Chukwunonso had driven nine hours from Abuja to be home for Christmas. The road through Lokoja had been full of trailers, and he arrived in Nnewi after dark with a boot full of rice, groundnut oil and a new wrapper for his mother. He is forty-three, a structural engineer who has spent the last decade designing culverts and pedestrian bridges for state governments. He is the one his siblings call when school fees are short. He paid for his father’s hospital stay in 2019 and for the burial that followed.
On the evening of the twenty-sixth, the extended family gathered in his late father’s compound. The generator hummed behind the house. Somebody’s child was crying for more fried meat. His father’s elder brother, who now speaks for the family, lifted his cup of palm wine and called across the courtyard, loudly enough for the neighbours to hear: “Nonso! We hear you are building bridges for the whole of Nigeria. When will you build one to a wife’s house?”
Everybody laughed. A cousin added that at this rate the family would have to marry for him. His mother looked down at her plate and said nothing. Later that night, she came to his room and asked, very gently, whether there was something he was not telling her. Was it a woman who had hurt him? Was it something spiritual? Should she take his name to the prayer mountain?
He went back to Abuja in January, and the questions followed him. In his church, Valentine Sunday ended with every married couple standing for prayer, after which the pastor asked “all our singles” to come forward so that “every obstacle to your marriage” would be destroyed. A month later he learned, through a friend on the church council, that his name had been quietly removed from the list of men being considered as deacons. Nobody had accused him of anything. Someone had simply said, “A man of his age who is not married? People will talk.”
He told me all of this in my office, sitting very straight, the way engineers sometimes sit when they are holding something heavy. “Pastor,” he said, “in my village I am a problem to be solved. In this church I am a prayer point. Is there anywhere I am simply a brother?”
That question deserves an answer from the Scriptures. And the answer matters for far more people than Chukwunonso.
A prayer point or a brother
When churches speak about “singles,” they usually picture a twenty-six-year-old waiting for the right person. But the unmarried people sitting in our congregations are a much larger and more varied company. There is the young graduate who has not yet met anyone. There is the woman of fifty who has never married and has made her peace with it, or has not. There is the widower who sits alone in the pew where he and his wife sat for thirty years. There is the young widow with three children. There is the divorced man who did everything he could to save his marriage, and the divorced woman who left because staying would have cost her life. There is the person whose fiancé died two months before the wedding. All of them are unmarried. None of them is a lesser Christian.
Yet the church often treats them in one of two ways. The first is sympathy. The unmarried adult becomes a permanent object of pity, someone to be prayed for and rarely someone who is asked to pray. The second is suspicion. If he is not married by forty, something must be wrong with him. If she is divorced, she must have been difficult. If she is widowed and still attractive, the wives in the church keep an eye on her. Neither response treats the person as what Scripture says they are: a full member of the household of God.
Families add their own pressure, usually from love mixed with fear. In much of Nigerian culture, marriage is how a person becomes a full adult and how parents know their duty is complete. So the questions come at every gathering. “When are you bringing your husband?” “Is there no one in that your church?” “Your mates are now carrying their second child.” Some of these questions are innocent. Some are cruel. All of them carry an assumption that we need to test against the Word of God: that a life without marriage is a life still waiting to begin.
Marriage is a good gift
Let us be clear first, because a teaching on singleness can easily be heard as a criticism of marriage. Marriage is a good gift from God. It was His idea before it was ours. In the garden, before sin had entered the world, God looked at the man and said, “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Genesis 2:18). Then He made the woman and brought her to him. Marriage belongs to the goodness of creation.
The New Testament keeps that honour in place. “Marriage is honourable in all” (Hebrews 13:4). And when false teachers later tried to make Christians more spiritual by forbidding them to marry, Paul called their teaching a departure from the faith. He described them as “Forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving” (1 Timothy 4:3). Anyone who despises marriage, or tells you that a truly holy person would never desire it, has stepped outside the teaching of Scripture.
So if you are single and you long to be married, there is nothing shameful in that longing. You are desiring something God calls good. You may pray for it honestly. You may hope for it. You may grieve when it does not come as soon as you wished.
But notice carefully what Genesis 2:18 says and what it does not say. God said that aloneness was not good. He did not say that every unmarried person is alone. Marriage was the first answer God gave to human aloneness, and it remains a precious one. It was never meant to be the only one. In the same Bible, God “setteth the solitary in families” (Psalm 68:6), and the family He has in view is larger than any one household. A married person can be desperately lonely. An unmarried person can be surrounded by deep companionship. The goodness of marriage does not make its absence a curse.
That is where many of our churches have gone wrong. We have taken a good gift and turned it into a measure, a line between those who have arrived and those still in the waiting room. Scripture will not let us draw that line.
