The aim of this arti­cle

In this arti­cle we describe how God intend­ed the rela­tion­ship between man and woman to be and con­trast it with the dis­tort­ed use of sex­u­al­i­ty today. We would like to point out the val­ue of stay­ing sin­gle for the sake of God’s king­dom and show what the Bible says about the rela­tion­ships between mar­ried and unmar­ried peo­ple in the Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty based on broth­er­ly love, which tran­scends the love between hus­band and wife.

1 Introductory Thoughts About the Value of Staying Single for God

In this arti­cle we wish to touch on a top­ic that has great sig­nif­i­cance for people’s per­son­al lives. For most, it is a self-evi­dent mat­ter to start a part­ner­ship or to look for one—a wish which is often con­nect­ed with great expec­ta­tions, and hence great dis­ap­point­ments are not uncom­mon, which plunge peo­ple into a deep cri­sis, even in reli­gious cir­cles.

By con­trast, there is hard­ly any­one who decides to renounce part­ner­ship, sex­u­al­i­ty and fam­i­ly life freely and con­scious­ly, and to devote their lives to anoth­er aim. To the New Tes­ta­ment, how­ev­er, this thought is not alien. Jesus and Paul both speak about it. Ear­ly Chris­t­ian writ­ings tell us that it was not a sel­dom thing for peo­ple to decide to remain unmar­ried for the sake of God’s king­dom.

We have gath­ered some thoughts con­cern­ing the val­ue and sig­nif­i­cance which mar­riage and remain­ing sin­gle have in God’s eyes, and what the Bible says about them. This arti­cle is pri­mar­i­ly addressed to read­ers with a Chris­t­ian back­ground because we would like to wak­en the aware­ness that scrip­ture does not speak about mar­riage as the only option. Choos­ing to stay sin­gle for the sake of God’s king­dom is a real­i­ty in the Bible which is often ignored.

At this point we would like to make clear that the deci­sion of a Chris­t­ian to remain unmar­ried is not to be con­fused with the vow of celiba­cy tak­en by priests, monks and nuns and which is a manda­to­ry require­ment of tak­ing up one of these so-called reli­gious voca­tions. More about that lat­er.

We are well aware that this issue is an exten­sive one, and that we have to lim­it our­selves to some of the most essen­tial ideas. We would be glad to hear from any­one with fur­ther inter­est so that we can explain the thoughts on a per­son­al basis and in greater depth that we can only touch on here.

2 A Life of Following Jesus

Jesus called peo­ple in var­i­ous sit­u­a­tions of life to fol­low him. We know about Peter, for exam­ple, that he was mar­ried (Mark 1:29–31). Oth­ers were still young and there­fore sin­gle when they were called by Jesus, as we can sup­pose in the case of the apos­tle John.

Quite inde­pen­dent­ly of what per­son­al sit­u­a­tion these indi­vid­u­als were in, Jesus placed the same call on their lives:

Now great crowds accom­pa­nied him, and he turned and said to them, “If any­one comes to me and does not hate¹ his own father and moth­er and wife and chil­dren and broth­ers and sis­ters, yes, and even his own life, he can­not be my dis­ci­ple. Who­ev­er does not bear his own cross and come after me can­not be my dis­ci­ple. …So there­fore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has can­not be my dis­ci­ple.” (Luke 14:25–27,33)

Luke places these words direct­ly after the para­ble of the great ban­quet:

But he said to him, “A man once gave a great ban­quet and invit­ed many. And at the time for the ban­quet he sent his ser­vant to say to those who had been invit­ed, ‘Come, for every­thing is now ready.’ But they all alike began to make excus­es. The first said to him, ‘I have bought a field, and I must go out and see it. Please have me excused.’ And anoth­er said, ‘I have bought five yoke of oxen, and I go to exam­ine them. Please have me excused.’ And anoth­er said, ‘I have mar­ried a wife, and there­fore I can­not come.’ So the ser­vant came and report­ed these things to his mas­ter. Then the mas­ter of the house became angry and said to his ser­vant, ‘Go out quick­ly to the streets and lanes of the city, and bring in the poor and crip­pled and blind and lame.’ And the ser­vant said, ‘Sir, what you com­mand­ed has been done, and still there is room.’ And the mas­ter said to the ser­vant, ‘Go out to the high­ways and hedges and com­pel peo­ple to come in, that my house may be filled. For I tell you, none of those men who were invit­ed shall taste my ban­quet.’” (Luke 14:16–24)

Jesus cites var­i­ous instances in which peo­ple were not ready to respond to God’s invi­ta­tion. The mar­riage part­ner­ship also finds a men­tion here. Jesus shows that even mar­riage and fam­i­ly must be sub­mit­ted to the call to dis­ci­ple­ship.

The apos­tles accom­pa­nied Jesus for the dura­tion of his pub­lic min­istry. From the very begin­ning, fol­low­ing their master’s exam­ple, they learned to put their pri­vate life behind the ser­vice for the king­dom of God. With­out this readi­ness they would not have been wor­thy of fol­low­ing Jesus. We can learn what the right pri­or­i­ties are from them, name­ly, that God, and things relat­ing to the king­dom of God—things that have eter­nal value—are what are most impor­tant. Even if oth­er things are good in them­selves, they are not what mat­ters most in life, and should there­fore take sec­ond place, because they do not last for­ev­er.

This is also vis­i­ble from a dis­cus­sion between Jesus and some Sad­ducees:

The same day Sad­ducees came to him, who say that there is no res­ur­rec­tion, and they asked him a ques­tion, say­ing, “Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man dies hav­ing no chil­dren, his broth­er must mar­ry the wid­ow and raise up chil­dren for his broth­er.’ Now there were sev­en broth­ers among us. The first mar­ried and died, and hav­ing no chil­dren left his wife to his broth­er. So too the sec­ond and third, down to the sev­enth. After them all, the woman died. In the res­ur­rec­tion, there­fore, of the sev­en, whose wife will she be? For they all had her.” But Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know nei­ther the Scrip­tures nor the pow­er of God. For in the res­ur­rec­tion they nei­ther mar­ry nor are giv­en in mar­riage, but are like angels in heav­en. And as for the res­ur­rec­tion of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: ‘I am the God of Abra­ham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the liv­ing.” (Matthew 22:23–32)

Obvi­ous­ly there will be no espe­cial rela­tion­ship between mar­riage part­ners in heav­en; oth­er­wise Jesus would have had to admit to the Sad­ducees that they were right.

