I can still remember the pang of distress that flushed through my body when I discovered that our country of service was no longer classified as “unreached” by the Joshua Project. Four percent of the ninety-million-person population was reportedly Christian. That percentage is twice the standard threshold for qualifying as unreached.

Since we had gone to the field with the idea that the unreached were of highest priority, we wondered, If we are not serving among the statistically unreached, can we justify being here? One of the important lessons we’ve learned is that missionaries serving among the reached can still have a profound impact on the unreached by leaning into the global church.

To be clear, identifying and pursuing people who do not have access to Scripture, discipleship, and healthy churches remains vital within the global church’s missions strategy. Wherever barriers to access exist — and wherever those barriers are most impermeable — missionaries should strategically seek to overcome them for the glory of God and the good of his people.

However, we also would do well to remember that getting the gospel to every tribe, tongue, nation, and people — however one understands those categories — is a vision and responsibility given to the global church. To see what I mean, consider the ministry of Robert Morrison (1782–1834), nineteenth-century missionary to the Chinese.

Reaching by Leaving

In 1807, Robert Morrison was appointed by the London Mission Society (LMS) to serve in China. He was the first Protestant missionary the LMS sent to East Asia. At the time, however, China was notoriously closed to outsiders — especially missionaries. The foreign trading companies that had established themselves in China were also averse to hiring missionaries. So, Morrison’s initial attempts to begin ministry in China were met with resistance and false starts.

In the eleventh year after he was appointed, however, Morrison took a fresh angle on ministry to the Chinese: he left China. Morrison relocated to neighboring Malacca (modern-day Malaysia), providing him the opportunity to engage Chinese people living there — people who could freely return to China and serve as native missionaries among the people he had struggled to reach. Despite the counterintuitive nature of leaving the country to reach its people, Morrison realized a strategic way to reach China was to prepare a missionary force of Chinese people who would assume their Great Commission responsibility, carrying the gospel farther into China than he could.

Following Morrison’s Example

Today, despite the best efforts of the Chinese government, the gospel has spread all over China, with Chinese believers leading the way. There are many other places, however, that present similar difficulties to foreign access as China did in Morrison’s day. The context my wife and I served in is surrounded by such places.

Though we found ourselves in a country no longer classified as unreached, some of our dear friends were local believers whom we saw God mobilize to go and serve among unreached people in nearby countries. We did not strategically design this plan — God providentially allowed us to watch it develop as the national believers sensed the weight of the Great Commission for the first time.

Better yet, a more intentional example of this strategy is present in a church I will call First Baptist Church in a major city of Southeast Asia. This country is populated by almost seventy unreached people groups whose native lands are notoriously difficult for foreigners to access. Despite operating in English, First Baptist Church has become a hub for gospel advance among foreigners, nationals, and the unreached by leaning into and mobilizing local believers into hard-to-reach places. Consider three elements of the church’s strategy.

1. Modeling a Healthy Church

First, this church has established itself in a city that is accessible to foreigners. At the same time, First Baptist distinguishes itself from other international churches by its healthy ecclesiology: it is led by a plurality of biblically qualified elders, it is congregationally governed, it promotes expositional preaching of the word, and it practices believer’s baptism. The members of this church observe the one-another commands of Scripture and engage actively in evangelism in their local communities.

“Missionaries serving among the reached can still have a profound impact on the unreached.”

This model contrasts with a more common model of an international church, where doctrinal statements and ministerial practices prioritize breadth rather than depth, often sacrificing biblical convictions in order to gain social community. Instead of aiming at an essentials-only vision of the church, First Baptist calls its members to covenant together under explicit convictions and doctrines that intend to protect the integrity of the body and its ability to display and convey the gospel. The healthy example of a convictional church benefits believers and unbelievers — whether foreign or local — in this city.

2. Developing Indigenous Leadership

Few of the nationals surrounding First Baptist speak English well enough to participate in church services. However, some are multilingual. The elders of First Baptist have taken special care to develop a ministry internship designed to disciple nationals toward the maturity, competency, and character qualifications required of ministry leaders and biblically qualified elders.

