Sexuality and Gender

How Singleness Can Testify to the Gospel of Grace

Author Amy K. Hall Published on 03/16/2017

If marriage is meant to be a parable of Christ and the church, then does that mean single, celibate people are wasting their sexuality by not using it to glorify God in this way? Sam Allberry says no:

Are those of us who are celibate wasting our sexuality by not giving expression to our sexual desires?...

[S]ingleness, like marriage, has a unique way of testifying to the gospel of grace. Jesus said there will be no marriage in the new creation. In that respect we’ll be like the angels, neither marrying nor being given in marriage (Matt. 22:30). We will have the reality; we will no longer need the signpost.

By foregoing marriage now, singleness is a way of both anticipating this reality and testifying to its goodness. It’s a way of saying this future reality is so certain that we can live according to it now. If marriage shows us the shape of the gospel, singleness shows us its sufficiency. It’s a way of declaring to a world obsessed with sexual and romantic intimacy that these things are not ultimate, and that in Christ we possess what is.

I appreciate people like Sam Allberry who have been thinking deeply about a theology of singleness in recent years. The need to respond to questions about homosexuality and marriage that led to this kind of discussion has been a blessing to the church. Read the rest of his article here.