You ever wonder why the traditional family is generally associated with Christianity? It’s certainly not unique to Christians, but the further our culture gets from religious faith, the less it values marriage and children. Meanwhile, Christians are still quick to hold up family as a blessing from God. That makes sense, given how family is praised throughout the Bible.
But there’s something I think a lot of Christians don’t realize (at least not where I come from). God’s blessing on mankind to have a family is not just a blessing; it’s a command. In fact, it’s the first command given to us that we read about in the Bible.
In Genesis 1:28, after God has created the world and the animals, he creates man in his image (male and female), then blesses them with these words: “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” This is a command to all mankind. We can see this not only in the phrasing, but in how it fits into the chapter.
Just a few verses earlier (1:22), God had blessed the first animals with a similar command (“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth”). In fact, the second half of the phrase (“let birds multiply”) is spoken to nature, in a sense, just like all of God’s other creative phrases throughout the chapter: “Let there be light,” “Let the earth sprout vegetation,” and so on.
It’s also directed at all mankind, not just Adam and Eve as individuals. The first couple are representatives of the whole human race at this point in the story because they’re the only human beings who exist. That’s made especially clear by looking ahead to Genesis 9:1-7, where the same general command (“Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth… increase greatly on the earth and multiply in it”) is repeated to Noah’s family after the flood. Once again, they’re the only humans alive and therefore representative of the whole race.
True, it’s not called a command in either place, but that’s irrelevant. The Ten Commandments in Exodus 20 aren’t introduced as commands either, but they certainly count (and are later referred to as such). Furthermore, God gives this command in the same breath that he tells man to rule over the animals and subdue the earth in 1:28. When it’s repeated after the flood in 9:1-7, it frames God’s commands to execute murderers and avoid eating blood, both of which are still binding on Christians in the New Testament (Romans 13:3-4 and Acts 15:20).
None of these divine commands are revoked or superseded at any point in Scripture. And they’re given to all mankind, not just Israel under the Law of Moses. Most people (at least Christians) would agree with all that. And those who would debate it continue to live as though it’s true; not even the most ardent environmentalists or climate change activists will give up their lives for animals or refuse to live off the resources of the earth.
Genesis is about the beginning of things, and here we see the beginning of God’s earthly plan for mankind. It begins with having a family. And I say “having a family” for a reason. Genesis 1:28 goes hand in hand with 2:24, which says “a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.” These two passages aren’t given in chronological order. Genesis 1 is a general account of the whole creation that culminates with man; Genesis 2 retells the creation of man specifically. So while chapter 1 gives the first command to have children, chapter 2 gives us marriage as the prerequisite. Taken together, they can be fairly summed up as one general command to have a family.
And it is a general command, meant for the vast majority of people (and introduced as a blessing for the good of the world). There are a couple exceptions, to be sure, but if someone doesn’t qualify for those, we can safely assume this command is applicable to all of us.
The first exception is a no-brainer, and that’s anyone who simply can’t have a family. Some people are unable to have children, but they’re obviously not disobeying God (especially if they adopt). Some people can’t get married, usually because they never find someone. And some people live in constant danger or enslavement. None of those people would necessarily be refusing God’s command by remaining single or childless. It may just be the hand they were dealt.
For these reasons, we should all seek to marry and have children. It should be viewed as not just a good but necessary part of human life. Some people would love the opportunity who never get it. All the more reason to embrace it if we can. To intentionally choose not to seems like a waste of God’s greatest earthly blessing.
In the Old Testament, God gave the Sabbath Day to Israel as a command and a blessing for their own benefit. There were legitimate reasons—even for Jews—to break the Sabbath. Jesus referenced this when he spoke of rescuing a fallen ox (Luke 14:5) or keeping up the priestly temple duties (Matthew 12:5). But in most cases, it was obviously meant to be kept and obeyed. Yet despite the fact God gave the Sabbath for the Jews’ own blessing and benefit, they continued to break it throughout the Old Testament because it didn’t suit them. Not only did they ignore what God told them to do, but they rejected his blessing to do it.
The other exception is in 1 Corinthians 7. If we read this chapter “literally” or “at face value,” we can easily come away thinking Christians are better off remaining single. Indeed, the Apostle Paul seems to say exactly that. But I think that’s a bit of a misunderstanding. After all, Paul tells women later in this very book to wear head coverings and long hair (11:2-16) or to keep silent in church (14:34-35; also 1 Timothy 2:11-12). Elsewhere, he tells them to avoid jewelry or expensive clothes (1 Timothy 2:9), which Peter also emphasizes (1 Peter 3:3). Obviously, we shouldn’t dismiss any of these passages because they’re culturally unpopular or we don’t like the way they sound, but most Christians would agree that a straightforward reading is overly simplistic. Difficult passages—especially those which seem contradictory to the rest of Scripture—require a bit more careful study and should be interpreted in light of the entire Bible.
