Timothy Keller Sermons Podcast by Gospel in Life - A Theology of Singleness

Episode Date: September 27, 2023

This is the least appetizing of titles, but I want to talk to you about a theology of singleness.  I’d like to share with you the basic theological principle in the New Testament about singleness. There is a Christian biblical theology of being a single adult, which means to be an adult without a spouse or children of your own. I’d like to discuss 1) that there is a theology, 2) the uniqueness of this theology, 3) what it means when Paul says singleness is a gift, and 4) the practical implications. This talk was given by Dr. Timothy Keller at Redeemer Presbyterian Church on March 1, 2014 for the conference "S1NGLE: God’s Gifts — Our Plans". Today's podcast episode is brought to you by Gospel in Life, the site for all sermons, books, study guides and resources from Timothy Keller and Redeemer Presbyterian Church. If you've enjoyed listening to this podcast and would like to support the ongoing efforts of this ministry, you can do so by visiting https://gospelinlife.com/give and making a one-time or recurring donation.

What's the greatest enemy to any marriage? Impatience? Criticism? Boredom? Tim Keller argues that self-centeredness is the biggest problem in any marriage, and that all other problems come from that. Listen as Dr. Keller explores how the gospel frees us from selfishness to love, serve, and bear with our spouses.

After you listen, we invite you to go online to gospelandlife.com and sign up for our email updates. When you sign up, you'll receive our quarterly newsletter with articles about gospel-changed lives as well as other valuable gospel-centered resources. Subscribe today at gospelandlife.com. I have the least appetizing title. I want to talk to you about a theology of singleness.

You say, theology of singleness? It sounds sort of like, I don't know. I don't know. It sounds like popular mechanics. How do you build a single? Popular Mechanics, How Do You Build a Single? But no, I'd like to share with you the basic theological principle in the New Testament about singleness. There is a Christian theology, a biblical theology, of being a single adult, which means to be an adult without a spouse or children of your own.

You're single. There's a theology I'd like to talk to you about, first of all, that, and then secondly, the uniqueness of this theology when you look at all the other religions and cultures of the world. Number three, I'd like to say, what does that mean then when Paul says, singleness is a gift? And then lastly, I'd like to just draw out some practical implications. So the theology of singleness, the uniqueness of theology of singleness, what does it mean to say singleness is a gift? And then lastly, just some practical implications. So I don't think there's a better place to go for the New Testament theology of singleness than 1 Corinthians 7. And when I read you these two verses, you'll see right away why

these are enigmatic verses to the average reader. He says, Paul says, are you unmarried? Do not look for a wife. But if you marry, you have not sinned. but if you marry, you have not sinned. And if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. But those who marry will face many troubles in this life, and I want to spare you this. What I mean is that the time is short. Now, it sure seems enigmatic when you read that. It sure seems like Paul's had a bad day, because in Ephesians 5, he has this exalted view of marriage where he talks about marriage is a symbol and a sign of the union of Christ and his people. It's this high, exalted view of marriage. And here he says, are you unmarried? Don't look for a wife. I mean, you know, he didn't say that's okay.

You can live with that. It's a form of suffering that if you, you know, I'll use it for a while to make you a better person. But then, of course, you need to get on with your life. He doesn't say that. He says, are you unmarried? Don't look for a wife. If you do marry, you haven't sinned. But those who marry will face many troubles in this life. I want to spare you. What I mean is the time is short. First of all, it looks like he seems to have fallen off from the exalted view of marriage he has in Ephesians. And then it seems like he's basing it on the idea that Jesus is coming back anytime because it says the time is short. And of course, Jesus didn't come back right away. And so maybe that was a mistake. Now, here's the right answer.

When he says the time is short, he doesn't just mean Jesus is coming back any day, because he goes on immediately and says this, and he applies this principle to all of life, including eventually singleness and marriage. He says, from now on, those who have wives should live as though they had none. Those who mourn as if they did not, those who are happy as if they were not, those who buy as if it was not theirs to possess, those who use the things of the world as if not engrossed in them, for this world and its present form is passing away. Now, what we have here is actually what a lot of theologians would call a sophisticated kingdom theology. What Paul taught, and actually what Jesus taught, and what the Bible teaches,

is that though many people thought that when the Messiah showed up, that he would bring in the kingdom of God. And in other words, you have the old age in which there's suffering and there's death and there's brokenness and there's pain. And then the Messiah comes, it was thought, and he would bring in the kingdom, the new world. And the new world, there would be no sighing, no suffering, no death. Everything would be perfect. Instead, what happens is the Messiah doesn't come back once. It's like the old world, then Messiah, and then the new world.

