eschatology, sanctification, scripture as authoritative
Full Transcript
Introduction: Paul's Teaching on Singleness
Turn to 1 Corinthians chapter 7. Paul is dealing with the topic of marriage and singleness and divorce and remarriage, and that is what we have been looking at. Today will be the end of a three-week examination of this chapter, and we have talked about all of these issues. Today the focus is really on the advantages of singleness.
We need to be clear about what Paul is not doing when we talk about the advantages of singleness. Paul is not saying that being single is superior to being married. Throughout this teaching Paul has been consistent in this way: if God has given you the gift of singleness, then being single is where you ought to be. If God has not given you this gift, then pursuing marriage is acceptable. One is not an indication of a more spiritual person, and Paul was really fighting that battle in this church at Corinth.
In that environment there was teaching going around that singleness is superior because in the single life your devotion is to Christ and Christ alone. It was so distorted that some were teaching that if you are married you need to get divorced in order to be single and truly serve the Lord. Paul is shattering that false teaching. We will say it three, four, five times today because I want to keep it fresh in your mind: Paul is not endorsing one over the other. What he is doing today is laying out some very practical reasons why there are advantages — practical advantages, not moral issues — to being single.
Paul's Apostolic Authority
We begin in 1 Corinthians chapter 7 verse 25: "Now concerning virgins I have no command of the Lord, but I give an opinion as one who by the mercies of the Lord is trustworthy." Paul is saying he does not have a command from the Lord on this. This is similar to a technique we have seen him use before. What he means is that Jesus did not specifically teach on this issue when He was here, so Paul is not passing along something Jesus taught and reaffirming it. He is giving his own teaching.
Paul uses the word "opinion," though the word is really stronger than that. It means judgment or consideration. What Paul is saying is that what he offers here is indeed supernatural, authoritative, and divine — it just has not previously been taught by the Lord Himself. Look back to the very first verse of this book. 1 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 1: Paul identifies himself not merely as a bond servant, as he frequently does, but as "Paul, called as an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God." Paul appeals to his apostolic authority beginning in chapter 1 verse 1 and all through this letter.
So Paul is not saying these are his random views, to take or leave as one wishes. He is saying this is authoritative teaching — it is simply not teaching he received directly from the Lord Himself.
Three Types of Single People
Paul uses the word "virgins" as he introduces this section. This is a good moment to revisit something we looked at earlier in this chapter. Throughout the chapter, Paul identifies three types of single person. The first is the unmarried person. That word appears four times in the New Testament, all in this chapter, and when Paul speaks of someone unmarried he is speaking of a person who has been divorced — they are single because they were once married. He does not give us the grounds for the divorce, only that it occurred.
Then Paul speaks of those who are single because they are widowed, a term we are all familiar with: someone who was married and whose spouse has passed away. But when he uses the word "virgin," he is speaking of a person who is single and has never been married. Notice the contrast: the unmarried person has been married and divorced; the virgin is single and has never been married. So as Paul introduces this section, he is speaking specifically about those who are single and have never been married.
Staying As You Are in Times of Distress
Paul begins to give insight, moving through marriage, singleness, and remarriage, but there is a thread we can follow. Verse 26: "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. Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be released. Are you released from a wife? Do not seek a wife."
The operative phrase here is "present distress." Distress means a stress or a calamity, something pressing in on you — a stressful situation. Commentators wonder whether Paul is referring to something specific and unique to Corinth: something happening in that city at that time that was producing an extraordinary amount of pressure. It might have been financial hardship. It might have been famine. It might have been something personal. We do not know.
What we do know is that while Paul is writing to the church at Corinth, he understands this teaching will go beyond Corinth to all churches in all places. The teaching is universal in its application. In its simplest form, Paul is saying that when difficult times come, it is good to stay as you are — and he is speaking in particular about those who are single.
Singleness Has Practical Advantages
This is a really good time to stay that way. When there is suffering, when there is persecution, it is tough enough when you are single to stay focused. When difficulties come, your challenges are multiplied as you begin to wonder about your loved ones, your kids, your family — how are they doing, what is going on. Paul is saying this is not necessarily a good time to be changing things.
In fact, look at verse 28: "But if you should marry, you haven't sinned. If a virgin should marry, she hasn't sinned. Yet such will have trouble in this life and I am trying to spare you." What Paul is saying is, let's stay practical. If you are single and there is conflict around you, you need to understand that staying that way has extraordinary advantages. If you are single and you decide to marry, that is okay — but if you decide to stay single, that is okay too. Paul's point in verse 28 is simply: I am trying to spare you the trouble.
