Will I Be Single Forever?

John Piper

I was single all through my twenties, and I enjoyed it a lot of the time. When I wanted a
particular food for dinner, I ate it. When I wanted to take a week to hike a one-hundred-mile
section of the Appalachian Trail, I hiked it. When I felt called to pursue graduate work in another
country, I went. And there were other, less selfish benefits, including more time and energy for
building deep friendships and fruitful ministry.
But, all in all, I found singleness pretty tough. There were seasons of terrible loneliness when I
wondered if God would ever give me a lifelong companion. At times I was like a severed
powerline, the voltage of unfulfilled longing causing me to thrash about in ways that hurt others.
I was sometimes jealous of married friends. I did not always navigate singleness with grace,
poise, deep faith, and steadfast joy. Instead, I blundered between enjoyment and regret, happiness
and longing, purity and sin.
I wish someone had helped me understand, and then live, my singleness in the light of eternity. I
think it would have helped me to enjoy a godlier, more productive, more contented life during
those years.

A Stable Ground for Soaring Hope

Eternity changes everything, including our singleness. By eternity I mean the future new
creation God describes in the Bible. This is a future beyond our wildest imaginings and most
fervent hopes. Its this present world renewed, restored, and remade into a perfect place with no
more sin, suffering, brokenness, tears, pain, or death.
The new creation will be far better even than the original Eden, because 1) Jesus will be
physically present there (Revelation 22:1) and 2) it will last forever, with its inhabitants never
falling into sin unlike Adam and Eve. In other words, the worlds perfect future will be better
than its perfect past. Eden was lovely fragility. The new creation will be gorgeous stability. Eden
was like an exquisite china bowl beautiful but breakable. The new creation will be like the
Alps breathtaking and immovable.
Were imperfect people living in an imperfect world, but this perfect future becomes our future
when were united to a perfect Savior through faith. We can then be completely assured that this
future is ours. In the Bible, that firm assurance is called hope.
Christian hope is the confidence that an amazingly good future is securely ours, and this hope
changes the way we view our present. It strengthens and equips us in every life situation,
including singleness. It heightens our restlessness for the new creation, and that restlessness
makes us more content.

To Grow More Content, Get More Restless

One of the feelings I often experienced as a single person was lack of contentment. Even some of
my most enjoyable adventures and sweetest experiences were shot through with a longing to
share them with someone else.
A robust longing for eternity helps us with our discontentment by increasing our restlessness.
That sounds like a contradiction, but its not. The apostle Paul was a tremendously restless
person, one who said he strained forward and yearned for Gods final future (Philippians 3:13
14). And yet he also said that he had learned the secret of contentment in any circumstance
(Philippians 4:12). The two are intimately related after all.
The reason we grow discontent in our singleness (or our job, or marriage, or car, or children, or
anything else) is because that person or thing (whatever it is) looks so big and eternity looks so
small. If you hold a coin close enough to your face, it will obscure an entire city skyline.
When our present circumstances look bigger than eternity, we have lost perspective. When we
lose perspective, we tend to load too much of our contentment onto something never designed to
bear the weight. We look to a spouse, a friend, a vacation, or an accomplishment to give us the
happiness they never can.

Your Marital Status in Heaven

The problem with this way of living is that it leads to perpetual discontentment. If God gives us a
better job but were still seeing our job as bigger, more important, and more meaningful than the
new creation, well either sacrifice everything to excel at it, or be destroyed if we lose it.
If were single and all we can see is our longing for a spouse rather than eternity with Christ,
well load down a God-sent spouse with the crushing weight of needy expectation, or become a
resentful or cynical or broken-hearted single. A discontented single person will become a
discontented spouse and then a discontented parent . . . until eternity breaks in and moves to the
center.
God is more concerned with a change in our perspective than a change in our marital status. If
eternity is at the center, and a husband or wife or child fails us or if we dont have the
husband, wife, or children were longing for it will be painful but well be okay, because we
know a perfect eternity is still ours. Theres ballast in our boat, and it will hold us steady through
the disappointments, missed opportunities, and tragedies of this life.
The more restless we are for the new creation the more our thoughts and emotions are
captivated by it the less well be shaken by disappointment in this life and the more well see
every present blessing not as a final destination but as a signpost pointing toward eternity. The
more restless we become, the more contented we are.

Perhaps if youre a single person, your identity as a single has moved to the center of how you
think about yourself. But it appears from Jesuss teaching that in eternity well all be single.
There wont be marriage in the new creation. What will define us forever will not be our marital
status, but our enjoyment of the perfect presence of Christ.
That means a single person who loves Jesus is much more like a married person who loves Jesus
than like a single person who doesnt know him. Well know Jesus forever and be loved by him
for eternity. This is way more central to our identity than our marital status. Dont think of
yourself as unwanted by any prospective spouses. Know yourself as loved forever by Jesus.
Its likely that for many (not all) singles, there will be moments and seasons of loneliness and
longing times when it feels awkward to be the only single person at the table or the party.
That was certainly my experience. But knowing our God and his final future for us plus knowing
ourselves in light of that future can produce a profound contentment in our present.