Holy Calling

There is a question that most of us carry quietly, one that rarely gets spoken out loud but shapes a remarkable amount of how we see our lives: Is the season I'm in right now the right one? Am I where I'm supposed to be? Whether you are newly married, decades into a covenant, walking through a difficult stretch in your home, or single and wondering what God is doing with this chapter of your life, the question underneath all of it is the same. Does God have a purpose for where I am right now? First Corinthians 7 is Paul's answer. And it is better news than most of us expect.

The church at Corinth was a congregation caught between two extremes. On one end, sexual immorality had worked its way so deeply into the culture that it had begun to infect the church itself — as if freedom in Christ meant freedom to do whatever desire demanded. On the other end, a segment of the congregation had swung to the opposite conclusion: that the truly spiritual life required rejecting physical desire altogether. Some had even convinced themselves that married couples should abstain from sex in order to achieve a higher plane of devotion. Paul writes into this chaos not with a list of rules but with a theology — a coherent, gospel-rooted vision of what God intends for every relational season of human life. What he says reorients everything.

Paul begins with marriage, and his first move is to push back against those in the congregation who had been treating the body and human sexuality as enemies of the spiritual life. Marriage, Paul insists, is God's design — not a concession to human weakness, but a gift. Within the covenant of marriage, husband and wife belong to one another in the most complete sense: "A wife does not have the right over her own body, but her husband does. In the same way, a husband does not have the right over his own body, but his wife does" (v. 4). That kind of reciprocal, mutual self-giving was nothing short of revolutionary in the ancient world, where wives were routinely treated as property. But Paul's vision is more than social equality — it is a picture of the gospel itself. The kind of love that lays down its preferences, its comfort, and its self-interest for the good of another is exactly the love Christ showed on the cross. Marriage, lived well, is a sermon.

Whatever season you are in, God has a purpose for it. Faithfulness — not status — is what he requires.

But Paul is equally clear — and equally emphatic — about singleness. "Each has his own gift from God," he writes in verse 7, "one person has this gift, another has that." He is not consoling single Christians by telling them their season will end soon. He is calling the entire church to see singleness for what it actually is: a gift, calibrated by a wise God for a specific person and purpose. The single person is not spiritually deficient, not in a holding pattern waiting for real life to begin. Paul goes further and points to a unique advantage the single life carries — the freedom of undivided devotion. Without the legitimate and beautiful demands of a spouse and family, the single believer can give to Christ and to the church a quality of focused attention that the married person must work harder to sustain. The greatest missionary the church has ever known was single. So was the greatest preacher, and the greatest prophet. God knows what he is doing when he calls someone to singleness, and he wastes nothing.

Chapter 7 also addresses a situation that was deeply pastoral and urgently practical in the early church: what happens when one spouse becomes a Christian, and the other doesn't? Paul's counsel is clear — stay. Don't dissolve the marriage in pursuit of a more spiritually comfortable home. His reasoning is striking: "The unbelieving husband is made holy by the wife, and the unbelieving wife is made holy by the husband" (v. 14). He does not mean the unbeliever is automatically saved. He means something more specific — that the believing spouse's presence in the home creates an environment saturated by gospel influence. The patience that doesn't crack under pressure. The forgiveness offered when it wasn't deserved. The joy that doesn't evaporate when things are hard. These are not character traits. They are evidence of another at work, and the people who live closest to us are always watching for something to believe in. The believing spouse in a mixed marriage is not a spiritual casualty. They are a missionary.

Midway through the chapter, Paul widens the lens dramatically. Whatever your relational season, he says, hold it with a loose grip — because "this world in its present form is passing away" (v. 31). This is not a call to emotional detachment or to stop caring about our marriages, our families, or our circumstances. It is a call to keep everything in proper order. The present age is real, but it is temporary. The relationships and structures we see around us are second-to-last, not ultimate. When we treat our marriage as the thing our life is organized around — the thing we cannot be content without — we have given it a weight it was never designed to bear. When we treat our singleness as the defining tragedy of our lives, we have given the present age more authority than it deserves. Paul's reminder is actually an act of mercy: you do not need your circumstances to change to be deeply, lastingly whole. That wholeness is already yours in Christ.

The theological spine of the entire chapter appears three times in eight verses, almost like Paul is pressing it into the reader with his thumb: "Let each one lead the life that the Lord assigned to him and to which God has called him" (v. 17). The problem Paul sees in Corinth is not really about marriage or singleness or any external circumstance. It is about discontentment — the restless conviction that faithfulness to God requires different circumstances than the ones he has actually given. We are all prone to this. The person who imagines they could serve God better if their marriage were different. The person waiting for their real life to begin once they find a spouse. The person convinced that the right change in circumstances would finally produce the spiritual life they have always wanted. Paul looks at all of us and says quietly but firmly: the problem is usually not around you. It is within you. And the God who called you to himself can address what is within you right here, in the life you already have.

First Corinthians 7 is not ultimately a chapter about marriage and singleness. It is a chapter about the lordship of Christ over every relational season of life. The married person who loves their spouse faithfully and raises their children in the fear of the Lord is not inferior to the devoted single missionary. The single person who gives their undivided attention to the church and the kingdom is not inferior to the devoted husband or wife. What makes either one holy is the same thing: knowing that they have been bought with a price, that they belong to Another, and that every season of life is an opportunity to live for his glory. This Sunday we will open 1 Corinthians 7 together and ask the question Paul wants all of us to sit with: What does faithful look like right here, right now, in the exact life God has given me? We hope you will join us.

Join us at Union Avenue Baptist Church — 2181 Union Avenue — Sundays at 10:45am, or online at unionavenue.org. This message is part of our ongoing series Gospel Centered Order through 1 Corinthians.