Giv­en that mar­riage is an insti­tu­tion just for this world, we must not seek our ful­fil­ment in life in it. There is a much high­er aim—the eter­nal fel­low­ship with God. There, the mar­riage rela­tion­ship will no longer play a role. The love for God fills the rela­tion­ships one has in eter­ni­ty with the same love for each per­son. It is pos­si­ble to reach this aim only when one loves God more than every­thing else, and noth­ing and no-one can keep me from fol­low­ing Jesus and obey­ing his com­mand­ments.

You can find more detailed expla­na­tions about this point in the arti­cles “Repen­tance” and “What Does It Mean to Be a Chris­t­ian?”.

3 “It Is Not Good That the Man Should Be Alone…”: Thoughts Concerning Marriage and Sexuality

In the cre­ation sto­ry we read:

Then the LORD God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him.” …So the LORD God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh. And the rib that the LORD God had tak­en from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. Then the man said, “This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called Woman, because she was tak­en out of Man.”

There­fore a man shall leave his father and his moth­er and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh. And the man and his wife were both naked and were not ashamed. (Gen­e­sis 2:18,21–25)

God made woman as a helper for man. Both should give mutu­al sup­port to one anoth­er and com­ple­ment one anoth­er in all areas of life. When they mar­ry, they become “one flesh”, which means that a union is cre­at­ed that before God, is indis­sol­u­ble in this world. They have deeply entrust­ed them­selves to one anoth­er, which means that they have oblig­ed them­selves to mutu­al faith­ful­ness.

The trust that two peo­ple give each oth­er in the act of mar­ry­ing, is con­nect­ed with a seri­ous respon­si­bil­i­ty, that is, the par­tak­ing in the act of cre­ation through beget­ting off­spring, and the edu­ca­tion of chil­dren to love God and live in awe of him and his com­mands.

“One flesh” can­not be sep­a­rat­ed. Despite the fact that there are exam­ples in the Old Tes­ta­ment for polygamy, the expres­sion “one flesh” nev­er­the­less shows that in these cas­es, they had depart­ed from the orig­i­nal plan of God, and that monogamy is the will of God. Man can­not leave his moth­er and father and be unit­ed with his wife more than once. Mar­riage part­ners should be faith­ful to one anoth­er, until death parts them.

Even if there are sit­u­a­tions in which a sep­a­ra­tion of mar­riage part­ners can­not be avoid­ed, this does not mean that their being “one flesh” is annulled and that a new mar­riage is pos­si­ble. It is only pos­si­ble to remar­ry if the mar­riage part­ner dies.

At this point we will not deal with this issue in greater detail. You can find a sep­a­rate arti­cle on our web­site about “Divorce and Remar­riage”.

Fur­ther to this, we read in the sto­ry of the fall of man:

So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate, and she also gave some to her hus­band who was with her, and he ate. Then the eyes of both were opened, and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves togeth­er and made them­selves loin­cloths. …But the LORD God called to the man and said to him, “Where are you?” And he said, “I heard the sound of you in the gar­den, and I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.” He said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eat­en of the tree of which I com­mand­ed you not to eat?” The man said, “The woman whom you gave to be with me, she gave me fruit of the tree, and I ate.” …To the woman he (God) said, “I will sure­ly mul­ti­ply your pain in child­bear­ing; in pain you shall bring forth chil­dren. Your desire shall be for your hus­band, and he shall rule over you.” (Gen­e­sis 3:6–7,9–12,16)

Through the fall, many things in this world took a change for the worse. Man turned his back on God. He gave up the lov­ing, trust­ing rela­tion­ship with his creator—a deci­sion which brought with it a fun­da­men­tal change for the rela­tion­ship of the sex­es. We read that the eyes of Adam and his wife were opened and that they real­ized that they were naked. Pre­vi­ous­ly, they had not been ashamed in each other’s pres­ence. Now they sought to hide their naked­ness. The pure, nat­ur­al and undis­turbed rela­tion­ship that God had intend­ed for man and wife was destroyed.

The wife then began to seek her secu­ri­ty in her hus­band, and to depend on him, because she had lost the refuge and sense of safe­ty that she had found in God. Like­wise man, hav­ing reject­ed God as his mas­ter and head, changed his atti­tude towards the woman, from that of a car­ing, broth­er­ly pro­tec­tor to a ruler.

In the world around us we see that the realm of the rela­tion­ships between the sex­es is laden with poten­tial for sins and temp­ta­tions. The area of sex­u­al­i­ty often brings suf­fer­ing, degra­da­tion and divi­sion into the lives of peo­ple. Although it is well known that such sins often occured through­out the his­to­ry of man, at no time did the abuse of sex­u­al­i­ty reach the extent it has today. Just one exam­ple: sta­tis­ti­cal­ly, more than one third of the total con­tent on the Inter­net is porno­graph­ic and every 4th search per­formed using Google is a search for porno­graph­ic web­sites²…and what can be found there is unimag­in­ably detestable.

How cor­rupt­ed must the char­ac­ter of a per­son be, that he finds plea­sure in such mate­r­i­al rather than find­ing it sick­en­ing and turn­ing away in dis­gust? To what extent must peo­ple have lost their sen­si­tiv­i­ty for the fact that these things have noth­ing to do with love, but are rather an expres­sion of the deep­est degra­da­tion of human dig­ni­ty?

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the major­i­ty of young peo­ple today step into such sins very ear­ly on, and soon become enslaved by them. This is accom­pa­nied by a dead­en­ing of their con­science and los­ing respect for the oppo­site sex. It destroys their sense for faith­ful­ness and the abil­i­ty to love pure­ly and selflessly—a fact that is tes­ti­fied to by chang­ing part­ners, divorces and “patch­work” families—which are a part of every­day life in our soci­ety. When some­one abus­es sex­u­al­i­ty for the grat­i­fi­ca­tion of their own desires, or they use their part­ner as an object for their own sat­is­fac­tion, they are gov­erned by an ugly ego­tism that has par­tic­u­lar­ly severe con­se­quences for their char­ac­ter and conscience—a self­ish­ness which, because it can nev­er give a per­son what he is seek­ing, devel­ops into such per­verse forms as sex­u­al vio­lence with­in or out­side of the mar­riage, pros­ti­tu­tion, pae­dophil­ia.

