Tony Evans - Tony Evans Speaks Out On Being Single and Satisfied

M OODY P RESS
CHICAGO

2002 by
A NTHONY T. E VANS

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

All Scripture quotations are taken from the New American Standard Bible, Copyright The Lockman Foundation 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995. Used by permission.

ISBN: 0-8024-4371-0

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Printed in the United States of America

A single woman was talking with her pastor one day, discussing the subject of marriage. The pastor said, You know, God has designed the perfect plan for marriage, one man and one woman together for life. You cant improve on Gods plan.

Pastor, I dont want to improve on it, the woman replied. I just want to get in on it.

Thats the way many single people feel today. They fear they are missing out on Gods plan or Gods best for their lives because they arent married. Many singles feel as if their lives are in a holding pattern, like an airplane that is supposed to be landing at its destination but has been ordered to circle the airport.

Ive flown enough to know what its like for the pilot to come on the intercom and announce that the plane has been denied permission to land for whatever reason. Holding patterns are very frustrating because you are helpless. You didnt choose the situation, and there is nothing you can do about it. All you know is that you want the pilot to get that metal bird on the ground so you can get off and get on with your life.

If you are a Christian single person who loves God and wants to honor and serve Him with your life, then I want to speak to you from Gods Word, because the Bible contains some very important, challenging, and encouraging principles for Christian singles. (Let me also say that these principles have implications for married people, as well see.)

The Scripture deals with the subject of singleness head-on in 1 Corinthians 7:2540, where the apostle Paul was in the process of answering his readers questions concerning marriage and singleness. Paul was the right person to handle these issues, because the evidence suggests that he had been married at one time and then lived for many years as a single person. So he knew what it was like to have a mate and to be alone.

Paul must have been married because before his conversion he was a member of the Sanhedrin, the supreme council of Jewish leaders, which required its members to be married. Perhaps his wife had died, or she may even have left him when he came to Christ. The point is that Paul knew what it was like both to have a mate and to live as a single person.

Theres another reason 1 Corinthians 7 is so important to the issue of marital status, which is that Paul was speaking by divine revelation. So what he wrote in this portion of Scripture is the Word of God and not just one mans opinion. And in 1 Corinthians 7 we find at least three vital principles for singles. We can summarize these as waiting on the Lord, working for the Lord, and being wed in the Lord.

A lot of singles would look at this subhead and say, Oh, yeah, I know all about waiting. Ive been waiting on the Lord to give me a mate for a long time.

Most singles would agree that theyre waiting for an opportunity to marry, because they dont plan on being single the rest of their lives. Gods concern for you as a waiting single is how you are doing while youre waiting. Let me show you what I mean.

Paul had been discussing marriage and divorce in 1 Corinthians 7:124 before turning to the specific issue of singleness in verse 25: Now concerning virgins I have no command of the Lord, but I give an opinion as one who by the mercy of the Lord is trustworthy.

When Paul said the Lord had not given a command about being single, he meant that when Jesus was on earth He didnt speak directly to this issue. Jesus certainly could have spoken on singleness, because He experienced the single life to the nth degree, including the temptations that singles face.

But God chose instead to entrust His message on singleness and its principles to Paul. My point is that when Paul said he was offering his view, he was saying, I have the Lords mind on this. This is important because some people try to discount Pauls teaching here as of lesser authority than Jesus words. But the Bible knows no such distinction.

Notice that when Paul began to discuss unmarried people, he used the term virgins in 1 Corinthians 7:25. For Paul, singleness was synonymous with virginity, and so the first principle in waiting is to maintain your moral purity.

In the divine context, if you are single and you love the Lord, you are also celibate. The two go hand in hand. Paul was referring primarily to physical virginity or sexual purity, although there is also a spiritual purity that people who have been sexually immoral can recapture. Well talk about that too.

God not only anticipates and expects, but also demands, that single people be celibate. Now this is a difficult message in a day of license, liberty, and hedonism. Weve gone from the Victorian Age to Victorias Secret catalogs and television ads. Modesty has been thrown to the wind. Yet we are not called to adapt the Bible to our age, but to adapt our age to the Bible.

Sex today has been cheapened by a world that does not have a divine perspective. And things that are cheap can be given away easily. Things that are valuable, you protect.

My single friend, your sense of value will be measured in large part by your morality. Too many people treat sex like the all-night drive-through at the local fast-food restaurantalways available when the desire hits you. Purity is no longer a priority.

But the Bible says equally to men and to women that Gods desire and design for singles is their moral purity. Sex in Gods hand is holy; sex in the devils hand is death. One of the major ways that Satan promotes his program in history is through illicit sex. For example, Satan used sexual relations between unholy men and the daughters of men to produce an ungodly race in an attempt to destroy Gods plan for the world (see Genesis 6:12).

How spiritual is this matter of sex for a Christian?

Since God commands purity for singles, how can a single person come to grips with this demand when our natural desires and our sexuality are so much a part of our makeup? To answer that, let me show you a crucial principle in Pauls thinking that comes out of this same letter to the Corinthians. The principle is that as Christians we are not to view sex as purely a biological matter, but as a spiritual one.

In 1 Corinthians 6:13 Paul wrote, Food is for the stomach and the stomach is for food, but God will do away with both of them. Yet the body is not for immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord is for the body.

Notice the contrast between the way we treat hunger, a legitimate physical appetite, and the way we should treat our bodies when it comes to sexual morality. Most people in Corinth, a very wicked city, equated food with sex. When they got hungry, they ate. When they wanted sex, they fed that appetite. Corinth even had a temple with a restaurant on one side and a brothel on the other. A person could have dinner at the restaurant and go to the brothel for dessert. No big deal.