This effort has been led by a local believer — we will call him Paul — who has been a partner in ministry from the early stages of the church. Paul serves as a pastor at the church and feels the weight of the Great Commission to equip and go with his own people in missionary service.

While the internal partnership between foreign and local pastors is beautiful in and of itself, the next step in Paul’s ministry is to develop a core team of other nationals and to be sent by this English-speaking church to establish a local-language church nearby. Lord willing, in the next few years, this new church will be serving as a pillar and buttress of the truth for the local population in their own tongue.

Already, then, this English-speaking church is having an impact on the local context, partnering with and mobilizing local believers to Great Commission obedience. Although progress is slow and requires the initial partners to have proficiency in English, this pathway holds promise for seeing the gospel advance, disciples mature, and churches established in the broader context.

3. Reaching Unreached Language Groups

Along with the multiplication mentioned above, First Baptist also serves as the staging ground for two teams that intend to plant churches in other parts of the country among unreached language groups. Because these teams are composed primarily of missionaries (at least currently), they need to learn the culture and trade language of the country before attempting to enter the subculture and minority language groups they are targeting. Again, Paul has been a key partner in consulting and advising these missionaries.

Language learning and cultural adaptation take considerable time — usually two to three years to attain fluency and cultural savvy. It can be unhealthy for believers to spend those years without gathering with a church. By landing in this major city, both teams have had access to formal language-learning opportunities, have been immersed in the culture, and have also been members of a healthy church that aims to reach its neighbors. These teams are already in contact with national church-planting partners in their target location.

When the time comes for these teams to launch into their second context, First Baptist will be involved in sending them to their fields of service. While they are members at First Baptist, the missionary teams can also mobilize locals to join these pioneer church plants as they prepare to launch. More than that, they provide a vision and example for the nationals of how to strategically engage needs beyond their context. The missionary teams are already challenging nationals to respond to the Great Commission by making them aware that the majority of unreached groups in the area are far more inaccessible to foreigners. The best mobilization comes not from voices pushing you from behind but from voices calling you from ahead.

Don’t Panic — Mobilize

The historical example of Robert Morrison and the contemporary example of First Baptist are not a critique of or replacement strategy for direct missionary engagement in pioneer settings. The church in the West still needs to send missionaries directly to unreached people groups. However, the church’s missionary force does not come only from Western countries. All believers everywhere inherit the Great Commission and have a role in the “all nations” aspect of our disciple-making command.

The danger that “reached” places might get more attention from Western missionaries because they are easier to access and more comfortable is real. However, Westerners cannot neglect the opportunities to raise up and mobilize local believers in those places and equip them to go farther than Westerners can go on their own.

Morrison’s example reminds us that some places considered reached might become staging grounds for the equipping and mobilizing of a missionary force that will outlast our lifetimes and extend beyond our limitations. So, if you find yourself serving in a place that the Joshua Project deems “reached,” don’t panic — mobilize.

Will male-female complementarity exist in the new heavens and new earth? If so, what can we learn about the continued distinctions between men and women in the new creation?

Scriptural data on the contours of the life to come are limited, so we must admit the speculative nature of our question up front. However, we can draw reasonable inferences from what the Bible does say about life in the resurrection, particularly from how the Bible treats masculinity and femininity in creation, after the fall, and in redemption.

Grace Restores Nature

Before considering complementarity in creation, it is necessary to introduce a theological concept on which the logic of this essay depends. According to Dutch Reformed theologian Herman Bavinck, a key Reformational principle holds that grace does not destroy nature. What God created in the beginning is natural, and what is natural is good and not undone by God’s redemptive purposes. Rather, grace restores nature. Bavinck explains,

Grace serves, not to take up humans into a supernatural order, but to free them from sin. Grace is opposed not to nature, only to sin. . . . Grace restores nature and takes it to its highest pinnacle, but it does not add to it any new and heterogeneous constituents. (Reformed Dogmatics, 3:577)

Nature (which in this context is another word for God’s original design) is not inherently bad. Nature is good, but it has been corrupted by sin. In fact, sin is a privation and corruption of a created good. God’s gospel mission in Christ is to rid the world of sin and reform and restore nature in the new creation, taking it “to its highest pinnacle.” Importantly, the restoration of the created order includes God’s complementary design for male and female.

