1. Love is much bigger than romantic love.
Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world. (1 John 4:8, 9)
We often say “love” when we mean sexual intimacy, or romantic love. But real love is far bigger than that. Real love is the giving of self to others in sacrificial service. It comes from God and it overflows supremely in the love that Christian believers show for one another and for a needy world. It is marked by a desire for the very best for someone else, rather than the yearning to have our own needs met.
2. Romantic love ought to be about real love (but often isn’t).
Husbands, love your wives. (Ephesians 5:2). . . train the young women to love their husbands. (Titus 2:4)
The wonderful chemistry of sexual desire and delight, with all its mysterious power and—at best—its glorious sense of release and contentment, is a powerful and yet dangerous thing. We all know something of its power. But what about the danger?
The danger is that something intended to fuel our self-giving becomes an engine to drive our self-serving. The words “I love you” can mean “Actually, I love myself and I want you.” And so the very word “love” comes to have two contradictory meanings: selfish desire and genuine, caring love. When romantic love is, in reality, a mask for self-serving, it becomes—like all idols—disappointing; it can never perform for us what it promises.
3. Romantic love needs the protection of marriage.
You shall not commit adultery. (Exodus 20:14)
We are foolish and naïve if we suppose that we can form stable romantic partnerships as isolated individuals. The sad statistics tell a different story. From casual one-night stands right through to the shared ownership of a property in unmarried cohabitation (now pretty much the norm in many western countries), such sexual relationships are far less stable than marriage.
Sure, marriage is no copper-bottomed guarantee of a lasting relationship. But, precisely because it begins with a public promise of lifelong faithfulness, and is supported by family, friends, and wider society, it stands a much better chance of lasting the course. This needs to be said more often. Unmarried cohabitation is a far more widespread challenge to God’s standards than the hot button issues like same-sex marriage (important as that is).
4. Romantic love was created for the service of God.
The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to work it and keep it . . . Then the LORD God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him. (Genesis 2:15, 18)
What was “not good” about the man being “alone”? We tend to think the poor man was lonely. But the problem is not his state of mind; after all, some more men could have been created to keep him company and be his friends! No, the problem was that he had a big job to do, looking after God’s great parkland paradise garden in Eden.
That is why God says he will make him not a companion but a “helper.” The woman comes alongside the man to help. Romantic love in marriage is intended to help us serve God together in his world. It is not a soft-focus, inward-looking thing of each gazing into the other’s eyes and expecting the other to be “all I need.” No, that will always disappoint. Marriage is, at its best, a delightful love and intimacy that enables husband and wife to serve God joyfully together.
5. Unmarried love is also for the service of God.
You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. (Deuteronomy 6:5)You shall love your neighbor as yourself. (Leviticus 19:18)
You don’t need to be married to serve God. Each of us is called to love God and then, for God’s sake, to love the particular people whom God sets before us (our “neighbor”). We don’t love God any better for being married, or any worse; nor do we love God any better for being single, or any worse. But we will serve God in different ways. Well, some of the ways are the same—living godly lives, praying, giving, and caring. But some are particular to marriage, like building a home with a husband and wife and, God willing, with children.
6. God sometimes gives us the gift of being unmarried and sometimes the gift of being married.
I wish that all were as I myself am. But each has his own gift from God, one of one kind and one of another. (1 Corinthians 7:7)
Paul was unmarried, at least when he wrote 1 Corinthians. He may have been a widower. He speaks of his unmarried state as a “gift from God.” He doesn’t mean a subjective feeling of being happy to be unmarried, of not wanting to be married. That is a common, and dangerous, misunderstanding. Plenty who are unmarried would love to be married, just as some who are married sometimes wish they weren’t. Our desires vary in all sorts of ways.
No, I know I have the gift of being married because I am married. Paul knew he had the gift of being unmarried because he was not (then) married. Before I was married, God gave me the gift of being unmarried. If my wife dies before me, God will again give me that gift. My challenge—and yours—is to accept my condition as God’s loving gift to me, to receive it from his hands. Not an easy challenge, but a good one.