Singleness has its advantages. Marriage is complex. Some of you can't even get along with yourself, and now we add to this mix another person who, by every indicator, you are incompatible with. They are a controller — and I guarantee you that is true, because my theory is very simple: every person is a controller. Who doesn't want to be in control? Some of us mask it a little better than others, but we all want things our way.
When I come together in marriage, I make life more complicated. There is more trouble. Paul says he is not speaking morally — he is speaking practically. If you want to keep your trouble quotient low, stay single. That is all he is saying. You will be much more free and flexible in that environment.
The Church Has Elevated Family at the Expense of Singleness
Paul was writing at a time when he was encouraging people amid all sorts of different views on singleness. His culture was elevating singleness, but I think we live at a time where we have diminished it. We look at people who are single as somehow out of order — let's get them structured, let's give them something to do, let's keep them occupied until they get matched up, because until then they are not really fully one of us.
We have reached a point where we have focused too much on the family. We see family as superior to singleness, and it has become the definitive way we measure someone's spirituality. I will talk to people all the time and ask how someone is doing as a Christian, and the response is, "Oh, he's a great dad, he's a great husband." But if those were the two chief indicators of spiritual health, the apostle Paul brings nothing to the conversation.
Living the Christian life can actually pull us out of a family-first orientation. Love your neighbor as yourself. Go and make disciples. The burden I am placing on you is to listen carefully here, because there is no way for me to qualify this adequately — but the emphasis has become so much on family that we have elevated it in almost an unhealthy way. Now, obviously you are hearing this from someone who has spent great time, energy, effort, and money on family and holds it very highly. But the family is not the only barometer of how you are doing spiritually.
Time Is Short
Paul writes to these people and says, let me give you some practical advice — I want to save you a lot of trouble. It is harder and more complicated to be married. He says this in verse 29: "But this I say, brethren, the time has been shortened" — and dropping down to the very last phrase — "the form of this world is passing away." We will come back to see what he has sandwiched in between, but he is making this point first: time is short.
When Paul uses that word "time," it speaks of a definitive period, an appointed allotment of time. Let me tell you what you obviously already know — you are not going to live forever. Ray Stedman wrote this: "Two weeks ago I turned 61, and I want you to know, as the years go by they seem to go much faster. I am increasingly aware of the shortness of time and how few years we have on earth to do the things God desires — the exciting adventures He sets before us — and how one would want to pursue them more and more. The longer we live, the more aware we are of how time seems to fly. As someone said, by the time your face clears up, your mind begins to go."
When I pulled up my homepage this morning, there was a story on aging making two striking points. First, every 7.6 seconds in America, someone is turning 50. Second, by 2050, seniors will outnumber young people for the very first time in history in this country — think of the change that is coming. And yet, even though we are living longer — I gave you the statistic that 50% of the girls born in the year 2000 will still be alive in the year 2100 — even with our time expanding, Paul is saying it is still a short time. Do not lose sight of that.
Living with an Eternal Perspective
In light of the brevity of life, Paul offers some advice that on the surface looks pretty harsh. He writes: "From now on, those who have wives should be as those who have none, and those who weep as those who do not weep, and those who rejoice as those who do not rejoice, and those who buy as those who did not possess, and those who use the world as those that did not make full use of it."
We understand that Paul is not saying what he appears to say. He is not saying that if you have a wife, you should act as though you are single. We know he is not saying that, because when we get into Ephesians 5, he gives advice for married couples: wives submit to your husbands, husbands love your wives. What he is saying is that, in light of this brief time, the responsibilities we have in marriage are no excuse for not undertaking and engaging in the Lord's work. Time is short, and if you have decided to be married, you need to understand that you have split those interests, and that is going to take even more energy from you.
He also says not to be distracted by emotional swings — those who weep as those who do not weep, those who rejoice as those who do not rejoice. He is not saying those emotions are inappropriate. What he is saying is that you cannot swing from one extreme to the other. There is a calmness, a perspective on life. He also says to live as someone who buys and yet does not possess, because the material things we have are temporary, and he is weighing that temporariness against the eternal.