Paul’s surprising preference
The longest passage in the New Testament on marriage and singleness is 1 Corinthians 7. Paul is answering questions the church in Corinth had written to him about. Some there seem to have thought sex itself unspiritual; others were careless about sexual sin. In the middle of answering both, Paul says this:
For I would that all men were even as I myself. But every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that. I say therefore to the unmarried and widows, It is good for them if they abide even as I.
These verses would sound strange in many of our churches. Paul, the great apostle, the man who planted churches across the Roman world, says he wishes everyone were like him. And he was unmarried. We do not know whether he had always been single or was a widower; the text does not say. What it does tell us is that when he wrote this letter he was unmarried, and he regarded that state as good.
Then comes the most important phrase in the passage: “every man hath his proper gift of God, one after this manner, and another after that.” The word translated gift is charisma, the same word Paul uses in chapter 12 for the gifts of the Spirit. He is saying that both marriage and singleness can be gifts from God. Neither is a consolation prize.
Christians have understood the “gift” in two main ways. Some understand it as a particular enabling, a grace given to certain people to live unmarried with contentment and freedom from consuming desire. On this view, not every single person has the gift, and those who do not are wise to seek marriage, as Paul says in verse 9. Others understand the gift more simply as the state itself: whatever situation God has placed you in at present is His gift to you for this season, to be received with thanksgiving and used for His glory. Both readings are held by careful students of Scripture, and both share Paul’s main point. Your marital status is not a verdict on your spiritual worth. It is a setting in which grace is given.
Notice also who Paul addresses: “the unmarried and widows.” He includes those who had been married and are now alone. Paul tells the widow that her present state is “good.” She is not a remainder. She is not someone the church tolerates until a new husband can be found.
PunchlinePaul is not issuing a law. A few verses later he says plainly, “if thou marry, thou hast not sinned” (1 Corinthians 7:28). Neither choice is second best.
Undivided attention
Paul then explains why he values singleness so highly:
But I would have you without carefulness. He that is unmarried careth for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please the Lord: But he that is married careth for the things that are of the world, how he may please his wife. There is difference also between a wife and a virgin. The unmarried woman careth for the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit: but she that is married careth for the things of the world, how she may please her husband. And this I speak for your own profit; not that I may cast a snare upon you, but for that which is comely, and that ye may attend upon the Lord without distraction.
“I would have you without carefulness.” The word carefulness means anxious concern, the pulling of the heart in many directions. Paul is honest about marriage here. A married man rightly cares “how he may please his wife.” A married woman rightly cares “how she may please her husband.” That is not a criticism. It is what love in marriage requires. A husband who ignored his wife’s needs because he was busy with church work would be failing in his covenant, and Paul would say so.
But the unmarried person has a particular freedom. Their attention is not divided in the same way. They can give themselves to the Lord’s concerns “without distraction.” Many fruitful servants of God have been unmarried people who used that freedom with joy.
I think of a widow in our church whom I will call Mrs Odu. Her husband died eleven years ago. For the first two years she could barely leave the house. Then she began visiting the general hospital on Thursday afternoons, reading Scripture to women on the maternity ward whose families had not come. Today she leads a team of nine. “When my husband was alive,” she told me once, “I could never have done this. My time belonged to my home. Now my time belongs to the Lord in a different way.” Her grief was real. So is her fruitfulness.
Notice verse 35: “not that I may cast a snare upon you.” Paul refuses to make singleness a trap. He will not pressure anyone into it, and he certainly would not want the church to treat its single members as free labour, assigning them every vigil and every Saturday programme because they “have no one at home.” The freedom of the unmarried person belongs to the Lord, and it is theirs to offer. It is not the church’s to presume upon. Paul is describing an opportunity, and opportunities can only be received freely.
A name better than sons and daughters
In the ancient world, as in many cultures today, a person’s name lived on through children. To die childless was to have your name cut off. That is why the prophecy of Isaiah 56 is so moving:
Neither let the son of the stranger, that hath joined himself to the LORD , speak, saying, The LORD hath utterly separated me from his people: neither let the eunuch say, Behold, I am a dry tree. For thus saith the LORD unto the eunuchs that keep my sabbaths, and choose the things that please me, and take hold of my covenant; Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off.
The eunuch was a man who could never marry or father children. Under the old covenant he was excluded from the assembly in certain ways (Deuteronomy 23:1). He would say of himself, “I am a dry tree.” Barren, finished, without a future. And God answers him with one of the most tender promises in the prophets. Within My house, within My walls, I will give you “a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters.” Children are a blessing, and Scripture never pretends otherwise. But God Himself promises the one who cannot have them something better: an everlasting name in His house.