The prac­tice of homo­sex­u­al­i­ty, that is, of same-sex rela­tion­ships, also belongs to the sphere of the abuse of sex­u­al­i­ty. Sex­u­al dri­ve is giv­en to humans in order to pro­cre­ate and main­tain the human race. This is not pos­si­ble in a homo­sex­u­al rela­tion­ship, and the sat­is­fac­tion of the desires is there­fore the cen­tral focus of such a rela­tion­ship. Scrip­ture con­demns such prac­tices as the result of man’s turn­ing away from his cre­ator, togeth­er with the arro­gance and con­ceit that fol­low such a deci­sion:

For the wrath of God is revealed from heav­en against all ungod­li­ness and unright­eous­ness of men, who by their unright­eous­ness sup­press the truth. For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invis­i­ble attrib­ut­es, name­ly, his eter­nal pow­er and divine nature, have been clear­ly per­ceived, ever since the cre­ation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are with­out excuse. For although they knew God, they did not hon­our him as God or give thanks to him, but they became futile in their think­ing, and their fool­ish hearts were dark­ened. Claim­ing to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glo­ry of the immor­tal God for images resem­bling mor­tal man and birds and ani­mals and creep­ing things. There­fore God gave them up in the lusts of their hearts to impu­ri­ty, to the dis­hon­our­ing of their bod­ies among them­selves, because they exchanged the truth about God for a lie and wor­shipped and served the crea­ture rather than the Cre­ator, who is blessed for ever! Amen. For this rea­son God gave them up to dis­hon­ourable pas­sions. For their women exchanged nat­ur­al rela­tions for those that are con­trary to nature; and the men like­wise gave up nat­ur­al rela­tions with women and were con­sumed with pas­sion for one anoth­er, men com­mit­ting shame­less acts with men and receiv­ing in them­selves the due penal­ty for their error. (Romans 1:18–27)

A per­son with an uncor­rupt­ed mind guards a deep sense of shame in them­selves against using sex­u­al­i­ty as an end in itself and from divorc­ing it from life­long faith­ful­ness, that is from the bond of mar­riage, which grants the sex­u­al union its prop­er dig­ni­ty and pro­tec­tion.

Young girls and women who make a degrad­ing offer­ing of them­selves to men in the name of “free love” destroy the spir­it of moth­er­li­ness with­in them. Among oth­er indi­ca­tors, this fact is most vis­i­ble in the mil­lions³ of women who kill their defence­less chil­dren before they ever see the light of day—a crime of insuf­fer­able mag­ni­tude. This shows the destruc­tive char­ac­ter of this ego­tism espe­cial­ly clear­ly. A fur­ther indi­ca­tor of the hos­til­i­ty towards chil­dren can be seen in the var­i­ous meth­ods of arti­fi­cial con­tra­cep­tion. Many peo­ple are per­haps unaware that the pill has severe health risks for women. The most seri­ous moral prob­lem with the pill, how­ev­er, is that it is abortive. It does not only pre­vent fer­til­i­sa­tion of the egg. Should the egg have been fer­tilised, the pill also pre­vents the embryo—that is, the per­son who just begun life—from find­ing its first essen­tial har­bour in the womb, and it dies.

Pop­u­la­tion explo­sion is an argu­ment often raised in answer to crit­i­cism of abor­tion and arti­fi­cial meth­ods of con­tra­cep­tion. From a Chris­t­ian per­spec­tive, we can­not accept this argu­ment, espe­cial­ly in the west­ern world, where many abor­tions are per­formed despite low birth rates.

The real cause for mankind’s prob­lem is that the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple don’t ask our cre­ator how he intend­ed us to lead life here on earth. Many, who would have the pos­si­bil­i­ty to make a change to this world, are led instead by an addic­tion to their own advan­tage. They live with­out thought or con­science and irre­spon­si­bly with regard to the needs of oth­ers. The result­ing social injus­tice and irre­spon­si­ble use of sex­u­al­i­ty can­not and must not be answered with inhu­man means or means hos­tile to life. To do so would mean heap­ing one injus­tice on anoth­er.

The only real solu­tion is to return to the good com­mands of God, as we know them from the Bible—selfless love for one’s neigh­bour that seeks the best for every­one rather than per­son­al advan­tage.

We are well aware that most peo­ple are not ready to live this love, and that we can there­fore not expect any glob­al changes. Nev­er­the­less, for those who want to live with a good con­science before man and God, there is no oth­er way. Through­out the his­to­ry of man, it has unfor­tu­nate­ly gen­er­al­ly been the case that the mass­es do not ask what the truth is and what is real­ly good. In this impor­tant ques­tion, then, we must not let our­selves be influ­enced by the views of the major­i­ty.

The self­less­ness of love and giv­ing of one­self with­in the ordi­nances and bound­aries of a life­long covenant of mar­riage is the only thing that can allow the rela­tion­ship between hus­band and wife to flour­ish. It is God him­self who teach­es us this love. For this rea­son, the mar­riage part­ners should not be ori­en­tat­ed toward one anoth­er, but togeth­er, and indi­vid­u­al­ly, ori­en­tat­ed towards God. Who­ev­er expects ful­fil­ment from their mar­riage part­ner, places an unbear­able bur­den on them. Many rela­tion­ships fall apart under the bur­den of such false expec­ta­tions that God alone can ful­fil. It is HE alone, who should be most impor­tant in a person’s life and the aim towards which he is ori­en­tat­ed. A per­son is only then able to give them­selves with­out self­ish motives if they live out of the rela­tion­ship with God. A mar­riage gov­erned by this self­less love has nei­ther the part­ner, nor sex­u­al­i­ty as its focus. It will be char­ac­ter­ized by an earnest sense for the puri­ty and holi­ness that is willed by God, and which forms the foun­da­tion for the rela­tion­ship between man and wife, based in the aware­ness of the momen­tous respon­si­bil­i­ty con­nect­ed with the sex­u­al union, as par­tak­ers in God’s cre­ation.

That is why God gave man very clear com­mands espe­cial­ly for this area—commands that pre­cious few peo­ple even think about today: ONE man and ONE woman belong togeth­er until death. Sex­u­al­i­ty belongs with­in mar­riage, and ONLY there, and is con­nect­ed with the open­ness for chil­dren, as and when God grants them. For us as Chris­tians, absti­nence is the only pos­si­ble means of con­tra­cep­tion if there are rea­sons to believe that this be God’s will. The “nat­ur­al method” can also be con­sid­ered moral­ly respon­si­ble. It is only when these ordi­nances are rec­og­nized and held holy, that the mar­riage bond can be giv­en the val­ue that it deserves in God’s eyes.

An addi­tion­al thought con­cern­ing unmar­ried part­ner­ships: The miss­ing mar­riage cer­tifi­cate is not a licence to change part­ners at will. When a man and a woman decide to live togeth­er and prac­ti­cal­ly con­sum­mate the mar­riage, they are bound to one anoth­er for the rest of their lives, as if they had mar­ried. Such “free” rela­tion­ships are nev­er­the­less not legit­i­mate mar­riages, because the pub­lic con­fes­sion of com­mit­ment to the part­ner is miss­ing (which in our soci­ety con­sists of sign­ing the mar­riage cer­tifi­cate at the mar­riage reg­istry office).