He comes back twice. The first time in weakness, the second time in power. The first time to begin the kingdom, but then the second time to bring it in fullness. And what that means is right now we live in what's called the overlap of the ages. The old world is still going on. The new world is still going on. The new world has actually begun. The Spirit of God is in the world to renew people's lives in many ways, but the fact is it's still a place in which we still have the suffering and the brokenness and

all that. And so we live between the times, between the first and the second coming of the Messiah. And what Christians are supposed to do in that time, Paul actually lays out in the most practical terms. What this means is we do marry. We do buy and sell. We do have jobs. We do grieve and mourn. We do rejoice. But we always do it right now in light of the future.

And see, in light of the future, God is going to give you the ultimate wealth. So right now, whether you have money or not isn't the biggest deal. If you have it, great. But don't get too attached to it. If you don't have it, don't be too upset. It's not real wealth. You see what he's doing? What he's actually...when he...see, it sounds strange at first. He says, those who mourn as if they didn't mourn.

Okay, you can weep, but at the same time, don't overdo it, because everything is going to be made right. And you can rejoice, but at the same time, don't overdo it, because this isn't real joy. This is nothing like what you're going to get. This will never satisfy your heart. And then he applies it to marriage and singleness. And that's the reason he's saying basically this.

The ultimate family is in the future. The ultimate wedding is in the future. The wedding supper of the Lamb. All of the deepest desires you have for love, for closure, for acceptance, for unity, for security, all of that will be satisfied on that day. And no earthly family and no earthly marriage can do anything more than be penultimate. It can be a foretaste, it can be a sign, it can be great. But if you don't have a family, don't get too upset. And if you do have a family, don't be too elated and don't put too much of your hopes in it.

And once you see that, in other words, once you see the idea that everything you do here, including being single and being married, has to be constantly done in light of the future and not acting as if this life is all there is. Everything has to be done in terms of the future and to be lived in light of the future, it changes everything. But it also means it equalizes singleness and married life. That's why Paul, I mean, there's no two ways around it. When he says, are you unmarried? He doesn't say, well, that's all right, but married state is the real way in which you

live out the Christian life. He says, no. He says, also, do I want you to say, oh, you're married, don't do that. If you marry, you're not sinning. If you're not marrying, you're not in trouble. You're not a freak. It's astounding, actually. It really is pretty astounding. And so there's your theology of singleness. It's a sophisticated theology of the kingdom of God applied to singleness and marriage. Now, let's talk about how unique it is, and I mean it's unique, and you'll see it immediately. There are basically two approaches, I think, culturally to

this whole subject. In the West, we make an idol out of your individual rights and your individual happiness. And in traditional cultures, to some degree in the East, but not just in the East, And in traditional cultures, to some degree in the East, but not just in the East, Latin America and Africa too, in non-Western traditional cultures, those cultures make an idol out of the family. You're nobody until you're in a family. And in the West, so let's go back and forth here. In the West, yeah, marriage is fine as long as it meets your individual needs. Don't cut yourself off from too many options.

Never get married before you've got your career going. Why? Because absolutely, ultimately, marriage has to fulfill you. It has to be an asset in your portfolio. But what really matters is you. Self-realization is paramount. And marriage is just a means to an end. And so you better not marry anybody who's going to be too high maintenance. Of course, you've got to get somebody who's bringing assets in if you're going to do that. You know, emotional and spiritual and sexual and maybe financial. You know, it's got to be something that enhances you and gets you where you want to go in life. That's the Western idea.