John MacArthur writes this: "In times of affluence, ease, permissiveness, self-acceptance, it is easy to live life for pleasure. Pleasures that are not immoral or extravagant are still worldly." This is a huge point. Just because something is not immoral, or just because it is not extravagant, does not mean it is acceptable before God — it can still be worldly. More leisure, more vacation time, earlier retirement, a comfortable home — things like this can occupy our interest and time such that the Lord is neglected. That is exactly what Paul has in mind.
Jesus said it this way: "Seek first the kingdom of God and all these other things will be added to you." The key to godly living is having a perspective on life that is eternal. I shared this with students at high school camp, and I was honest with them: I do not know how to help a college graduate see this, or a thirty-year-old, or a forty-year-old. I still talk to people who are saying, "Yeah, but when I get..." and the sentence never quite finishes, because they are always looking ahead to the next material milestone.
The Weight of Glory Against the World's Successes
Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 4: "Do not lose heart though the outer man is decaying, the inner man is being renewed day by day, for momentary light affliction is producing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison." Paul is saying you have to live in that light. The successes of the world simply do not matter in that accounting.
One mistake we have made is linking success and happiness, so that by every definition we think that if we are successful, we will be happy. Someone came up after the first service and offered a helpful insight: discontentment inevitably leads us to more discontentment — or to pride. Either we compare ourselves to others and say, "I am way better than them," and we become proud, or we look at them and say, "I will never have what they have," and we become discontent. What Paul is saying is that we must look at our own situation in light of the fact that Jesus is coming again. It does not matter what you accumulate on this earth in material goods, because none of that will transition to the next world.
I was in Boston a few years ago speaking, and in retrospect it was a questionable place to make this point, but at the time I thought it was sharp. I was telling the audience a story about a day I was on the couch watching television when Haley came in and asked what I was watching. I told her I was watching a biography and that it would be about an hour, so she sat down with me. She had to be about five or six years old at the time. It was a biography of John Kennedy, and it started in Brookline and took him through all his days — through Harvard, through PT 109, back home, into a congressional district, then the Senate, then the presidential race, through West Virginia, and finally to the presidency itself.
Time Is Short
Haley sat there the entire time watching this whole thing. Then there is a scene where you see President Kennedy and Jackie getting off a plane, and she is wearing her pink dress. Anyone with any sense of history knows exactly the scene — it is Dallas, November 22nd, 1963, and you know what is going to happen. The screen goes dark, and then they show the caisson, a flag-draped caisson being pulled with a riderless horse, boots backwards in the stirrups.
Haley said, "Who's in there?" I said, "John Kennedy." She said, "Well, what happened to him?" I told her somebody shot him. Then Haley summarized the essence of John Kennedy's life with one brief question: "Did he know Jesus?"
That is all that matters. He did not get up to heaven and have someone say, "Man, you were a president — that's an automatic pass," or "Boy, that blockade of Cuba, that was smart, you're in." No. If he did not know Jesus, then hell is his destination.
Paul's Point: The World Is Passing Away
That is all Paul is saying. Paul is saying, "I want you to live differently." As you look around, understand two things: time is short, and the world is passing away. Our tendency is to say, "I'll get to it later." Our tendency is to be swept up in the emotions of the moment — swept away by this deal, this game, this graduation, this job. All Paul is saying is that none of that is eternally important.
Undivided Devotion
Verse 22: "But I want you to be free from concern. One who is unmarried is concerned about the things of the Lord and how he may please the Lord. But the one who is married is concerned about the things of the world and how he may please his wife. His interests are divided."
Marriage forces us into a situation where we are preoccupied. "A woman who is unmarried and a virgin is concerned about the things of the Lord that she may be holy — that is, set apart, separated, consecrated to Him — both in body and in spirit. But the one who is married is concerned about the things of the world and how she may please her husband. And this I say for your own benefit, not to put a restraint on you, but to promote what is seemly, to secure undistracted devotion to the Lord."
Paul is speaking to those who are single and saying: do you understand this? When you marry, your interests are split. When you are single, you can be holy, entirely devoted to the Lord. But once you are married, you have responsibilities to a wife, to a husband, to children.
Jim Elliot and the Multiplication of Needs
Jim Elliot was a young man — the best of the young men of the mid-1950s. An extraordinary young man, he went to Wheaton College and had the world in front of him. He chose to become a missionary, and on his first journey to reach an unreached people group, he and two or three other men of exceptional quality were killed. That is Jim Elliot.