4 On the Question of Purity

…there is a sep­a­rate top­ic on this web­site. Here we would like to add some thoughts espe­cial­ly con­cern­ing the issue of puri­ty with­in mar­riage.

Some peo­ple believe that peo­ple with prob­lems con­cern­ing sex­u­al puri­ty can solve them by get­ting mar­ried. 1 Corinthi­ans 7:8–9 is some­times used for this:

I say there­fore to the unmar­ried and wid­ows: It is good for them if they remain even as I. But if they can­not con­tain them­selves, let them mar­ry; for it is bet­ter to mar­ry than to burn. (King James Ver­sion KJ21)

The text in the New Inter­na­tion­al Ver­sion and Eng­lish Stan­dard Ver­sion is par­tic­u­lar­ly mis­lead­ing: “For it is bet­ter to mar­ry than to burn with pas­sion.”

It is degrad­ing for mar­riage to be con­sid­ered as the solu­tion for some­one not being able to con­trol their sex­u­al dri­ve. Such con­sid­er­a­tions reveal a low moral stan­dard that Paul would cer­tain­ly not sup­port. He often speaks against sex­u­al sins, and that the spir­it deter­mines the life of a Chris­t­ian and not the flesh (i.e. Gala­tians 5:16). The deep­er the wish and decid­ed­ness of a Chris­t­ian to serve God and love fel­low believ­ers is, the less space there will be for flesh­ly desires. How could Paul give such advice, to more or less legit­imize the liv­ing out of untamed sex­u­al desires in a mar­riage?

In 1 Corinthi­ans 6:13,17–20 he writes:

“Food is meant for the stom­ach and the stom­ach for food”—and God will destroy both one and the oth­er. The body is not meant for sex­u­al immoral­i­ty, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body. …But he who is joined to the Lord becomes one spir­it with him. Flee from sex­u­al immoral­i­ty. Every oth­er sin a per­son com­mits is out­side the body, but the sex­u­al­ly immoral per­son sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a tem­ple of the Holy Spir­it with­in you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glo­ri­fy God in your body. ”

4.1 How Should We Understand “to Burn” in 1 Corinthians 7:9?

Paul can only have seen mar­riage as pos­si­ble where the rea­sons and motives for it are good in God’s eyes. He must have thought of such believ­ers who inward­ly had deeply iden­ti­fied them­selves with mar­ried life with a spe­cif­ic per­son, and were “inflamed” with the wish to give fatherly/motherly care to a fam­i­ly, and who saw their respon­si­bil­i­ty in edu­cat­ing chil­dren in the ways of God and in giv­ing them­selves to their mar­riage part­ner in pure love, as a God-willed sup­port­er and helper.⁴

It is good to remem­ber the stan­dard of Jesus regard­ing puri­ty. In Matthew 5:27–28 he says:

You have heard that it was said, “You shall not com­mit adul­tery.” But I say to you that every­one who looks at a woman with lust­ful intent has already com­mit­ted adul­tery with her in his heart.

Sin begins in the heart, in thoughts and wish­es. That is where the purifi­ca­tion must take place. In the fol­low­ing vers­es, Jesus shows the path to this aim:

If your right eye caus­es you to sin, tear it out and throw it away. For it is bet­ter that you lose one of your mem­bers than that your whole body be thrown into hell. And if your right hand caus­es you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. For it is bet­ter that you lose one of your mem­bers than that your whole body go into hell. (Matthew 5:29–30)

Who­ev­er is clear­ly decid­ed to deny sin any space in their thoughts, and to sep­a­rate from every­thing that can tempt them to sin, will be giv­en free­dom by Jesus from all impu­ri­ty.

Con­cern­ing the mar­riage rela­tion­ship, Paul writes in 1 Corinthi­ans 7:1–6:

Now con­cern­ing the mat­ters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sex­u­al rela­tions with a woman.“⁵ But because of the temp­ta­tion to sex­u­al immoral­i­ty, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own hus­band. The hus­band should give to his wife her con­ju­gal rights, and like­wise the wife to her hus­band. For the wife does not have author­i­ty over her own body, but the hus­band does. Like­wise the hus­band does not have author­i­ty over his own body, but the wife does. Do not deprive one anoth­er, except per­haps by agree­ment for a lim­it­ed time, that you may devote your­selves to prayer; but then come togeth­er again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-con­trol. Now as a con­ces­sion, not a com­mand, I say this.

Here Paul answers a ques­tion made to him. Regard­ing its con­tent we are not exact­ly informed. In vers­es 2–6 he speaks about the mar­ried Chris­tians. Although he advis­es that it is good for a man not to touch a woman, he tells those who are mar­ried not to deprive each oth­er. He empha­sizes that they no longer belong only to them­selves, but also to their mar­riage part­ner. For this rea­son, it would not be in accor­dance with love for one part­ner to deprive the oth­er of mar­i­tal rela­tions. Paul sees the dan­ger of temp­ta­tions for the part­ner that does not agree ful­ly, from the heart, with renounc­ing the sex­u­al rela­tion­ship. He warns them of this.

He says how­ev­er, that it is of ben­e­fit to the mar­riage rela­tion­ship when both part­ners mutu­al­ly decide to renounce the sex­u­al rela­tion­ship for a time, in order to take time for prayer and direct­ing their atten­tion towards God, and in doing so, to main­tain the right pri­or­i­ties.

In 1 Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 4:3–5 we read:

For this is the will of God, your sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion; that is, that you abstain from sex­u­al immoral­i­ty; that each of you know how to pos­sess his own ves­sel in sanc­ti­fi­ca­tion and hon­or, not in lust­ful pas­sion, like the Gen­tiles who do not know God; (NASB)

The word “ves­sel” stands for a man’s wife.⁶ The man is to behave in a holy and hon­ourable way with his wife, in con­trast to how it is gen­er­al­ly among unbe­liev­ers. This clear warn­ing shows that mar­riage does not serve in itself as a pro­tec­tion from sex­u­al sins. Also here, where sex­u­al­i­ty is lived out, the chal­lenge to give the desires the cor­rect lim­its is great, and not to allow one­self to be led by them.

Peter writes about this mat­ter:

Like­wise, hus­bands, live with your wives in an under­stand­ing way, show­ing hon­our to the woman as the weak­er ves­sel, since they are heirs with you of the grace of life, so that your prayers may not be hin­dered. (1 Peter 3:7)

Here too, the mar­ried men are called to be con­sid­er­ate and deal in an hon­ourable way with their wives. If they do not behave decent­ly with their wives, their abil­i­ty to turn to God will be dis­turbed.