The traditional idea, of course, is you're nothing until you're married. You are a freak until you're married. By the way, when I say West and East, you know that we're obviously in non-Western parts of the world, in the big cities in Asia, Latin America, and Africa. Very often the big cities are more Western. And we also know if you go away from the big cities and say in North America, it's more traditional. And it's one of the reasons why a lot of you are living in New York, because you can't go home as a 30-year-old single without almost everybody saying,

non-verbally saying, with their looks, you poor thing you poor thing so in traditional societies you really uh don't have a legacy you have your life hasn't really gotten started until you get married and in western um the western idea is that marriage is a basically a disposable asset, something that you take up if you want, if it really helps you. Now, Christianity and its approach to singleness and to marriage is absolutely astonishingly different. It's astonishingly different. It puts us completely at variance with our culture, no matter where we're from. And in some of your cases, since you're bicultural people,

it puts you at variance with both the cultures you're living in and the culture you grew up in. So for example, on the one hand, what this means is this exalted view of marriage as a place in which I give myself and I don't... I'm not, I'm supposed to be giving myself to my marriage partner to help my marriage partner grow into everything that Christ wants him or her to be. And it's supposed to be a thing of service. It's not supposed to just be a way of self-fulfillment. And on the other hand, on the other hand, the fact is that marriage can never give you all the things that you really are looking for. It's only in Jesus's arms that you'll ever find what you're really looking for in a spouse. It's only in the family of God and the church. Now, here's what's weird about the church. The church

is actually living in the overlap of the ages. Ultimately, we're not just going to be in the presence of God. We're going to be in our family, brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters. Those who are in Christ are part of a family. Now, right now, we get a foretaste of it a bit. We'll get to this in a second. But we're going to be not only seeing Jesus, we're going to be together in that wedding supper. The Lamb has a lot of people. There's a lot of guests at the wedding. Blessed are those who are guests at the wedding supper of the Lamb. And because of this, the Christian view of singleness has always been that this is a viable paradigm for adult life. And Stanley Harwas, as some of you know if you've ever heard me teach on this or if you've read Kathy and my book on marriage, Stanley Harwas at Duke University has a couple of classic essays on this subject that

you can find in the book, which you can buy easily now, called Community of Character. And in it he says this, he says, Christianity was the very first religion or worldview that held up single adulthood as a viable way of life. One clear difference between Christianity and Judaism and all other religions is the former, that's Christians, entertainment of the idea that singleness is a paradigm way of life for its followers. He points out in the essay, for example, that Tiberius at one point, you know, Tiberius Caesar, at one point made it a law that any woman who became a widow who was under a certain age had to get married again in two years. How'd you like that? Because the idea was that if you were a single

person, you were a drag on society and you were an embarrassment to yourself. There was no honor without family honor. You didn't have really individual honor. There was no legacy unless you had heirs, unless you had people who were descended from you. And it just was not considered a viable way of life. And yet when you read the New Testament, you will see that widows were not forced in any way to marry. And that's what's so radical about the places where it says the poor widows, poor Christian widows, were supported by the whole church financially in every way. Why? Because the implication is it's okay to be single. It doesn't say poor old widows, by the way. Poor widows. Women who were widowed and who therefore

did not have a good means of support, they were supported by the church. And what did that mean? It meant that it's okay to be single. And Hauerwas goes on and says it's that plus the fact that Paul and plus the fact that Jesus, Jesus himself, the perfect human being. Let me point that out. The perfect human being, the ultimate expression of perfect humanity didn't feel the need to get married in order to exhibit perfect humanity.

Which means, by the way, he also, the earthly Jesus also lived in wondrous hope and joy at the prospect of that future wedding supper of the Lamb. It was enough for him too. Now, here's what this means. Paul says some stuff in 1 Corinthians 7, which is pretty pretty even-handed about singleness in marriage. One of the things he says, which is, I think, a little easy to misunderstand, but actually, in light of what Wesley has already taught earlier, he actually is setting me up to say what I want to say right now. Paul says, one of the reasons why he's saying, look, if you want to get married, that's fine, but it's great to be unmarried. In fact, there's a lot of problems with being married I would like to spare you from. And you say, what? And then he says, well, a man who is married wants to please his wife.

