Conservative Christians are right about the blessings of marriage, but they are wrong to treat those who choose to remain single as unfaithful.
Christians were late to the fight for the family. A coalition of ideologies — in media, movies, schools, and homes — has been teaching for decades that marriage and childbearing are little more than shackles.
As a result, across America, Europe, and East Asia, fewer people now marry or have children. The right has tried to answer this with a simple standard: “Get married. Have babies.”
That cause is righteous. Marriage and family are blessings from God. But in our zeal to defend them, the Christian right is hovering close to a false doctrine: that marriage and parenthood are necessary for maturity, fulfillment, and obedience to God.
Singleness Is Not Inferior to Marriage
To refute this, we should appeal to Scripture, where the chief passage on singleness is found in 1 Corinthians 7.
The Apostle Paul opens the chapter by writing, “Now concerning the things about which you wrote, it is good for a man not to touch a woman.”
However, Paul follows up by writing that “because of immoralities, each man is to have his own wife, and each woman is to have her own husband” and neither should deprive each other of sexual intimacy.
If the discussion ended there, marriage would seem mandatory, but it does not.
In verses 6 through 9, Paul says,
“But this I say by way of concession, not of command. Yet I wish that all men were even as I myself am. However, each man has his own gift from God, one in this manner, and another in that.
But I say to the unmarried and to widows that it is good for them if they remain even as I. But if they do not have self-control, let them marry; for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.”
Here Paul is saying that he wished everyone could be single, as he was. He adds that if they lack self-control, then they should marry.
He further explains his reasoning in the rest of the chapter. In verses 25 through 31 Paul writes that in light of the troubles in the church at Corinth, it was his opinion that the members of the church were better off staying in whatever marital state they were currently in.
That phrase, “in view of the present distress,” does not mean that the rest of his words are not instructive for us today.
In verse 28, Paul wrote “But if you marry, you have not sinned; and if a virgin marries, she has not sinned. Yet such will have trouble in this life, and I am trying to spare you.”
He elaborates in verses 32 through 34a:
“But I want you to be free from concern. One who is unmarried is concerned about the things of the Lord, how he may please the Lord; but one who is married is concerned about the things of the world, how he may please his wife, and his interests are divided.”
Paul ends the treatise by saying that widows are free to remarry after their husband dies before adding, “But in my opinion she is happier if she remains as she is; and I think that I also have the Spirit of God.”
It would be difficult to be any clearer about what Paul’s view of singleness is, and it is diametrically opposed to the view of singleness that many on the right are peddling. Paul does not treat singleness as inferior to marriage. In fact, for the right person, he says that singleness can be superior to marriage.
But which path is right depends solely on God’s gifting and calling in that person’s life.
Jesus and a Legacy of Faithful Singles
1 Corinthians 7 isn’t the only text to speak about singleness. In Jesus’s instruction on divorce in Matthew 19, He teaches that divorce is only permissible in the case of sexual immorality. His disciples respond incredulously, “If the relationship of the man with his wife is like this, it is better not to marry.”
Take careful note of how Jesus responds.
“Not all men can accept this statement, but only those to whom it has been given. For there are eunuchs who were born that way from their mother’s womb; and there are eunuchs who were made eunuchs by men; and there are also eunuchs who made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the kingdom of heaven. He who is able to accept this, let him accept it.”
If the disciples had lived in a modern evangelical context they would have been vociferously scolded for their alleged slander of marriage.
But that isn’t what Jesus did. Here he acknowledges that some choose to be celibate to better serve God. And it wasn’t just Jesus’s teaching that praised godly singleness, Jesus Himself was single.
Yes, Jesus is God, and so we must be careful taking direct instruction from His celibacy, but how can the claim be made that singleness is a sign of selfishness, immaturity, or immorality when Jesus was single?
Moreover, Jesus wasn’t the only biblical figure who was single. We have mentioned Paul, but Jeremiah was instructed not to marry, John the Baptist never married, Anna the prophetess was widowed when young and then devoted the rest of her life to service of God, and Philip’s four daughters were all unmarried and prophesied.
Verses Misused to Oppose Singleness
Despite the numerous biblical figures who served God as singles, there are some common objections to singleness that we will unpack briefly here.
The most common objection is Genesis 2:18. After creating Adam but before Eve, God said, “‘It is not good for the man to be alone; I will make him a helper suitable for him.”
Some use this verse to say that nearly all people should marry. But the text does not say “it is not good for man to be unmarried”; it says “it is not good for man to be alone.” Adam was the only human on Earth, he was truly alone. He did not have friends, parents, neighbors, or a church.
Man was not made to live in isolation; however, now that the Earth is filled with Adam’s descendants, people don’t have to be married to commune with others.