We find a fur­ther verse in Hebrews 13:4:

Let mar­riage be held in hon­our among all, and let the mar­riage bed be unde­filed, for God will judge the sex­u­al­ly immoral and adul­ter­ous.

Striv­ing for puri­ty must be a fun­da­men­tal duty of every Chris­t­ian, regard­less of whether they are mar­ried or not.

For God has not called us for impu­ri­ty, but in holi­ness. There­fore who­ev­er dis­re­gards this, dis­re­gards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spir­it to you. (1 Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 4:7–8)

5 On Remaining Unmarried

By reject­ing divorce and remar­riage, and tes­ti­fy­ing to one life-long mar­riage as the orig­i­nal plan of God, Jesus made clear what val­ue and dig­ni­ty mar­riage has.

How­ev­er, he shows his dis­ci­ples anoth­er way that goes beyond this—a way that he him­self went: to renounce mar­riage for the sake of the king­dom of heav­en, and to find ful­fil­ment in God alone and in ser­vice for him.

The dis­ci­ples said to him, “If such is the case of a man with his wife, it is bet­ter not to mar­ry.” But he said to them, “Not every­one can receive this say­ing, but only those to whom it is giv­en. For there are eunuchs who have been so from birth, and there are eunuchs who have been made eunuchs by men, and there are eunuchs who have made them­selves eunuchs for the sake of the king­dom of heav­en. Let the one who is able to receive this receive it.” (Matthew 19:10–12)

To become a eunuch for the sake of God’s king­dom means to freely decide to renounce mar­riage. “Not every­one can receive this say­ing”: For peo­ple of that time and indeed of today, who do not know the pow­er of God, and whose way of think­ing is direct­ed towards mate­r­i­al life, the thought of mak­ing such a sac­ri­fice is incon­ceiv­able. Who­ev­er turns their gaze towards eter­ni­ty, how­ev­er, and, with this per­spec­tive, to how lost this world is, under­stand­ing will be “giv­en” that it is bet­ter to be free for ser­vice in God’s king­dom.

Jesus encour­ages who­ev­er has this pos­si­bil­i­ty to take it.

When Jesus gave pri­or­i­ty to remain­ing unmar­ried for the sake God’s king­dom, he did not do it out of dis­re­gard for mar­riage, such as was the case of Gnos­tics:

Now the Spir­it express­ly says that in lat­er times some will depart from the faith by devot­ing them­selves to deceit­ful spir­its and teach­ings of demons, through the insin­cer­i­ty of liars whose con­sciences are seared, who for­bid mar­riage and require absti­nence from foods that God cre­at­ed to be received with thanks­giv­ing by those who believe and know the truth. (1 Tim­o­thy 4:1–3)

The ide­ol­o­gy of the Gnos­tics was char­ac­ter­ized by hos­til­i­ty towards the body and rejec­tion of the mate­r­i­al world as bad in itself. This led some Gnos­tic move­ments to prac­tise strict asceti­cism and for­bid­ding mar­riage, for exam­ple, in order that, accord­ing to their way of think­ing, no fur­ther souls were locked up in the body—that is, in the prison of the mate­r­i­al world.

When set against this back­drop, Paul’s words in 1 Tim­o­thy 2:15 become more under­stand­able: “Yet she (the woman) will be saved through child­bear­ing⁷—if they con­tin­ue in faith and love and holi­ness, with self-con­trol.” When a mar­ried woman accept­ed the role of wife and moth­er and took it seri­ous­ly and bore chil­dren, she showed by this her rejec­tion of Gno­sis as a false teaching—a step which was as essen­tial for her sal­va­tion as faith, love, holi­ness and pro­pri­ety.

When Chris­tians decide to remain celi­bate, then they do it out of love for God and thank­ful­ness for the sal­va­tion they received—choosing what is bet­ter in com­par­i­son to what is good.

God said to the first man, “Be fruit­ful and mul­ti­ply.” In our world today, there are now very many peo­ple who do not know God, and who have lost their way in false philoso­phies and reli­gious views. By con­trast, there are few peo­ple who are ready to fol­low Jesus with their whole heart, and to bring the light of the gospel to the world.

Paul’s love for the lost moti­vat­ed him to give his life untir­ing­ly for their sal­va­tion. This love is what moti­vat­ed many Chris­tians after him, includ­ing us, to be as free as pos­si­ble from such mate­r­i­al oblig­a­tions and cares as are inher­ent in mar­riage, in order to spir­i­tu­al­ly serve as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble.

In 1 Corinthi­ans chap­ter 7, Paul repeats the prin­ci­ple three times, that each should remain in the sit­u­a­tion he was in when he was called (see vers­es 17, 20, 24). He wants to encour­age the believ­ers to direct their atten­tion whol­ly to the world to come, which is imper­ish­able.

For those who were sin­gle when they repent­ed, it nor­mal­ly meant remain­ing sin­gle:

Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife. (1 Corinthi­ans 7:27)

By this encour­age­ment Paul did not want to exclude the pos­si­bil­i­ty of get­ting mar­ried, but such cas­es should be sin­cere­ly test­ed before God. Such is the case Paul treats in vers­es 36–38:

If any­one thinks that he is not behav­ing prop­er­ly towards his betrothed, if his pas­sions are strong, and it has to be, let him do as he wish­es: let them marry—it is no sin.

The expres­sion “his betrothed⁸” shows that it refers to two peo­ple who were promised to one anoth­er before they became Chris­tians, and who had already pre­pared them­selves for mar­ried life togeth­er. Paul’s opin­ion that they can mar­ry, is to be under­stood in the sense of a con­ces­sion, as he fur­ther states:

But who­ev­er is firm­ly estab­lished in his heart, being under no neces­si­ty but hav­ing his desire under con­trol, and has deter­mined this in his heart, to keep her as his betrothed, he will do well. So then he who mar­ries his betrothed does well, and he who refrains from mar­riage will do even bet­ter.

A Chris­t­ian who is mar­ried can serve in many ways, as is tes­ti­fied to in the New Tes­ta­ment, but due to the com­mit­ments that are nat­u­ral­ly con­nect­ed with the tasks and respon­si­bil­i­ties of fam­i­ly life, he is divid­ed (see vers­es 33–34). That is what Paul was refer­ring to when he speaks of “world­ly trou­bles” (lit­er­al­ly: trou­ble in the flesh) in verse 28. It is a good and impor­tant task to care for chil­dren and edu­cate them, but it is nev­er­the­less con­nect­ed with prob­lems, dif­fi­cul­ties and wor­ries that Paul wants to spare them, in view of what it means for the many spir­i­tu­al tasks.