Some theological systems treat natural differences — such as those between men and women — as something bad to overcome. But after God created the world and everything in it, he called all that he had made “good,” and then he said it was “very good” after creating the man and the woman equal yet different in his image (Genesis 1:31). With God, we should confess that complementary difference is “very good,” and woe to those who call evil good and good evil (Isaiah 5:20).

Complementarity is creational, good, and part of what God redeems in the gospel.

Complementarity in Creation

Origin stories often provide crucial information for understanding a subject. The early chapters of Genesis are foundational for a properly biblical anthropology, and from these chapters we learn that complementarity — equal value with different callings — is original to and constitutive of humanity.

Genesis 1:26–28 introduces humanity’s form and function, teaching that God made mankind in his image to come in two varieties: male and female. The original Hebrew words for male (zakar) and female (neqebah) in Genesis 1 make subtle etymological references to the natural reproductive differences between men and women. These natural differences (form) ground and point toward their meaning and fulfillment (function) in marriage and procreation.

Jesus taught his disciples this connection between marriage and God’s complementary design in Matthew 19:4–5, where he connects the purpose of marriage in Genesis 2:24 (“Therefore . . .”) with God’s design in Genesis 1:27 (“male and female”):

Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, and said, “Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh”?

Maleness and femaleness, masculinity and femininity, are inherently complementary, meaning not only that we understand one vis-à-vis the other, but also that each bears witness to and complements the other as they both point toward their fulfillment in marriage. How God created “in the beginning” informs God’s purposes for his creation. And in God’s grand design, we learn that God created marriage itself to be a mysterious sign with meaning in the gospel (Ephesians 5:31–32).

So God’s complementary design has both a natural and a supernatural purpose. The natural purpose of male-female complementarity is marriage and procreation — cornerstones of the natural family, which is the bedrock of human society. The supernatural purpose of complementarity is to display the good news that Jesus has given his life for his bride, the church.

Complementarity After the Fall

When sin entered the world, complementarity was affected but not destroyed. We see this clearly in the curses God pronounces over creation in Genesis 3:16. Procreation continues in a fallen world, but it is more difficult. Marriage likewise continues, but it is also more difficult. Strife and conflict afflict the relationship between husband and wife. The wife tends not to willingly submit to her husband, but she has desires contrary to his leadership — or she resigns herself to being a doormat. And the husband tends not to relate to his wife in love as his equal, but with harsh rule — or he resigns himself to being a pushover.

Either way, God’s original complementary design is defaced by sin, but it is not erased. In a fallen world, we continue to bear God’s image as males and females, and marriage and procreation continue as a common grace for the continuance of the human race and as a picture of God’s ongoing activity in the world.

Complementarity in Redemption

God answers sin in the gospel. Not only has Jesus paid the penalty of sin through his substitutionary death on the cross, but he has begun a redemptive work in creation everywhere the gospel takes root.

It is through complementary procreation and childbearing that redemption is both promised and ultimately realized. In the midst of cursing the world on account of mankind’s sin, God promises to raise up an offspring of the woman who will put down the rebellion instigated by the serpent. In Genesis 3:15, God addresses the serpent within earshot of the man and the woman:

I will put enmity between you and the woman,     and between your offspring and her offspring;he shall bruise your head,     and you shall bruise his heel.

As the biblical genealogies testify, generations of complementary relations between men and women brought this promise to the brink of fulfillment. Then, through the supernatural conception by a betrothed-and-then-married virgin, the promise was finally realized. Jesus is begotten of his heavenly Father and an earthly mother — the God-man come to earth to redeem his bride, the church. Complementarity permeates the gospel.

