More Than a Way Out: Rethinking "Burning With Passion"
Inside Chapter Seven of 'Single Ever After'
If there’s one verse I’ve heard quoted to single Christians more than any other when it comes to their sexuality, it’s 1 Corinthians 7:9: “But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.”
I’ve heard it in countless sermons and podcasts about singleness. I’ve read it in innumerable books and articles about the unmarried life. It’s usually presented as a dire warning: If you can’t control yourself, you’d better get married.
But over time, our usage of it began to bother me. Not because I disagree with Paul (far from it!) but because I was no longer sure we were hearing him rightly. So I went back to the text. Dug deeply into it. Sat with the context. Read it within the rest of Scripture. And it changed how I understood this verse.
“[Sasha] was in her late thirties, had never been married, and was struggling with sexual purity. “Dani, I have all these desires bubbling up in me,” she said. “But I have no outlet for them. I don’t know what to do with them.”
She recounted how, on a recent Sunday, the preacher at her church had said that if any singles in the congregation were struggling with sexual temptation, then they needed to heed the apostle Paul’s words that “it is better to marry than to burn with passion” (1 Corinthians 7:9).
Even though he wasn’t aware of Sasha’s struggle, she said it felt as if this pastor was speaking right at her, telling her she needed to get married before her desires got the better of her. But what was she meant to do? She had been praying for marriage for years, all to no avail. She felt trapped, helpless and doomed. And she also felt angry at God. Why would he tell her she needed to get married to solve her problem with lust but then withhold marriage from her? How was she meant to indefinitely say no to sexual sin if she never had the opportunity to say yes to marriage?”
Single Ever After (p. 142)
Chapter Seven offers a reframing of this commonly misunderstood verse.
If you’re a single Christian struggling with sexual temptation, this chapter will meet you there. It will call you to a Spirit-led deeper understanding of how your body, desires, and discipleship are intended to all be held together in Christ. Oh, and it will also encourage you to think seriously, carefully and prayerfully about whether or not you should marry.
But this chapter also challenges married Christians to consider what assumptions we’ve absorbed about sex, desire, and discipleship—and where those assumptions have led us astray. Because here’s the thing: Paul isn’t saying that marriage is the solution to lust.
When we suggest that marriage is the cure for lust, we reverse God’s good order—turning sex into the defining reality and marriage into its container. But lust isn’t solved by marriage. Wedding vows don’t legitimise it.
The lust of a married (or single) person is always sinful. Which means Jesus Christ is our one and only remedy for it.
In this final chapter, I explore how Paul opens the eyes of both the single and married Christians alike to a possibility that the modern world tells us doesn’t exist: that self-control is not only possible but good, beautiful, and God-glorifying… when the gospel shapes it.
Pssst. Stay tuned next week for the final wrap-up post of this companion series on the eve of Single Ever After’s release!
Over to You
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