Jim Elliot kept a diary, and that diary has been reproduced in a little book called *Shadow of the Almighty*. You ought to have that book and you ought to read it. In it, you see his diary entries beginning at age seventeen, and you follow him as he thinks through the great questions of life.
Here is what Jim Elliot wrote as a twenty-two-year-old, about to graduate from college, thinking particularly about marriage:
> "I've been musing lately on the extremely dangerous cumulative effect of earthly things. One may have a good reason, for example, to want a wife, and he may have one legitimately, but with a wife comes Peter the Pumpkin Eater's proverbial dilemma — he must find a place to keep her. And most wives will not stay on such terms as Peter proposed. So a wife demands a house, a house in turn requires curtains, rugs, washing machines, et cetera. A house with these things must soon become a home, and children are the intended outcome."
Then comes this phrase, and it is incredible insight: "The needs multiply as they're met."
Needs Multiply as They Are Met
Here is what we tend to think: I have a need, I meet the need, the need goes away, and I am done. Jim Elliot says no. When you meet a need, unless you are very careful, you are creating a whole series of other needs. You meet this need and there are more.
The way I remember this — one day I was at the house and the girls screamed. Our girls are really scared of bugs. It does not really matter what kind — crickets, spiders — it does not matter. So they screamed, and I asked where their mother was. She was not there. They said, "You better do something, Dad." So I went out and there was this enormous spider right on the porch. I walked over, got right over it, and stomped it. When I hit it, I would bet fifty little baby spiders came springing out of that spider. That is the perfect illustration for this phrase. Needs multiply as they are met.
Listen to what Jim Elliot continues, and you cannot argue with this: "A car demands a garage, a garage demands land, land demands a garden, a garden demands tools, and tools need to be sharpened."
The Danger of a Complicated Life
Woe to the man who would live a disentangled life in my century. I've learned from this that the wisest life is the simplest life. He lived in the fulfillment of only the basic requirements of life: shelter, food, covering, and a bed. Even these can be productive of other needs if one is not careful. Be on guard, oh my soul, of complicating your environment so that you have neither time nor room for growth — and he means spiritual growth.
Let me just tease you. The next two sentences have nothing to do with what he's written and nothing to do with what comes after. But knowing how Jim Elliot's life ends, listen to these two sentences. He writes this: "I must not think it strange if God takes in youth those that I would have kept on earth until they were older. God is peopling eternity and I must not restrict Him to old men and old women."
A Warning to the Single and the Married
Here is the danger. If you're single, open your eyes and understand this: you're about to complicate your life. Your life is going to get more difficult, you're going to have more troubles, and it's going to be harder. It's just the nature of it — it's hard alone, and it's harder together.
If I can make this point to those of you who are married: just because you're married, it does not mean you have to make it complicated or make it hard. Do you see this theme running through the passage? It is all through Scripture, especially in the area of material things.
I have to tell you — this is just me — but I look out at the parking lot on Sunday and I see these cars and I'm asking myself, how can these people afford to drive these things? How can they live like that? Well, there's only one way: debt. You put yourself in bondage.
I heard an ad the other day for a Ford — I don't remember which model, a Taurus, it doesn't matter. They said, "We owe $109 a month." And then I listened to the rapid talk at the end: the loan is spread over 84 months. You'll be on your third transmission in that Ford when you finally have it paid off. It is not going to run that long.
I want you to know, because there are a lot of families here and some of you have done this: you're driving a car that after five years you're going to owe $12,000 or $13,000 on, and it's only worth three, and it won't run. And you're doing it all so you can have a Ford now.
The Bondage of Debt
We just hosted a pastor's luncheon here to talk about Crown Ministries, and Dave was saying this: there are now four credit cards issued for every man, woman, boy, and girl in this country. When your student arrives on campus their freshman year and walks into their dorm room, on their bed will be three pre-approved credit cards with limits anywhere between $2,500 and $5,000. Right when they get there. Because once they've got you, they've got you. And now you are in bondage.
So now you're going to work tomorrow. It starts today — the weight of it kind of starts this afternoon. Your stomach's in a knot, you don't want to do it, you're down, you're depressed. And we can't connect it, except it always happens on Sunday around 2 o'clock. You hate your work. When we sit down I ask, if you hate it so much, why do you go there? And the answer is: because it's the only place I can make enough money to live in the lifestyle I've become accustomed to. You're in bondage. That's exactly what Paul is saying. And you can get out of this — you don't have to live that way.