A man who is single wants to please the Lord. Now, I want you to know that is a trenchant observation. And here's what I think it's got to mean. It is possible to turn a friend into an idol. It's possible to look at a friend or two and basically put them in the place of Jesus. Make their friendship the thing you're living for. Make their regard the thing that gives you your self-image. In other words, really turn a friend into a pseudo-savior. But I want you to know it's a lot harder to do that with a friend than it is with a spouse. I guess I would say that

friendship in general, we're all sinners, so we can twist anything. But in general, friendship is more, how do I say it? It's more unavoidably unselfish. Friendship more naturally becomes unselfish. But let me tell you, when you get into marriage, you want to be fulfilled. And if you are not being fulfilled, you just blow up. Marriage is really about me. Marriage is about you. Marriage is about me. I mean, it's supposed to...

What I liked about Wes's talk was he was bringing out the fact... Now, there's actually no relationship that's perfectly like that, but relationships have both service and possession as part of them. So on the one hand, a friend or a spouse belongs to you. And what that means is you're my possession, you're my wealth. You're something that fulfills me. You are a form of my wealth. I enjoy you. You help me, you build me up, but also I serve you. I'm here to serve you, to help you along, to help you become what Christ wants you to be, to not think of my own interests.

Now, I'd say the fact of the matter is that it is a lot easier in friendship in general to remember that relationship is about service. And it's a lot harder in marriage, and this is what Paul is saying, not for marriage to become possessive, absorbing, idolatrous, either way. You know, if you have a good marriage, a lot of people know this. If you have a good marriage, it's absolutely, absolutely, almost impossible not to have that spouse replace Jesus in your life. And all sorts of ways. John Newton, the great letter writer, hymn writer, John Newton has some great stuff in his letters about the fact that he had a good marriage. And as a result, he says, I just do not lean on Jesus the way I would otherwise. I just do not really go to Jesus

to really get my love, to really get my satisfaction. I don't do that. I don't need to. I've got this adoring woman who's doing all this. And he says, if your marriage is good, you have a problem with idolatry of your marriage bad marriage is bad I think it's just as easy if not easier to say if my marriage was good. Everything would be better in my life It would all be fixed and it wouldn't be No, it wouldn't be that's Paul's whole point. The only thing that's gonna fix you is the future that incredible wedding supper that's coming that incredible wedding supper that's coming.

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So here's what you have. If you are a single person, you've got a really great prospect in front of you. If you're a single adult and you're a Christian, on the one hand, what it means is you can avoid the idolatry that very often happen and the selfishness and the absorption that very often happens. By the way, I'm now into the point is how could singleness be a gift? Paul calls singleness a gift and a whole lot of people do not understand that. They think of it as a spiritual gift. Does that mean I don't need to be married? I don't want to be married? Uh-uh. Here's what it is. Here's why it's a gift. It's possible in singleness for you to have a lot more friends. There's no doubt those of us who are married and are raising children, we cannot maintain the same number of friends, nor can they have as much, there can be as much depth.

Just not possible. Secondly, friendship is an extraordinarily sanctifying experience. Marriage can be, what I just told you, it's filled with potholes. That's what Paul's talking about. It's extraordinarily easy just to be sucked into the problems of marriage, idolatry in marriage, whether it's good or bad. And in many ways, friendship is one of the best ways to get out of yourself, to learn what you're supposed to learn through serving other people, to actually experience love the way it's supposed to be loved, as supposed to happen. And he says, man, as a single adult, you can have more friendships. You can find yourself growing through those friendships. Of course, you can serve more. You know, Jesus and Paul and John Stott were all single, and they got a lot of ministry done, a whole lot of ministry done.

And when a lot of people say to me, you know, your books are really good. Why did you wait till you were in your mid-50s to start writing books? I said, family. I had to go. My family had to get grown up and really be okay and off. And so in all these ways, I think that's what it means when Paul says, do you realize what a gift singleness can be? You shouldn't think of it as the ability to not hurt or care or get sad about sometimes being lonely. That's not what it's talking about. I don't have that gift because I get lonely. That's not what it's talking about. Do you see what a gift it can be? But think about this. If on the one hand, and some single Christians pull this off, if on the one hand you spend all your time as a single person beating yourself up, hating yourself,

feeling like a failure because you're not married, you're giving in to the idolatry of traditional cultures. Stop it. On the other hand, if you go on out and you have sex without commitment, without marriage, just go out and have sex because you want to be fulfilled, you're giving in to the idolatry of Western cultures. You know, personal fulfillment. I got to go out there and have somebody meet my needs. Okay? Stop it. And what's interesting to me is there are a fair number of Christian singles that somehow seem to be able to pull off both idolatries at once, going out and having sex and hating themselves for not being married. It's amazing. It's just wonderful. So you have absolutely the worst of both worlds.