The next objection is Genesis 1:28, in which God commanded Adam and Eve to “be fruitful and multiply” and to “fill the earth, and subdue it.”
This command is later repeated in Genesis 9 to Noah and his family after the flood.
In both instances, these few people were charged with populating, or repopulating, the Earth. These were not commands that every person on Earth get married and have children.
The other passage I will note is 1 Timothy 5:14-15, in which Paul wrote: “Therefore, I want younger widows to get married, bear children, keep house, and give the enemy no occasion for reproach; for some have already turned aside to follow Satan.”
This verse falls in the greater discussion about placing widows on a list for their physical needs to be taken care of by the church.
It is not an instruction that everyone get married, it is a prescription against placing young widows in the care of the church or taking a vow to service because they might renege on their oath or become idle with nothing to do.
Singleness Doesn’t Make Immorality Permissible or Inevitable
What finally motivated me to take on this topic was a claim I recently saw on social media.
Lamenting economic barriers to home ownership and marriage, the post said that maybe Bible-thumping churches could guilt teenagers into not having sex, but that by age 18 this was unrealistic, and even Christians would start committing immorality if they hadn’t gotten married by then.
The author then doubled down and said that if men weren’t married by their mid-20s or early 30s, “of course they’re going to fornicate.”
This belief is part of a larger cultural belief that has invaded the Church: that sexual activity is essential for life and that marriage is somehow a magic salve that cures all lust.
But that’s not true. Sexual intimacy is not a human need. And singleness does not equal sexual immorality.
Our culture is saturated with hypersexuality, and professing Christians aren’t doing much better. Rampant pornography use, infidelity, lust, and premarital sex and cohabitation are plagues upon our society, and many a Christian has fallen headlong into these sins.
That doesn’t mean it has to be that way. Christians can experience victory over sexual sin through the power of God.
Marriage will not do that work by itself. A vow does not kill a porn habit. A wedding does not make a wandering heart chaste. Marriage can help restrain temptation, but it is not a guarantee.
When “Get Married, Have Babies” Goes Too Far
I want to be cautious here because it has been one year since the death of Charlie Kirk, who popularized the phrase “Get Married, Have Babies.” It’s a phrase our own organization has used.
The sentiment is a good one. We should encourage young people to reject premarital sex and the lie that marriage and children are a trap.
But “Get Married, Have Babies” has quickly changed from an encouragement into a command.
I, in no way, mean that this was Charlie Kirk’s intent, or our own.
Online, though, singleness is now treated as immaturity and childlessness as selfishness, even a betrayal of the human race. Fear of demographic decline has led some to talk as if Christians must outbreed Islam and secularism to save the Church.
The command ignores the reality that men and women in several industrialized nations are more divided than ever before on matters of critical importance, including the desire for marriage and children, political affiliation, religion, and LGBT identification.
Christians are increasingly finding it difficult to find a partner who is of sound doctrine, purity, and responsibility. And rushing into marriage without a suitable partner fails to honor Scripture’s prohibitions on marrying the wrong person (Proverbs 21:9, 12:4, 27:15, 2 Corinthians 6:14).
Brothers and sisters, having babies is not how God told us to grow the Church. “Outbreeding the Muslims” is a coarse and animalistic reduction of humanity to one of its physical functions.
God called us to make disciples of all nations, to be fishers of men. And that is the primary way we should seek to grow the Church.
This is one of the great distinctions of the New Covenant. The Kingdom of God does not advance through biological descent but through the proclamation of the Gospel and the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit. Christian parents should welcome children as blessings and raise them in the discipline and instruction of the Lord, but no one enters the Kingdom because he was born to Christian parents. He must be born again.
Marriage is Not the Default, and Singleness Is Not a Failure
But a myth still looms in churches: that singleness is a “gift” no one wants and that it is only bestowed on an exceptionally rare few who are unfortunate enough to have it.
These chosen few are said to be monastics, that they should somehow possess a higher devotion to God, while married Christians are free to live their lives as typical Christians.
“Singleness is only permissible so you can be wholly devoted to God,” the claim usually goes.
But that belief treats marriage as the default and singleness as an inferior exception. Scripture never says that.
There is also no scriptural basis for the idea that marriage, or parenthood, is essential to spiritual growth or fulfillment and purpose in life.
The Bible says that singleness makes undivided devotion easier; it doesn’t say that single people must wear a hair shirt. A single person is called to serve God just as a married person is: with all your heart, soul, and mind.
Celibacy and marriage are both gifts and callings. Either can help lead to a life of joy and flourishing. The same can be said for parenthood or childlessness. Neither your marital or parental status determine whether you have purpose or joy in life — only your relationship with God can do that.
Man’s chief end is not to procreate; it is to know God and to make Him known. And that means, single or married, you should love Him with all your soul and all your mind and love others as yourself.
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