It is pos­si­ble that some Chris­tians in Corinth want­ed to dis­con­tin­ue their exist­ing mar­riage part­ner­ship in order to be freer for spir­i­tu­al tasks. Paul coun­ters this by stat­ing that, although he would wish that every­one were unmar­ried as he is, the broth­er who is mar­ried is also blessed with gifts from God with which he can serve (verse 7), and should not seek to sep­a­rate from his part­ner (verse 27).

On the oth­er hand, he urges mar­ried Chris­tians to be con­scious of the pass­ing nature of mar­riage, and to put mar­ried life behind the things which are con­nect­ed with the imper­ish­able world.

This is what I mean, broth­ers: the appoint­ed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none,…and those who deal with the world as though they had no deal­ings with it. For the present form of this world is pass­ing away. (1 Corinthi­ans 7:29,31)

Some hold the opin­ion that Paul appealed to the Chris­tians to remain celi­bate because he thought that the end of the world was near. Vers­es 26 and 29 are referred to:

I think that in view of the present dis­tress it is good for a per­son to remain as he is…. This is what I mean, broth­ers: the appoint­ed time has grown very short. From now on, let those who have wives live as though they had none….

What Paul writes to the Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans about this mat­ter, excludes this inter­pre­ta­tion:

Now con­cern­ing the com­ing of our Lord Jesus Christ and our being gath­ered togeth­er to him, we ask you, broth­ers, not to be quick­ly shak­en in mind or alarmed, either by a spir­it or a spo­ken word, or a let­ter seem­ing to be from us, to the effect that the day of the Lord has come.⁹ Let no one deceive you in any way. (2 Thes­sa­lo­ni­ans 2:1–3a)

Paul did not expect the immi­nent return of Jesus. The “present dis­tress” he writes about much rather refers to the spir­i­tu­al need that rules the world. It is there­fore, a “need of man­pow­er”, for the labour­ers are few. Jesus was untir­ing in his ded­i­ca­tion for people’s eter­nal lives. He saw that they were like sheep with­out a shep­herd. Many peo­ple wan­der aim­less­ly through life, not know­ing the way to true life. We can help such peo­ple in need, and for this rea­son, it is good to be as free and avail­able as pos­si­ble. That is why Paul encour­ages unmar­ried broth­ers and sis­ters to remain as they are.

Paul’s instruc­tions to Tim­o­thy in 1 Tim­o­thy 5:11–15, that young wid­ows should mar­ry, is by no means a con­tra­dic­tion to 1 Corinthi­ans 7. Here too, he does not give mar­riage pri­or­i­ty over remain­ing sin­gle, but rec­om­mends it in con­trast to the dubi­ous and harm­ful activ­i­ties men­tioned in verse 13. We can­not assume that all young wid­ows were the same (there will not have been very many of them either), but obvi­ous­ly, there were cas­es in which the care of their needs by the Church led to a dis­or­der­ly way of life, even to the point of their aban­don­ing Christ. It is in this con­text that Paul writes that it is bet­ter for them to mar­ry again, and to devote them­selves to the oblig­a­tions of house­wife and moth­er, in keep­ing with the orig­i­nal deci­sion they made for their life.

6 Testimonies from Early Christian Writings

In ear­ly Chris­t­ian lit­er­a­ture we find indi­ca­tions that a great num­ber of Chris­tians served God by remain­ing unmar­ried.

Justin Apol­o­gy I, 15:7: “…And many, both men and women, who have been Christ’s dis­ci­ples from child­hood, remain pure at the age of six­ty or sev­en­ty years; and I boast that I could pro­duce such from every race of men. For what shall I say, too, of the count­less mul­ti­tude of those who have reformed intem­per­ate habits, and learned these things?”

Athenago­ras, A Plea for the Chris­tians 33: Nay, you would find many among us, both men and women, grow­ing old unmar­ried, in hope of liv­ing in clos­er com­mu­nion with God. But if the remain­ing in vir­gin­i­ty and in the state of an eunuch brings near­er to God, while the indul­gence of car­nal thought and desire leads away from Him, in those cas­es in which we shun the thoughts, much more do we reject the deeds. For we bestow our atten­tion; not on the study of words, but on the exhi­bi­tion and teach­ing of actions,—that a per­son should either remain as he was born, or be con­tent with one mar­riage; for a sec­ond mar­riage is only a spe­cious adul­tery. “For whoso­ev­er puts away his wife”, says He, “and mar­ries anoth­er, com­mits adul­tery”; not per­mit­ting a man to send her away whose vir­gin­i­ty he has brought to an end, nor to mar­ry again. For he who deprives him­self of his first wife, even though she be dead, is a cloaked adul­ter­er, resist­ing the hand of God, because in the begin­ning God made one man and one woman, and dis­solv­ing the strictest union of flesh with flesh, formed for the inter­course of the race.

Ter­tul­lian, Against Mar­cion I, 29:1–4: “…Let us see, then, whether it be a just one: not as if we aimed at destroy­ing the hap­pi­ness of sanc­ti­ty, as do cer­tain Nico­lai­tans in their main­te­nance of lust and lux­u­ry, but as those who have come to the knowl­edge of sanc­ti­ty, and pur­sue it and pre­fer it, with­out detri­ment, how­ev­er, to mar­riage; not as if we super­seded a bad thing by a good, but only a good thing by a bet­ter. For we do not reject mar­riage, but sim­ply refrain from it. Nor do we pre­scribe sanc­ti­ty as the rule, but only rec­om­mend it, observ­ing it as a good, yea, even the bet­ter state, if each man uses it care­ful­ly accord­ing to his abil­i­ty; but at the same time earnest­ly vin­di­cat­ing mar­riage, when­ev­er hos­tile attacks are made against it is a pol­lut­ed thing, to the dis­par­age­ment of the Cre­ator. For He bestowed His bless­ing on mat­ri­mo­ny also, as on an hon­ourable estate, for the increase of the human race; as He did indeed on the whole of His cre­ation, for whole­some and good uses.”

Min­u­cius Felix, Octavius 31:5: “…But we main­tain our mod­esty not in appear­ance, but in our heart we glad­ly abide by the bond of a sin­gle mar­riage; in the desire of pro­cre­at­ing, we know either one wife, or none at all. We prac­tise shar­ing in ban­quets, which are not only mod­est, but also sober: for we do not indulge in enter­tain­ments nor pro­long our feasts with wine; but we tem­per our joy­ous­ness with grav­i­ty, with chaste dis­course, and with body even more chaste (divers of us unvi­o­lat­ed) enjoy rather than make a boast of a per­pet­u­al vir­gin­i­ty of a body.”