Jesus took this up when His disciples, shaken by His teaching on the permanence of marriage, said that perhaps it was better not to marry at all:
His disciples say unto him, If the case of the man be so with his wife, it is not good to marry. But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it , let him receive it.
Jesus speaks of three kinds of people who do not marry. Some are born unable. Some have been made so by others. And some have chosen not to marry “for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.” He does not mock any of them. He does not call them incomplete. He places them within the purposes of God.
And then there is Jesus Himself. The perfect man, the one in whom humanity was all that God intended it to be, never married. If marriage were necessary for a whole human life, then the life of Jesus Christ would have been lacking. No believer would say that. He was fully human, fully alive, fully loving and fully obedient, and He lived His whole earthly life unmarried. Whatever else we say about singleness, we can never again call it a deficiency.
Complete in Him
Paul’s letter to the Colossians was written to a church being troubled by teachers who offered a fuller spiritual experience. Faith in Christ was fine, they said, but you needed something more: special knowledge, religious rules, angelic visions, a higher level of spirituality. Paul answers with some of the greatest words he ever wrote about Christ:
For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him, which is the head of all principality and power.
“In him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily.” Everything that God is dwells in Christ. And then: “ye are complete in him.” The word translated complete comes from the same root as fulness. Paul is making a deliberate connection. The fulness of God is in Christ, and you have been filled full in Him. You lack nothing that makes you whole before God.
The false teachers in Colossae offered philosophy and rituals. Our culture offers something different. It tells us that a person finds completion in another person. Songs speak of “my other half.” Church announcements pray for singles to “find their missing rib.” These phrases are usually affectionate, but taken seriously they contradict the gospel. You are not half a person. If you are in Christ, you are complete in Him, today, whatever your marital status.
That completeness does not mean you have no needs. A complete person still needs friendship, community, purpose and love. Marriage, where God gives it, meets some of those needs in a beautiful way. But marriage adds companionship to a life. It does not add worth to a person. The married believer is not more complete than the single believer. Both stand in exactly the same fulness, because both stand in Christ.
NuggetMarriage can add companionship to a life. It cannot add worth to a person. If you are in Christ, you are already complete in Him.
So the unmarried person need not imagine that marriage will finally fix the restlessness in their soul. Many who married to escape loneliness have found that loneliness came with them into the marriage.
The family Jesus gives
When Jesus spoke about leaving family for the gospel, He made a promise that should shape every local church:
And Jesus answered and said, Verily I say unto you, There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel’s, But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions; and in the world to come eternal life.
“An hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands.” Jesus promises a family now, in this life, and that family is the church. Notice that He does not include wives in the list of what is restored. The hundredfold family is not a promise of a spouse. It is the promise of a household of brothers and sisters, mothers and children, who belong to one another because they belong to Him.
On another occasion, when His own mother and brothers stood outside calling for Him, Jesus looked at those sitting around Him and said, “Behold my mother and my brethren!” (Mark 3:34). He was not rejecting His earthly family. He was declaring that the bonds of the kingdom are as real and as deep as the bonds of blood.
If that is true, then the local church has a responsibility. An unmarried believer should never have to eat Christmas lunch alone because nobody thought to invite them. A widow should not be visited only in the first month after the burial. A divorced brother should not find that the couples’ fellowship is the only place where friendships are formed. The New Testament is full of unmarried people who served at the heart of the church. Phebe was commended by Paul as “a succourer of many, and of myself also” (Romans 16:2). Philip the evangelist had “four daughters, virgins, which did prophesy” (Acts 21:9). Anna, widowed after only seven years of marriage, “served God with fastings and prayers night and day” (Luke 2:37) and was among the first to recognise the infant Christ. Mary, Martha and Lazarus, siblings in a household with no spouse mentioned, opened their home to Jesus, and the Gospel tells us simply, “Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus” (John 11:5).
What about leadership? Paul says that an overseer should be “the husband of one wife” (1 Timothy 3:2). Some churches read that as requiring leaders to be married. Many careful interpreters understand it as a requirement of faithfulness: a man with one wife, not several, and faithful to her. They point out that Paul himself, who wrote the words, was unmarried. Churches may differ on how they apply the verse, but no church should use it as a cover for the vague suspicion that removed Chukwunonso’s name. Character is the test. Godliness, faithfulness and a good report are required of every leader, married or single.
Answering the question with grace
PunchlineWhat do you say when the question comes at the next family gathering? “When are you bringing your husband?” “When will you remarry?” “Is there nobody?”
First, remember that many of the people asking love you. Your mother is not your enemy. Your aunty, however clumsy, may be afraid for you in ways she cannot put into words. In cultures where marriage provides security and status, especially for women, a parent’s anxiety about an unmarried child is often an anxiety about that child’s future protection. You can honour your parents, as Scripture commands, while declining to accept their definition of a full life. Honour and agreement are different things.