The New Testament affirms the continued goodness of complementary differences, particularly in marriage and procreation. The apostles exhort all Christians everywhere to faith and good works, affirming male-female equality of value in their redeemed standing before God (Galatians 3:28). But the apostles also give the New Testament churches differing, enduring, sex-specific instructions, including to the unmarried, in places like Titus 2 and in the household codes in Ephesians 5, Colossians 3, and 1 Peter 3. Grace does not erase nature but restores it — including our complementary natures and callings.

For instance, in 1 Timothy 2:11–15, Paul instructs women to act differently from men in the covenant community. Just as Adam was created as the covenant head of his wife, men are called to covenant leadership in marriage and in the church, and women are called to embrace their God-given design under the leadership of qualified men in the covenant community. In 1 Timothy 2:15, Paul mentions the archetypically feminine act, childbearing, for women to embrace in faith, love, holiness, and self-control. Many commentators see a reference in this verse to the unique role women played in the history of redemption to bring about the birth of the Savior. It was through childbirth, after all, that Jesus came into the world to bring salvation. Men are instructed to embrace their masculinity and women to embrace their femininity in the eternal life they have in Christ.

We can see how the gospel answers sin and restores nature also in the instructions Paul gives husbands and wives in Ephesians 5:22–33. The sex-specific commands for husbands and wives in this passage directly answer the propensities toward sin listed in the curses of Genesis 3:16. As the redeemed, husbands are commanded to love their wives as Christ loves the church rather than to rule harshly over them. Wives are commanded to submit to their own husbands rather than to nurse desires contrary to their leadership.

This sampling of passages makes it clear that even as we are made more into the image of Christ (2 Corinthians 3:18; Romans 8:29; Colossians 3:10; Ephesians 4:24), we embrace our masculinity and femininity as the God-given way we image him (Genesis 1:27).

Complementarity in the New Creation

The resurrection of Jesus offers an important clue for life in the new creation. The Bible teaches that Jesus rose from the dead as the “firstfruits” of the new creation (1 Corinthians 15:20, 23). Firstfruits portend not only that more will follow, but also what will follow.

When Jesus rose from the dead, he demonstrated continuity between his bodily existence before and after his death. Jesus was born into the world as a human male, lived a perfect life as a human male, died as a human male, and was resurrected as a human male. Francis Turretin rightly connects Christ’s resurrection to the resurrection believers should anticipate:

When he rose, Christ received the same body he had before and the same flesh which he had assumed and in which he died, for what he once took he never laid aside (Psalm 16:10; John 2:19; Acts 2:31). Hence he significantly says, “It is I myself” (Luke 24:39). Such ought to be our resurrection. Our bodies ought to be no other than those which were deposited in the earth. (Institutes of Elenctic Theology, 3:572–73)

At the resurrection, all the redeemed will be raised with bodies in the same way that Jesus was raised. Men and women will be reconstituted with imperishable male bodies and female bodies, respectively. In this way, we can affirm that maleness and femaleness, which imply masculinity and femininity, will persist in the new creation.

But what will this masculinity and femininity look like? We find another clue to life in the resurrection from Jesus in Matthew 22. This passage is a hotspot for speculation, and for good reason. In this passage, Jesus answers the Sadducees’ attempt to stump him with a question about a woman who was successively married to seven brothers. To which of the seven brothers would this woman be married in the resurrection? But Jesus is not stumped:

You know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: “I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”? He is not God of the dead, but of the living. (Matthew 22:29–32)

Jesus’s reply contains two pieces of information about life in the resurrection: we will not marry or be given in marriage, and we will be like the angels. Mainstream Christian orthodoxy has concluded from Jesus’s teaching that there will no longer be marriage in the new creation. But if marriage and procreation cease, then will maleness and femaleness cease?

