Undivided Devotion (1 Corinthians 7:35)

I say this for your own benefit, not to lay any restraint upon you, but to promote good order and to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord.
– 1 Corinthians 7:35

So this verse comes near the end of a chapter in the Bible that talks a lot about singleness. In which Paul under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit encourages people who are single to remain single. Throughout this chapter, we see singleness is a gift for the glory of God and the good of singles.

1 Corinthians 7:35 Teaches Us Singleness Also Portrays the Gospel

And I know this is a sensitive subject in a variety of different ways. And I don’t presume to be able to address all of those sensitivities in a couple of minutes here. But we talk a lot about how marriage is a picture of the gospel, and it is. It’s a beautiful picture of the gospel of Jesus’s sacrificial love for the church and a husband’s love for his wife. The church’s submissive obedience to Jesus. And a picture of a wife gladly following her husband’s leadership.

And so some people think, well, okay, I want to portray the gospel, so I want to get married. But singleness also portrays the gospel. Singleness in beautiful, powerful ways portrays the Christian’s ultimate identity in Christ. And this world would say, you need a husband or a wife to complete you. But singleness reminds us that’s not true. That in Christ we are complete regardless of our marital status.

These are truths about the supremacy of Christ that in a sense are even better portrayed in singleness than in marriage. And even on a church level, singleness portrays the Christian’s eternal identification with the church. Genesis 2:18 is still true. It’s not good for man to be alone, but no man or woman is alone in the body of Christ. They’re surrounded by brothers and sisters that are in an eternal sense, far more precious and more important than any earthly relationship, even a relationship between a husband and a wife.

1 Corinthians 7:35 Reminds Us Singleness Reflects Our Eternal Status

Because in eternity we won’t have marriage. In the same way that we have marriage here, we’ll have ultimate marriage… Marriage between the bride of Christ and Jesus himself i.e. the church. And singleness points us to that reality. All of that comes back to 1 Corinthians 7:35. Paul, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit of God is pointing out the beauty and advantages of singleness. Specifically the language he uses here is to secure your undivided devotion to the Lord. And I praise God for many single brothers and sisters in Christ I know who demonstrate the beauty of singleness that Paul is talking about here in 1 Corinthians 7:35.

So, God, we pray for all of our single brothers and sisters in Christ. We thank you for the picture of the gospel and their lives in unique ways. We pray for that picture of the gospel to be evident in them… The beauty of identity in Christ… Satisfaction in Christ… Completeness in Christ. God, we pray that you would help our single brothers and sisters in Christ to show that supreme identification with Christ to the world in a way that draws people to yourself.

Lord, we pray that you would help us as the church to be brothers and sisters in all the ways that our single brothers and sisters need. God we pray that you would help us to truly be the family, the household you’ve designed us to be in the church. And God, we pray for our single brothers and sisters in Christ to experience the security of undivided devotion to you according to 1 Corinthians 7:35.

Prayer for the Teli People

We just pray those words over single brothers and sisters in Christ, even as we all long for this. But in the unique way that Paul prays it here… We pray for undivided devotion to Jesus and delight in Jesus and demonstration of the gospel. God, I think about so many single brothers and sisters who have had such an impact on the spread of the gospel here and around the world, not in spite of singleness, but precisely because of singleness. So God, as we pray today for the Teli people of India and Pakistan, over 5 million, almost completely unreached people.

God we pray that you’d raise up married and single men and women to go to the Teli people. But specifically in light of 1 Corinthians 7, today we pray that you would raise up many single brothers and sisters for the spread of the gospel to unreached people like the Teli that they might be brought into the family, into the body, into the bride of Jesus Christ. May it be so, we pray all of this according to your word in 1 Corinthians 7:35. Amen.