Paul's Instruction on Fathers and Daughters
Now Paul addresses some things that need to be said. We're going to move quickly through verses 36, 37, and 38. Paul says this:
"But if any man thinks he is acting unbecomingly toward his virgin daughter, if she should be of full age, and if it must be so, let him do what he wishes. He does not sin. Let her marry. But he who stands firm in his heart, being under no constraint, has authority over his own will, and has decided this in his own heart to keep his own virgin daughter, he will do well. So then he who gives his own virgin daughter in marriage does well. And he who does not give her in marriage will do better."
Here is what Paul is addressing. In that day and age, the father held the dominant role in arranging marriages. He would select the spouse and put the entire arrangement together. Part of what was happening in the culture was an emphasis on singleness being better than marriage, so a father would take a vow on behalf of his daughter that she would remain single. But when the daughter came of age, she was saying, "I don't have the gift of singleness — I want to marry."
That is all Paul is doing here: addressing that situation. He is coming to the father and saying, listen, you made a vow for this child that cannot be kept because the child does not have the gift of singleness. It's okay — that is what he's saying. It's okay if she marries. If she puts you under no constraint — in other words, if she says she is content to remain as she is — then it is fine for her to stay that way. That is the point Paul is addressing.
Paul's Summary on Marriage and Remarriage
Then Paul summarizes it very simply. He says this: "A wife is bound as long as her husband lives, but if her husband dies, she is free to marry to whom she wishes, only in the Lord." She can marry anyone, but only a Christian. "It is my opinion she will be happy if she remains as she is." Paul is saying, listen, if you're —
The Freedom of Singleness
A widower is free to remarry, and I don't know any couple that doesn't have that kind of conversation at some point while driving along. I said to Susan that I wouldn't remarry, and she said, "You would last one cycle of laundry — that's how long you'd last." Then I asked her if she would remarry, and she said, "Absolutely not." Now, there can only be one or two reasons for that: either I was a jerk and she would never do this again, or it's the opposite of that.
William Barclay speaks to that second possibility, and I offer this quote to set up the point. Barclay says: "In many ways a second marriage is the highest compliment that the one who survives can pay to the one who has gone before. It means that life without him or her was so lonely. It means that with him or her, the married state was so happy that it can fearlessly be entered into again. So far from being an act of disrespect, it is a mark of honor of the dead." That's my view — I'm honoring the dead.
What 1 Corinthians 7 Is Really Saying
Here is the heart of what Paul is dealing with in chapter seven, and it's really simple. He is saying: if you are married, you need to stay married. If you divorce, there are only two grounds for that — adultery and desertion by an unbeliever. If you are the faithful party in that divorce, you can remarry; if not, you cannot.
Beyond that, Paul speaks to singleness and says there are genuine advantages to being single. You don't have to worry as much about other people and your family. You are more flexible. You can focus on the eternal. You are free to serve. If you are here and you are single, the point is to keep your life simple — not so you are free to go to Club Med more, but so you are free to serve.
Paul as the Living Illustration
What dawned on me while preparing this is that the apostle Paul himself is a great illustration of this principle. He seems to write this section with a very clear personal understanding of what he is describing. He has been beaten, jailed, imprisoned, and faced all sorts of hardships and difficulties.
He is saying, in effect, that it is hard enough to do this work as it is. Remember what he writes in 2 Corinthians 11 — he speaks of momentary light affliction and catalogs the beatings and sufferings. Then he says that apart from all those external things, there was the internal concern for the churches. Just imagine if he had to add to that verse: "And I have to worry about my wife, and I have to worry about my kids." He is simply saying there is a real freedom in singleness.
Looking Ahead
With that, Paul closes this section and turns to a topic that is on the lips of virtually everyone I deal with and everyone who comes into our office — a topic we probably spend more time on than anything else. That topic is: can we eat meat offered to idols? So you will be on the edge of your seat for the next two months. Obviously we know there are principles in there that apply directly to us today, and we will begin looking at that starting next week.
Father, help us see that. I pray for those who are married here today, that You would allow them to live a life free from the distractions that come with the complications we so often bring into a relationship. For those who are single, give them the courage and the desire to remain in that gifted position — to be single and free to serve You. God, that is our prayer. In Jesus' name, amen.