And seriously, though, you have not encountered Jesus at the worldview level. You have not encountered Jesus at the worldview level. You basically are either still, you know, I'm a Christian. I'm not saying you're not a Christian, but you're completely conformed to the world. Either the Western world, which says, I've just got to have fulfillment, I've got to have sexual fulfillment, or I'm not a real person. I've got to have somebody adoring me like that. Or the Eastern, or the traditional approach, which says, you've got to be part of the family, or you're nothing at all, you're just a freak. You actually haven't actually let Jesus affect your worldview. The gospel affect your worldview and you're not living in... And you know what this means? The family of

God, the church, and Jesus, and that future hope is not enough for you. Well, you need to do everything you possibly can to make that thing real to yourself in prayer, through corporate worship, through the sacraments, all the ways in which they're called the means of grace in which Jesus is enough for you. Here's what I'm saying is dovetailing with Kathy. The thing that the serpent said in the garden, do you know what the original lie was? The original thing that got everything going, that messed up the whole world because Adam and Eve believed it? And the rest is history. And this lie has passed into our hearts, I think. It's probably one of the most fundamental

things about our nature. Let me paraphrase. I mean, what the serpent said is, you know, he said we're not supposed to eat the trees of the garden. The tree of the garden, he says, oh, you will not surely die. In fact, your eyes will be open. Here's what he was saying. The serpent, if you obey God, you'll never be happy. You'll miss out. That's the lie.

If you thoroughly and completely obey God, you will miss out. That's the lie. If you thoroughly and completely obey God, you will miss out. You will not be happy. That's it. And that's the reason why, actually, that lie distorts marriage too, but we're not here to talk about marriage. We're here to talk about singleness. And it's distorting your life, either in a Western way or an Eastern way. And one of my favorite texts, and I really, I just thought of it on the way over, but I'll at least share it. Derek Kidner, who wrote a commentary on Psalms and on Proverbs many, many years ago, a little Tyndale commentary, his stuff has meant so much to me, especially when I was a young Christian. And in his commentary on Psalm 81,

verse 10, he says something that nobody else says about that verse. I'll tell you what that verse is. It says, I am the Lord thy God who brought you out of Egypt. That's the first part of the verse. Now, that's exactly how the Ten Commandments starts. I am the Lord thy God who brought you out of Egypt. Thou shalt have no other gods before me. You know, down it goes. However, in Psalm 81, verse 10, God starts off talking about the fact you're in a covenant with me. You're in a covenant relationship with me. I am the Lord thy God, and I have saved you, brought you out of Egypt. But this time in verse 10, instead of saying,

here's all the things I want you to do, he says, open your mouth and I will fill it. What Derek Kittner says is, we have to remember this is the two sides of the covenant relationship. Yes, of course, there's requirements. God says, you want to be in a covenant relationship with me? I want you to live in this way. But here's the other side. He says, I am not going to hurt you if you obey me. I am not going to make you empty. If you obey me and you come to me, I will fill you. I will satisfy you. I am enough for you. You were built for me. Your joy sensors, you might say your spiritual digestive system needs me. That's what it needs. And so please don't believe that lie. If you obey me, you'll miss out. No, I'm the Lord thy God. Obey me and I will fill you. Now here's four, since I have four minutes left, I wouldn't want to waste

them. I'm a New Yorker. So here's four implications. They're kind of brief, but they're kind of interesting. You might want to go find something that Wes Hill did on the First Things blog recently in which he got out a letter from C.S. Lewis to a friend in 1956 on the subject of masturbation, which I had forgotten completely about and that he jogged my memory about. And he does some thoughts on it for a single person. But here's what it says. Listen, this is what C.S. Lewis says about the problem of masturbation. You know, we never use the word masturbation. We now use the word pornography. It's partly because, you know, pornography means masturbation and fantasy but usually

with something graphic in front of you. I think because he was living in 1956 when pornography wasn't nearly as available, he used the word masturbation. But here's what Lewis says to this friend about it. He says, for me, the real evil of masturbation would be that it takes an appetite, sexual appetite, which in lawful use leads the individual out of himself to complete and correct his own personality and that of another and turns it back, sends the man back into the prison of himself, there to keep a harem of imaginary brides.