This conclusion does not necessarily follow, in part because of the theological logic of resurrection (presented above) and in part because of Jesus’s own words. Indeed, the words Jesus uses in Matthew 22:30 appear to affirm the continuance of differences between the two sexes. The words “marry” and “given in marriage” refer to the uniquely male and female roles in marriage. In other words, the activity will cease, but not the differentiated identities. As Augustine observes,

In the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven (Matthew 22:30). They shall be equal to the angels in immortality and happiness, not in flesh, nor in resurrection, which the angels did not need, because they could not die. The Lord then denied that there would be in the resurrection, not women, but marriages; and he uttered this denial in circumstances in which the question mooted would have been more easily and speedily solved by denying that the female sex would exist, if this had in truth been foreknown by him. But, indeed, he even affirmed that the sex should exist by saying, They shall not be given in marriage, which can only apply to females; Neither shall they marry, which applies to males. There shall therefore be those who are in this world accustomed to marry and be given in marriage, only they shall there make no such marriages. (City of God, XXII.17)

In this way, Jesus does not mean to indicate that we will be “like angels” in that we will be non-physical or disembodied. We will have resurrected bodies, which means we will be sexed as Jesus is in his resurrected male body. But we will be “like angels” in that we will be immortal, as Augustine affirms, and we will no longer procreate. The pleasures promised to Christians (Psalm 16:11), both male and female, transcend the mere physical, instead promising spiritual unity with God himself as we enjoy his goodness forever in his presence (Revelation 21).

In sum, masculinity and femininity continue in the new creation because God created us male and female — equal in value yet different in our callings — in the beginning, pronouncing it “very good.” Masculinity and femininity are not erased by the fall but are being redeemed in the gospel. We who are united to Christ by faith will be raised with sexed bodies like his, male or female, which means masculinity and femininity will persist in the new heavens and the new earth. Male-female complementarity originated in the garden, persists in spite of the fall, is redeemed in Christ, and will be fully restored in the new creation.

Male and Female Forever

If we have adequately established that masculinity and femininity will persist in the new heavens and new earth, we may now explore what this might look like. If marriage and procreation are no more, what will masculinity and femininity look like? How will they be distinguished? And for what purpose?

The differences between masculinity and femininity will persist, first and foremost, in our embodied differences. Men and women have similar yet different forms that lend themselves to different but overlapping modes of subsistence. While no longer directed at marriage and procreation, masculinity and femininity will retain their original function in imaging and reflecting the glory of God. And because we are not God, no one of us can image or reflect his glory independently. Male and female together are required to image God sufficiently.

God-created differentiation will continue in the new creation. The new heavens will be distinct from the new earth; angels and cherubim will be distinct from seraphim; trees will be distinct from rivers, and these created realities will be distinct from the men and women who will walk among them, embodied and differentiated as either male or female. Each aspect of God’s new creation will proclaim something about its Creator (Romans 1:20). Because no one created being is equal to God, which includes each of us as male or female, we will continue to experience and benefit from differentiated createdness, which will bear testimony to and give glory to God.

Second, bodily continuity between this age and the age to come points toward spiritual continuity. Masculinity in this age is typified by strength and initiative and leadership. We have reason to think that in the new heavens and new earth, masculinity will continue to typify such. Femininity in this age is typified by beauty and receptivity and nurture, and this also is likely to continue in the age to come. Importantly, one typified attribute is not better than another. Just the opposite: every attribute is good and necessary, as it is created by and participates in God himself. But they are differentiated, and this differentiation will continue in the new creation because maleness and femaleness will continue.

Admittedly, though, we have arrived with C.S. Lewis’s character Ransom at the brink of futility and wonder as we try to fully account for the beauty of complementary difference:

But whence came this curious difference between them? He found that he could point to no single feature wherein the difference resided, yet it was impossible to ignore. One could try — Ransom has tried a hundred times — to put it into words. He has said that Malacandra was like rhythm and Perelandra like melody. He has said that Malacandra affected him like a quantitative, Perelandra like an accentual, metre. . . . What Ransom saw at that moment was the real meaning of gender. (Perelandra, 171)

Complementarity participates in true reality, because it reflects God’s design. Instead of trying to define the scope of masculinity and femininity in the age to come, we should content ourselves with affirming complementary continuity, which means affirming the goodness of male-female difference, while celebrating and anticipating continued complementarity in God’s (re)created order.