7 On “Clerical Celibacy”

We think that it is not in accor­dance with human nature, that monas­ter­ies and con­vents are made up of sin­gle sex com­mu­ni­ties in which they attempt to curb their desires through a life strong­ly deter­mined by for­malisms.

It is also prob­lem­at­ic to demand of priests, who through their office are some­what iso­lat­ed from their parish­ioners, to live celi­bate lives, giv­en that they have had to renounce the broth­er­ly and sis­ter­ly care which Chris­tians expe­ri­ence through their fel­low­ship. This unbib­li­cal and unnat­ur­al lifestyle is the result of com­bin­ing the pur­suit of a Chris­t­ian virtue with a non-Chris­t­ian church struc­ture, and has unfor­tu­nate­ly led many cler­gy to hypocrisy and grave sins.

It must be men­tioned here, how­ev­er, that the main rea­son for for­bid­ding Roman Catholic priests to mar­ry was not an endeav­our for Chris­t­ian virtues. The intro­duc­tion of manda­to­ry celiba­cy in the 11th cen­tu­ry was much rather an instru­ment of church pol­i­tics. It was intend­ed to ensure that the church real estate remained in the hands of the Roman Catholic Church rather than being dis­trib­uted among the chil­dren of the priests. The Roman Catholic Church did not wish to relin­quish her posi­tion as the largest land own­er.

8 “For Whoever Does the Will of God, He Is My Brother and Sister and Mother”: How Brotherly Love Changes Families

And his moth­er and his broth­ers came, and stand­ing out­side they sent to him and called him. And a crowd was sit­ting around him, and they said to him, “Your moth­er and your broth­ers are out­side, seek­ing you.” And he answered them, “Who are my moth­er and my broth­ers?” And look­ing about at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my moth­er and my broth­ers! For who­ev­er does the will of God, he is my broth­er and sis­ter and moth­er.” (Mark 3:31–35)

Unfor­tu­nate­ly we find a com­mon occur­rence in our soci­ety that we can only describe as fam­i­ly ego­tism.¹⁰ Here, the “well-being” of one’s own fam­i­ly (often just the imme­di­ate fam­i­ly) takes high­est pri­or­i­ty. There is lit­tle readi­ness to open up to out­siders, because the aim is to ded­i­cate one­self to one’s clos­est rel­a­tives in order to ensure that the fam­i­ly holds togeth­er.

By con­trast, a fam­i­ly is actu­al­ly bound more strong­ly by work­ing togeth­er to share with and help those in need, inde­pen­dent­ly of how close­ly relat­ed some­one is, and of how much and how often this help is required. In addi­tion to this, fam­i­ly ego­tism has a bad effect on the devel­op­ment of chil­dren. By it, they are trained to direct them­selves toward their own needs instead of prac­tis­ing self­less love. They hard­ly learn to open them­selves for the rights of oth­ers, or to par­take in the suf­fer­ings and joys of out­siders.

We often hear from reli­gious peo­ple that it is not pos­si­ble for them to meet togeth­er with their fel­low believ­ers more often than once or twice a week because more fel­low­ship would be detri­men­tal to fam­i­ly life. By this, they do the very thing Jesus crit­i­cizes in the para­ble of the great ban­quet. Their per­son­al family/private life is giv­en pri­or­i­ty, and the eter­nal things there­by rel­e­gat­ed to sec­ond place. The sor­ry result is that “church” life today is essen­tial­ly reduced to the attend­ing of meet­ings which are sep­a­rat­ed from people’s pri­vate life.

Jesus taught us that the spir­i­tu­al con­nec­tion between those who fol­low him and do the will of God is of greater val­ue than fam­i­ly ties (see the pas­sage quot­ed above). In the reli­gious world, this fact is most­ly ignored. Even when peo­ple offi­cial­ly call one anoth­er “broth­er” and “sis­ter”, they do not put broth­er­ly love into prac­tice. Each per­son goes back to their pri­vate life after the meet­ing is over. They hard­ly know what is in each other’s hearts, what they believe, or how they use their time. Through the lack of fight for per­son­al holi­ness, the foun­da­tion is miss­ing to be able to help oth­ers in it. This indif­fer­ent and unlov­ing atti­tude is jus­ti­fied by say­ing that each per­son has to know for him­self what is right for him—no one wants to “inter­fere” in oth­er people’s lives….

In New Tes­ta­ment times it was nor­mal for Chris­tians to meet for dai­ly fel­low­ship and to share their mate­r­i­al pos­ses­sions.

And they devot­ed them­selves to the apos­tles’ teach­ing and the fel­low­ship, to the break­ing of bread and the prayers. And awe came upon every soul, and many won­ders and signs were being done through the apos­tles. And all who believed were togeth­er and had all things in com­mon. And they were sell­ing their pos­ses­sions and belong­ings and dis­trib­ut­ing the pro­ceeds to all, as any had need. And day by day, attend­ing the tem­ple togeth­er and break­ing bread in their homes, they received their food with glad and gen­er­ous hearts, prais­ing God and hav­ing favour with all the peo­ple. And the Lord added to their num­ber day by day those who were being saved. (Acts 2:42–47)

When they under­stood that Jesus gave his life for the redemp­tion of mankind, they also real­ized that shar­ing their lives in lov­ing, self­less devo­tion is the path he set us free to take.

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the broth­ers. (1 John 3:16)

Trust and trans­paren­cy can be fos­tered when we are able to see what is going on in our brother’s life and can see that he doesn’t seek his own ben­e­fit, but the will of God.

Through their dai­ly fel­low­ship the Chris­tians were able to get to know each oth­er deeply and to help one anoth­er to remain on the nar­row path by encour­ag­ing, admon­ish­ing and com­fort­ing one anoth­er. Their readi­ness to share didn’t stop there—they also shared their prop­er­ty. The peo­ple in their sur­round­ing were able to see this love as a clear sign that a dif­fer­ent Spir­it was at work, and that God’s love formed the foun­da­tion for their com­mon life.