Paul was an Apostle chosen by God. He isn’t going to contradict everything the Bible says about marriage. God’s command in Genesis still stands, and Paul isn’t making any effort to overturn it here. Yet he seems to say people should only get married to avoid temptation (1 Cor. 7:1-7). That can’t be a universal statement, because the Bible tells us marriage was instituted as an inherent good for mankind in and of itself. Rather, Paul is recommending something specific. To be sure, he seems to want a lot more Christians to pursue it. (He says as much several times in 7:1, 7-8, 32-35, and 38.) But it’s more than just a simple decision to be single. It’s a lifestyle.
Here’s something that must be said: Paul never speaks of this lifestyle as something God calls anyone to. He advises Christians to choose it if they’re able, but he never suggests God has required it of anyone. In fact, he clarifies that he’s not giving a command from the Lord, but his own godly judgment (in 7:6-7, 40). When he admits that only some will take his advice, he says we all have our own gift from God (7:7), not that God has called any of them to singleness per se. (That’s something of a misconception.) He only uses the word calling when he speaks of becoming a Christian or accepting our “lot in life” as assigned by God—which includes things like slavery and circumcision (7:17-24). Those are things people don’t generally choose and would more closely align with people who can’t marry than those who choose not to. Because once again, marriage is something we should generally choose.
It should be noted that Paul wrote these words to a church that seems to have been spiritually immature (1 Corinthians 3:1-3) and particularly prone to sexual sin (chapter 5 tells us one of their members was sleeping with his father’s wife). So it makes sense that Paul would try to steer as many of them as possible away from carnality and toward a more chaste lifestyle, not for the sake of chastity itself (the Bible doesn’t really elevate virginity over marriage) but for the sake of commitment to the Lord. He also repeatedly states that people should marry if they can’t resist. But he doesn’t spend any time on this subject when writing to other churches. And he qualifies it here by saying “in view of the present distress” (7:26) as if it were especially relevant for the Corinthians themselves.
Ultimately, we can determine what kind of lifestyle Paul is suggesting by looking at his main argument and interpreting it against the rest of the Bible. In 7:32-35, we see that Paul is talking about giving up marriage to give more time and attention to God. It’s not just about remaining single. People often do that to focus on their own interests; but that would miss the point entirely, especially in light of the biblical mandate to have a family. There’s nothing wrong with pursuing other interests, of course, but doing so is no excuse for avoiding marriage.
No one should give up on the obligation of marriage and family if they aren’t going to obligate themselves that much more to God. If that sounds daunting, it’s because it is. Having a family is the general calling (given by command) on all of us, which is itself a daunting task. But the only good biblical excuse for choosing not to is if we use our singleness to sacrifice more of ourselves to God. That’s not easy; two of the only people in the Bible who definitely lived such a life were Paul and Jesus—and those are hard acts to follow. Jesus himself affirmed that only some could do it, though he had a more colorful way of saying it: “Some have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom” (Matthew 19:12), which once again acknowledges that it’s a personal choice and not something God calls people to do.
In Genesis, God created woman as a cure to man’s loneliness—the first thing seen as “not good” in the Bible, juxtaposed against God’s “very good” creation and in spite of man’s relationship with God. As human beings, our relationship with God doesn’t answer all of our earthly needs. We still need food and water and air. And we still need relationships with other human beings. That doesn’t mean loneliness can only be cured by marriage or that it automatically is, but it does show us what God intended as the ideal relationship on which all others are founded.
Besides the general command to have a family, Paul says plenty of good things about marriage in other books. He’s not talking here about being single because we want to. He’s talking about dedicating our lives to God in such a way that we cannot if we’re married (again, 7:32-35). If the Christian life we’re living doesn’t preclude us from having a relationship—if we could do as much for God with a relationship as without one—then 1 Corinthians 7 doesn’t apply to us. We could almost certainly serve God and still have a family, because that’s what the vast majority of Christians have always done. The two things are not mutually exclusive. But what Paul describes in 1 Corinthians 7 is a choice to do something hard for God. If a person wants to be single, they aren’t making a sacrifice at all or doing anything hard for God; they’re doing what comes easy for themselves.
Most Christians are married—even those who live a life of service to God, like missionaries. And most of them would probably say their marriage (and children) made them better Christians with a stronger faith. It’s true, they have earthly concerns for one another that wouldn’t otherwise have distracted them, just as Paul said. But we all have earthly concerns that have to be subordinated to God. If we’re being honest, most single people could double or triple their service to God and still have a family—if they learned to give up their own time. Most of them live relatively normal lives with jobs and hobbies and way too much time on their smartphones. So if they’re giving up marriage, it’s to have more time for themselves—time for things other than what God wants for all of us.
If we all listed the godliest people we know—or rather, those who do the most for God—almost everyone we think of would probably be married. If any of them were single, would either be by chance or because they live the kind of life Paul’s talking about here. It wouldn’t be some average single who opted out of marriage and still makes time for all the same things as everyone else. And there’s a very good chance that even those single people would be doing less for God than a lot of married Christians did 150 years ago before we had all our modern distractions and our stupid smartphones.
