Marriage v Singleness

'A man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh' Genesis 2:24

'It is good for a man not to marry' 1 Corinthians 7:1

There's often a debate about whether God says in the Bible that it's normally right for Christians to marry, though in some cases it's right to stay single, or whether God says that it's normally right for Christians to stay single, unless they can't manage it in which case they can marry. The two verses above show why there's this debate.
It's quite hard to be unbiased when talking about this, because all of us are (a) married or (b) single! Let's try to think about what God's saying, and why he's saying it.

Genesis 2, in which God makes man and woman and they are married (in v24 above) comes before the Fall. That means it happens in this world before things go wrong. Therefore, God intended marriage as part of his initial creation. Let's notice a few things about what marriage therefore is:
a) It is between a man and a woman
b) It is lifelong (they leave their parents and become a separate family unit)
c) It involves sex once they are married (they get married and then 'become one flesh') - so the place for which God intends sex is inside, not outside, marriage

After the Fall, though, there's no such thing as a perfect marriage, or perfect wife or husband (just ask Lizzie!) Post-Fall, God allows divorce in certain (very limited) circumstances. But the ideal of marriage (who it involves and what it involves) is still the same, and it's what married people should strive for.

Also very important (and often forgotten) is that Bible reveals that human marriage is actually a picture, a visual illustration, of the relationship between Jesus and his church (Christians). Ephesians 5:23, 25 - 'The husband is the head of the wife as Christ is the head of the church...Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her.' Christian marriage, the way the husband and wife treat each other, reflects the relationship between Christ and the church.

Both the fact that there was marriage before the Fall and that Christian marriage reflects the marriage between Christ and his church suggests we should be careful about saying that being married isn't the norm for Christians, or that it's something God gives us to stop us having sex outside marriage (like giving a toy to a naughty child to stop him playing with other people's toys).

What then is 1 Corinthians 7 on about when it says it's good NOT to marry? Well, there are advantages to being single, the biggest one of which comes in 7:32-34. 'An unmarried man is concenred about the Lord's affairs - how he can please the Lord. But a married man is concerned about the affairs of this world - how he can please his wife - and his interests are divided'. In other words, the great advantage of being a single Christian is that you can spend all your time working only for God, rather than sometimes needing to look after your wife/husband. So Paul can say 'I wish that all men were as I am' (ie single, v7), because then no-one would have a wife or husband to look after.

That means that singleness is a gift - which is a message Christians in today's society need to hear and understand, because the media, peer pressure, advertising, everything is telling us that if you're single you're a bit of a failure really. Not at all - if you're single that's a gift God's given you so you can spend more time serving him.

Some people have that gift of singleness for life - and they're not 'weird' or 'strange'. But the thing about 1 Corinthians 7 is that in v26 Paul talks about 'the present crisis'. The Corinthian church was falling apart because of sexual immorality; and Paul seems to be asking everyone just to calm down, settle down, not to rush into things or to think that all Christians ought to marry or that all Christians ought to be single.

We should take heed of that advice today, and celebrate marriage as part of God's good creation and reflecting Christ's relationship with his church, and also celebrate the gift of singleness which God has given to some of his servants.