Now the full num­ber of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one said that any of the things that belonged to him was his own, but they had every­thing in com­mon. And with great pow­er the apos­tles were giv­ing their tes­ti­mo­ny to the res­ur­rec­tion of the Lord Jesus, and great grace was upon them all. (Acts 4:32–33)

We can pre­sume that a high per­cent­age of the thou­sands of peo­ple who repent­ed at that time in Jerusalem were mar­ried. The Chris­t­ian fam­i­lies shared their lives in com­mu­ni­ty with all the oth­er believ­ers. In this way, no one had to car­ry the bur­den of his spir­i­tu­al, fam­i­ly or finan­cial prob­lems alone. Sad­ly, Jesus’ words in Matthew 18:19 are often tak­en as a kind of def­i­n­i­tion of church life. In those days no one thought that a gath­er­ing of 2 or 3 fam­i­ly mem­bers con­sti­tut­ed church life. In the New Tes­ta­ment we read of a num­ber of “house church­es” where a church gath­ered togeth­er in the house of a cer­tain believ­er or believ­ing fam­i­ly.¹¹

For a child’s devel­op­ment, grow­ing up in this kind of envi­ron­ment is a great bless­ing. From an ear­ly age they can learn not to put them­selves in the cen­tre and not to be put in the cen­tre by their par­ents or grand­par­ents. They are brought up to be sub­mis­sive, mod­est and gen­er­ous. This is the best prepa­ra­tion for them to do God’s will with a serv­ing atti­tude as they devel­op the abil­i­ty to make their own deci­sions.

A rea­son that many peo­ple in main­stream and free church­es find the thought of mak­ing a deci­sion to remain unmar­ried so alien may be the fact that broth­er­ly love, as the dis­tin­guish­ing mark of Chris­tians, is gen­er­al­ly absent there. The result is that unmar­ried peo­ple remain alone and lone­ly. “Sin­gles social events” are some­times offered as a “solu­tion”, usu­al­ly with the inten­tion that a few of the sin­gles might still man­age to find a part­ner. “Church” activ­i­ties are thus orga­nized to pro­vide a kind of dat­ing service—another proof of the world­ly char­ac­ter of these “church­es”.

We regard this as a cheap and easy way of calm­ing one’s con­science while avoid­ing the real solu­tion, name­ly to open up our lives out of love for every broth­er and sis­ter, thus return­ing to the bib­li­cal exam­ple of church life.

A Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty is guid­ed by the spir­it of Christ’s love and devo­tion. As Chris­tians we offer our­selves to serve our broth­ers and sis­ters with every­thing we have and with our whole being. In this way every­one can receive the help he needs in his walk with God. We also share the bur­den of the earth­ly wor­ries and needs com­mon­ly. Even those who do not have any believ­ing fam­i­ly mem­bers or are unmar­ried are involved in the dai­ly shar­ing and sup­port of our extend­ed fam­i­ly of faith, the church, and every­one par­tic­i­pates in mutu­al giv­ing and receiv­ing. Thus we expe­ri­ence the ful­fil­ment of Jesus’ promise to his dis­ci­ples:

And Peter said, “See, we have left our homes and fol­lowed you.” And he said to them, “Tru­ly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or wife or broth­ers or par­ents or chil­dren, for the sake of the king­dom of God, who will not receive many times more in this time, and in the age to come eter­nal life.” (Luke 18:28–30)

The pur­suit of the same broth­er­ly love for all is what dis­tin­guish­es us as broth­ers and sis­ters in faith (1 Corinthi­ans 12:25). We expe­ri­ence deep spir­i­tu­al rela­tion­ships which devel­op as a result of God’s work in and among us. Con­se­quent­ly, despite fac­ing some strug­gles, it is much eas­i­er to decide to renounce mar­riage, to remain faith­ful to this deci­sion, and thus to be able to ded­i­cate our­selves freely and unhin­dered to the min­istry for the sake of oth­er peo­ple’s eter­nal life. It strength­ens us and makes us grate­ful when we see how God trans­forms our renun­ci­a­tion into a bless­ing.

We know well from our own expe­ri­ence that this deci­sion is not an easy one, not least because of the glo­ri­fi­ca­tion of sex­u­al­i­ty which per­me­ates our soci­ety, promis­ing ulti­mate sat­is­fac­tion in a sex­u­al rela­tion­ship. Unfor­tu­nate­ly most peo­ple are exposed to this influ­ence from their child­hood and it is not easy to avoid.

This moti­vates us all the more to invite every per­son to get to know the alter­na­tive which Jesus offers us in his church. The extent to which the church dif­fers from the world, and the depth of Jesus’ con­nec­tion and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with the church is well expressed in Eph­esians 5:25–32:

Hus­bands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave him­self up for her, that he might sanc­ti­fy her, hav­ing cleansed her by the wash­ing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to him­self in splen­dour, with­out spot or wrin­kle or any such thing, that she might be holy and with­out blem­ish. …For no one ever hat­ed his own flesh, but nour­ish­es and cher­ish­es it, just as Christ does the church, because we are mem­bers of his body. “There­fore a man shall leave his father and moth­er and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.” This mys­tery is pro­found, and I am say­ing that it refers to Christ and the church.

1. The par­al­lel pas­sage in Matthew 10:37–38 explains in which way Jesus uses the word “hate”: Our clos­est rel­a­tives and even our own life must not be more pre­cious for us than he. ↩
2. Source: TopTen Reviews: Inter­net Pornog­ra­phy Sta­tis­tics. 2020.06.04. ↩
3. See: Guttmach­er Insti­tute. ↩
4. The Greek word “to burn” (pyroō) occurs more than 20 times in the Bible, but nev­er in the sense of sex­u­al pas­sion. Paul uses it fig­u­ra­tive­ly once more in 2 Corinthi­ans 11:29, where it express­es his deep sense of respon­si­bil­i­ty, his con­cern for and sym­pa­thy with his broth­ers and sis­ters in faith. ↩
5. NASB: not to touch a woman. ↩
6. Some refer it to one’s own body. We do not con­sid­er it to be so fit­ting to say that some­one should know how to pos­sess his own body. ↩
7. Dar­by: pre­served in child­bear­ing. ↩
8. lit.: vir­gin. ↩
9. KJV: is at hand. ↩
10. In his book “Lebens­führung”, writ­ten at the begin­ning of the 20th cen­tu­ry, Fr. W. Foer­ster for­mu­lat­ed the fol­low­ing thoughts on this top­ic: “Fam­i­ly life car­ries with it not only the poten­tial for great edu­ca­tion­al forces, but also great dan­gers for the inner devel­op­ment of a per­son…. Fam­i­ly life can edu­cate a per­son to devel­op a high­er sense of moral responsibility—though for peo­ple who have not set them­selves any high­er aims it fre­quent­ly becomes noth­ing oth­er than a breed­ing ground for the all-con­sum­ing ego­tism and naive boast­ing and self-mir­ror­ing in one’s own off­spring. …The idol­a­try of the self, which is at the root of the exces­sive cult of the ego, is uncon­scious­ly trans­mit­ted to one’s chil­dren, poi­son­ing their whole emo­tion­al life through smug­ness, destroy­ing the mod­esty, with­out which moral char­ac­ter and con­science can­not devel­op.” (1922, p.86). ↩
11. See Romans 16:3–6,10,11,14,15; Colos­sians 4:15, Phile­mon 2. ↩