Second, you are allowed to answer simply and without apology. “I would be glad to marry if God brings the right person, Ma. Until then, I am well, and my life is full.” Or, “Uncle, I am trusting God with that. Let me tell you about what I am building now.” You do not owe anyone a detailed explanation of your private life. You do not need to manufacture a boyfriend for the village, and you do not need to rush into a marriage because the questions have become unbearable. A wrong marriage entered under pressure is a far heavier burden than a family’s disappointment.
Third, refuse the false explanations. Some single people have been told that their singleness is a curse, an ancestral covenant, a spirit husband or wife, or a punishment for hidden sin. Where there is genuine sin, the gospel provides forgiveness. Where there is genuine spiritual oppression, Christ has authority over it. But no one has the right to load an unmarried believer with suspicion simply because they are unmarried. Paul would have been a candidate for every one of those deliverance sessions. So would Jesus.
And to pastors, parents and church members, a word of honest challenge. Stop the jokes. A joke repeated at every wedding is not light to the person who hears it every time. Stop asking unmarried adults, in public, when it will be their turn. Ask instead about their work, their ministry and their walk with God. Invite them into your homes, give them responsibility according to their gifts, and pray for what they actually ask for. And examine your programmes. If every celebration in your church calendar is built around couples and children, you are telling a large part of your congregation that they belong at the edge.
If you are divorced or widowed, there is a particular word for you. You may carry grief, and in the case of divorce you may carry shame that others have placed on you or that you have placed on yourself. Bring the grief to the God who is “a father of the fatherless, and a judge of the widows” (Psalm 68:5). Bring the shame to the cross. If there is sin to confess, confess it and receive the forgiveness Christ freely gives. But do not allow anyone to define you by the end of a marriage. Your worth before God was never located in a wedding certificate, and it was not lost when that certificate was ended by death or by divorce.
Chukwunonso went home to Nnewi again last December.
He told me later that he had prayed about it for weeks before he went. He did not want to argue with his uncle, and he did not want to hide in his room. On the night of the twenty-sixth, when the palm wine went round and the familiar question came, he stood up. “Uncle,” he said, “if God gives me a wife, you will be the first man I call, and you will be the one to lead the family to her people. I mean that. But I am not waiting to start my life. I am living it now.” Then he told them about the footbridge he had designed in a riverine community in Kogi, where children who used to wade through floodwater to reach school now walk across dry. Somebody clapped. His uncle grunted and changed the subject, which in that family counts as agreement.
His mother walked him to his car the next morning. She held his hand through the window and said, “I will still pray for a wife for you. But I will stop praying as if something is wrong with you.”
In Abuja, the church council met again in March. One of the elders, who had heard what happened the year before, asked that Chukwunonso’s name be considered properly. He now serves as a deacon. He also hosts a lunch at his flat on the first Sunday of every month for anyone in the church who would otherwise eat alone: two widows, a divorced father whose children live with their mother, three young graduates, and once, memorably, the pastor’s own mother-in-law when she was visiting.
He is still single. He would still like to marry. He is also, in every sense that matters before God, complete. Whether you are married, never married, widowed or divorced, the same is true of you if you belong to Christ. You have a place and a name in His house. You are filled full in Him. You are not a problem to be solved or a prayer point to be managed. You are a brother. You are a sister. You are home.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Which assumptions about unmarried people have you absorbed from your family, your culture or your church?
- How does Paul’s description of singleness as a charisma, a grace-gift, change the way you see your own present season?
- What would it mean for you to believe today that you are “complete in him” (Colossians 2:10), whatever your marital status?
- Who in your church is unmarried, widowed or divorced, and how could you make them more fully at home in the family of God?
- If you are single, how might you answer the next family question with both honesty and honour?
This Week
Read Colossians 2:9-10 aloud each morning this week, and after reading it say, “I am complete in Christ today.” If you are married, invite one unmarried, widowed or divorced believer from your church to share a meal in your home before the month ends, and ask them about their life and work without asking about marriage. If you are single, write down one way you can use the freedom of this season for the Lord’s concerns, and take the first step this week.
A Prayer
Father, thank You that in Christ dwells all the fulness of the Godhead, and that I am complete in Him. Thank You that my worth was settled at the cross and is not measured by my marital status. Forgive me where I have despised my own season, or looked down on others in theirs. Heal the places where words from family and church have wounded me. If I desire marriage, I bring that desire honestly to You, and I trust You with it. Until then, and whatever You choose, let me live fully for You now, with undivided attention to the things of the Lord. Make Your church a true family for every unmarried, widowed and divorced believer. In Jesus’ name, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.