God’s creation is beautifully diverse, like a multifaceted diamond, in order to catch and reflect the eternal divine Light (1 John 1:5). It will be similar in the new creation, which is described in similar terms as the first creation (“new heavens and new earth,” Revelation 21:1; “the heavens and the earth,” Genesis 1:1). We serve a God whose Trinitarian love is reflected in and refracted through all of creation, including redeemed humanity. Male-female complementarity is part of God’s original design, and this complementarity will be beautifully restored with the rest of creation, which eagerly awaits God’s redemption (Romans 8:23).

Male-female complementarity will exist in the new heavens and the new earth, and so will masculinity and femininity. As for their eternal complementary purposes, Lord willing, we will have an eternity to appreciate them, and through them the strength and beauty of our God.

Audio Transcript

If you’ve listened to the Ask Pastor John podcast for more than a few weeks, you know that we regularly explore life’s deepest sadnesses and most painful losses. This is a fitting place to hear Pastor John address hard situations, and those hard situations include couples who are unable to bear children of their own. On infertility, we have looked at amazing Bible texts with amazing promises, like Isaiah 56:4–5. That comes to mind. And you can see how important Isaiah 56:4–5 is pastorally, in the APJ book, on page 193. There, you’ll see that this same incredible promise can be applied to two sadnesses: infertility and lifelong singleness. It’s one of those essential texts you want in hand, when the time is right, in ministering to others — Isaiah 56:4–5.

Lifelong singleness is the topic again today in an email from a woman, a listener, who writes in anonymously. “Hello, Pastor John. I am 43 and a faithful Christian — have been all my life — but I have never been married. I’ve been visiting many congregations in my community and have yet to find a suitable mate. I am haunted by the story of Jephthah and his daughter at the end of Judges 11:34–40. I know the point of that story is to teach us not to make rash vows, especially to God. But when I see how his daughter wanted to spend the last two months of her life mourning that she will never be a wife or a mother, it terrifies me. It shows me that if I don’t get married, I am missing out.

“That fear is compounded when I consider Jesus’s words from Matthew 22:30. I know some teachers, including you, who use this verse to give hope for single people. But I don’t see what is hopeful about it. I resonate with Jephthah’s daughter. If people are ‘neither [married] nor are given in marriage’ in the resurrection, that means if one doesn’t get married in this life, they will never know the joys of marriage! They won’t know what it’s like to touch or be touched by someone of the opposite gender. They won’t know what it’s like to hold their own child in their arms. These blessings that such a single person may have wished for their entire lives will be unrealized for all eternity!

“Even if whatever God has in store for us is better, won’t they still wonder what they missed — what it seems everyone, Christian and non-Christian alike, seemed to enjoy? My question is, if I die unmarried, yet remained faithful to Christ and have kept myself pure, will I have the same grief in my heart that Jephthah’s daughter dealt with in those last two months of her life for everything that I will never experience as well?”

Before I saw this question yesterday and had time to think about it, I was sitting in my chair over my Bible, pondering how pervasive and inevitable deep disappointments are that will never be turned around in this life.

World of Sorrows

I thought of people who are blind, perhaps from birth. They will never see the sun or moon or the beauties of a flower or the face of a friend. All will be dark until death. That will be their life on earth. I thought of people who are deaf and live in total silence all their lives — no music, no voices from a family or friend, no sweet robin’s song, no blasting thunder. I thought of people who are paralyzed because they were born that way or had an accident and perhaps can’t feel anything below their neck — paraplegics, maybe, who can’t run or walk or play pickleball, all the way to the end of their life. It never changes — all of life paralyzed. That was what they were dealt.

I thought of people who grow up in very poor, desperate conditions where they never learned to read — no Shakespeare, no Milton, no Herbert, no novels, no poems, not even a note or a letter from a friend — confined to a small world of limited experience. No reading. I thought of people who are miserable in marriages. All their hopes for what marriage was supposed to be have crashed. The romance has gone. There’s no mutual affection shown anymore — both partners in frustration and disappointment that the other doesn’t meet their emotional needs. The children are broken. All the dreams seem dashed all the way to the end. “For better or worse” — and it turned out to be worse.