And this harem, once admitted, works against his ever getting out and really uniting with the real woman, for the harem is always accessible, always subservient, calls for no sacrifices or adjustments, and can be endowed with erotic and psychological attractions which no real woman could ever rival. Among those shadowy brides, he is always adored, always the perfect lover. No demand is made on his unselfishness, no mortification ever imposed on his vanity. In the end, they become merely the medium through which he increasingly adores himself, and it is not only the faculty of love which is thus

sterilized, forced back on itself, it's also the faculty of imagination. Now, he says the purpose of sex, which obviously is for marriage, is to lead the individual out of himself to complete and correct his own personality and that of another. That's the reason why we always say sex is only for marriage, because only when you're giving yourself physically to someone who you have given yourself to in every other way, does sex become a way for you to correct your personality and your self-centeredness? It makes you unite with somebody who's different than you and who you're constantly having to clash with over each other's self-centerednesses, and you're becoming a more and more a loving person. You're becoming a person who's not so self-centered and so self-absorbed. You're

really becoming Christ-like. Sex can help you with that, but not only does it work if you're doing it outside of marriage, but it certainly doesn't work if you're having it by yourself. So don't do it. It ruins you not only for marriage but for friendship because it creates the habits of mind that are basically living in a world in which I have it all my way, and that's the opposite of what you need. That is the opposite of what you need. That's point one. Point two, it would be wonderful if Redeemer was the kind of place where because of this view of singleness in marriage, you weren't so unbelievably picky

about the looks and the financial well-being of your prospective marriage partners. Everything I've said, I hope, mitigates against that being the most important thing. You know, John Tierney, for some years, wrote a little article called Picky, Picky, Picky. Have you ever seen that? And he talks, he says, you know, a lot of his friends, you know, he says, say, well, I'm going to get married. But then he describes the person he's looking for. And he says, roughly speaking, it's something like this. He says, most of my guy friends say, I'm looking for somebody, a PhD with, who used to be an astronaut with a background in fashion modeling. And basically, he says, in other words, you don't want to get

married. But you know, here's what's so funny. We say we're, don't tell me, well, since I am actually being celibate, I am living the single life of a Christian single life. Not if you look at people who might be spouses and you rule them out because they're not perfectly thin or they're not beautiful or they're not good looking or they don't have a wonderful salary. If you're doing that, you're actually just as into the idolatries of the world and you're not really understanding the meaning of marriage anyway. Thirdly, let me just suggest, what is thirdly? Now, only one. I said I was going to do three. Time's up. I can only do one more. Get community input when you seek for spouses, when you seek for partners. See, we are the family. We are a family. We're not just a

bunch of individuals who come for a show. We're supposed to be brothers and sisters, fathers and mothers, sons and daughters of each other. And what that means is don't go trying to select your partners and the people you date and the people that you're thinking about getting married without lots and lots of input from the family. It'll help. Practice being in a family. That's what it means to be single. See, married people, this is the ultimate family right here. I have, God's been blessed me in my marriage and with my children. The fact is that I'm just a subgrouping of this family, this particular family, which is the body of Christ. And you're already in it if you're single. You're already in it. If you get married, you're already in the ultimate family.

So act like you're in the ultimate family. And that's all I got, too, so I don't know what comes next. Who comes next? You coming? Okay, that's it. Thanks for listening to today's teaching from Dr. Keller. If you were encouraged by this podcast, we invite you to consider becoming a Gospel and Life monthly partner.

Your partnership helps more people access resources like this podcast. Just visit gospelandlife.com slash partner to learn more. This month's sermons were recorded in 1991. The sermons and talks you hear on the Gospel and Life podcast were preached from 1989 to 2017, while Dr. Keller was senior pastor at Redeemer Presbyterian Church.