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Message Summary
In the second message of a series on how the gospel shapes our view of relationships, Pastor Phillip Santillan asks what could be greater than true love. As a boy he daydreamed about meeting the one and read every book on marriage he could find. Then he began marriage and ministry together, and walking with others through romance and marriage taught him what books never covered. Over twenty years, he has found that Christians too often take their cues about meaning from something other than Scripture.
Building on last week’s point that our relationship with God, not marriage, is the pinnacle of human relationships, Phil turns to a rarely preached passage. Answering questions the Corinthians had sent, Paul carefully distinguishes the Lord’s commands from his own counsel. He writes about “virgins,” a common term for the unmarried in a world where parents arranged most first marriages. Because of “the present distress,” however scholars interpret it, he advises people to remain as they are. Against those who would call marriage sinful, Paul says marrying is no sin, though married people will have trouble in this life. Phil adds that God uses such trouble to make us more like Christ.
The time is short, Paul says, so those with wives, and those who weep, rejoice, buy or use the world, should hold these things loosely, for this world in its present form is passing away. The unmarried can focus on pleasing the Lord, while the married have divided interests, and Paul wants believers devoted to the Lord without distraction. Phil’s bottom line: living out God’s mission matters more than relationship status. That is no permission to neglect the responsibilities of marriage or singleness. Marriage belongs to this world, as Jesus taught in Luke 20; married or single, a believer’s ultimate role is to be concerned with the things of the Lord. A single person’s life is not measured by finding a mate or by dating well.
Phil remembers Tim Keller, who had died that week and whose talk on why to plant churches is the reason Clarity exists. In The Meaning of Marriage, Keller and his wife write that marriage and singleness are both good, since only Christ can truly fulfill us and only God’s family truly satisfies, as Jesus showed in Matthew 12. Phil appreciates young parents’ passion for family, but wonders whether the evil one has used the pursuit of a perfect family to replace what only Christ’s family can fulfill.
Offering advice he labels “Santillan, not Scripture,” Phil suggests how to find God’s mission for your life. Start with what Scripture makes clear, which means reading it: love one another, love God and neighbor, and go and make disciples. Then thrive where God has planted you, as a parent or student, using your real gifts, resources and opportunities; if you see a need, fill it. But don’t mistake the ways God works through you, such as parenting, marriage or a career, for the mission itself. No spouse or romance completes us, Phil concludes. Only God does.