Of course, if someone goes into permanent ministry or missionary work, they can forego marriage according to 1 Corinthians 7 and focus on their work for the Lord. That decision would be between them and God. But the best thing most of us can and will do is live a quiet, godly life minding our own affairs (1 Thessalonians 4:10-12) and providing for our household (1 Timothy 5:8)—as Paul himself advises in other books. The first job we have on this earth, apart from having faith and sharing it with others, is to get married and have a family, to provide grandchildren and nieces and nephews to our family, to raise good citizens and send them out as Christians into our communities and our country and our world. That in itself is a sacrifice that a lot of people don’t want to make nowadays. And I hate to see Christians falling into that trap.
Again, the only thing most of us would have to give up for marriage or children is time to ourselves. But that’s the whole point: to give all that up for someone else. That’s why we’re here. For most people, being married and having a family is the best way to understand and live out the kind of sacrificial love Christ showed us. We can show that kind of love for our parents and siblings, even our friends and neighbors. But it doesn’t replace having our own families. Turning that down—the idea of two flesh becoming one, the idea of raising our own children who depend on us at all times—is like saying we would rather not have the burden of being responsible for someone else or the blessing of knowing someone is responsible for us. But that’s what marriage is about—putting your spouse first, looking after and taking care of someone who will do the same for you.
There’s a reason Jesus’s relationship with the church is compared to marriage. If someone doesn’t understand how important it is to be married, I’m not sure they understand how important Christ is to the church—and how important he should be to us. Paul says women should submit to their husbands and men should love their wives (Ephesians 5:22-33). Does that mean women shouldn’t love their husbands? No, but that part probably comes easier for them. It’s harder to submit, which is why he emphasizes it. On the other hand, men have to be told not just to love their wives, but to love them like Jesus did; because men often want to make their wives submit, and that’s not their job. Yes, they have a higher authority, but they have a higher responsibility to go along with it. Paul said this was all meant to reflect what Jesus did for the church and how we should relate to him as the bride of Christ; in teaching this, he reiterates the call to marriage from Genesis 2 (Ephesians 5:31-32).
Interestingly enough, even the great commission—“Go into all the world and make disciples of all nations” (Matthew 28:19)—is a sort of play on the first command. We’re called as Christians to spiritually populate the earth where the human race has been called to physically populate it. But these days we don’t do a very good job of either.
If a Christian said they didn’t feel called to share their faith, they would be wrong. When we’re given a command in the Bible, generally speaking, we don’t have to consult our feelings on it. We don’t have to ask if we’re called to do things the Bible tells us to. There are lots of things we don’t feel like doing. We don’t feel like sharing our faith. We don’t feel like serving God. And we may not feel like getting married or having children. But we’re still called to it as sons and daughters of Adam.
Even if there were no mandate from God—even if a person could be perfectly happy without marriage and family—it would still be objectively better to pursue them because it is morally better. Having a family not only improves our character, it brings us more joy than we can otherwise know. We do not and cannot know what we’re missing until we experience the best life has to offer. Despite all the heartache that may come with marriage and family—and it can be severe, as even the Bible attests—it’s still worth the risk. Whatever happiness one might have without a family will not compare to what they’ll have with it. It is both unfair and unhealthy to deny ourselves that privilege if we don’t have to. Yes, those who give it up to devote themselves to God will know a different kind of joy and fulfillment. But most of us can and should serve God as we live our lives—and we should do that to the fullest extent that we’re able.
The Bible has nothing but praise for marriage and family. We’re told to honor it alongside brotherly love and hospitality (Hebrews 13:1-4). Except in very specific cases, it’s simply assumed throughout Scripture that a person will and should have them; some of the men and women in the Bible even make long journeys and desperate prayers to acquire them, which God often honors. Peter points to Old Testament women as examples of holiness for the respect they have to their husbands (1 Peter 3:5-6). Paul likewise advises young women to be good wives and mothers (Titus 2:4-5) and in fact counts this as a good and godly result of divine grace (2:11-12); he even urges young widows to marry again as a general rule for fear of their being tempted by worldly distractions (1 Timothy 5:11-14)—almost the opposite of what he tells the Corinthians and proof that lust isn’t the only concern for the unmarried. Elsewhere, he instructs church leaders to be married to one woman (1 Timothy 3:2, 12; Titus 1:6) without even suggesting they remain single.
We can usually look around and see that everyone else is better off when they’re married and happier with a family. Choosing not to have that is a disservice to ourselves and I think a disservice to God. One might even say it’s an insult to those who want it but can’t have it. It’s also a disservice to our families, our communities, our country, and the world. In a world with a declining birth rate, we need children more than ever. We need good people, especially Christians, raising families.
The world is a better place when they do. And they’ll almost certainly be happier with that choice.
Think Truth 