I thought of refugees and people whose entire lives are decimated by war. I see the pictures today, people who as a class are hated, driven from one place to the next with scarcely any peace, any security, any comforts at all. And then there are the countless diseases, sicknesses, disabilities that people live with and die with and never experience healing or freedom from debilitating suffering.

“As we find our richest contentment in God, this life of singleness or marriage need not be wasted but full of joy.”

Now, I mention these realities in this world not to minimize this woman’s sorrows at not being married or having children. Her longings are good and right. Human beings were designed by God to be married, to be hugged in a one-flesh union, to have sexual relations that bring forth exquisite pleasures and then the cutest little persons. We were made to be cherished and respected in a lifelong union of man and woman in marriage that is deeply right, deeply human, deeply good, deeply gracious of God, and not to have it can be profoundly disappointing and painful, and I feel no need to minimize that.

Living with Realistic Hope

I mention these things because we really do need to have a biblical, realistic assessment of the possibilities of this fallen age, which is ruined by sin. And by ruined, I mean virtually everything that was designed by God for human pleasure is corrupted and, in greater or lesser ways, wrecked. Here’s Paul’s most penetrating description of our world. He said,

The creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.

That’s Romans 8:20–23 — subjected to futility, bondage to corruption, groaning as Spirit-filled Christians, waiting for our bodies to be redeemed from their present wasting away and dying condition. What an amazing, painful, realistic, worldly-hope-dashing assessment of the world. History is a conveyor belt of diseased, broken, frustrated, disappointed, dying, gloriously human persons and bodies. We in the West have so many suffering-ameliorating amenities that we can scarcely begin to imagine how hopeless this life feels to billions of people who don’t have a fraction of our comforts.

Looking to Our Reward

This is why the New Testament — unlike the Old Testament, including the experience of Jephthah’s daughter — is so relentlessly focused on the hope of eternal life: spectacular hope, incredible inheritance, lavish happiness being swallowed up by life at the resurrection, where the Lamb will bring us to springs of living water, and “[God] will wipe away every tear from [our] eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4). Over and over again, the New Testament presents the Christian life as shot through with sorrow and pain and disappointment and affliction and rejection and persecution — all of it sustained with gladness by rejoicing in the “hope of the glory of God” (Romans 5:1–2).

Apart from Jesus, nobody in the New Testament suffered nearly as much as Paul did, and yet he embraced it, even his singleness, as part of his calling, even though he had a right to have more pleasures than he got. Listen to what he says:

Do we not have the right to eat and drink? Do we not have the right to take along a believing wife, as do the other apostles and the brothers of the Lord and Cephas? Or is it only Barnabas and I who have no right to refrain from working for a living? . . . But I have made no use of any of these rights. (1 Corinthians 9:4–6, 15)

The flag flying over Paul’s life of self-denial and sorrow was 2 Corinthians 6:10: “Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.”

Sorrow Will Flee

I’m not asking our 43-year-old single friend not to be sorrowful. I’m not. If our arm is cut off, we are sorrowful. If we are not granted a legitimate lifelong desire to be one flesh with a person of the opposite sex, we are sorrowful. But we do not feel singled out. We do not feel picked on. We do not feel mistreated by God. And we do not feel hopeless, as if in the resurrection we will walk the barren hills with Jephthah’s daughter and bewail our virginity. No, we will not wail on any hill in the age to come. These are hand-clapping, dancing hills and will satisfy our deepest lungs.

Whatever we have sacrificed in this world “is [working] for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison [because] we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen. For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal” (2 Corinthians 4:17–18). And in the meantime, as we go deeper and deeper with God, finding our richest contentment in him, this life of singleness or marriage need not be wasted or meaningless but full of meaningful fruitfulness and joy as we pour ourselves out for the present and eternal good of others.