A Man Should Find a Wife

A MAN SHOULD FIND A WIFE

Before I go further, let me take a few moments to address single men. I said that I was not going to rebuke you for being unmarried, and I meant that. Moreover, I realize that it is not always so easy to find a godly wife, and that many earnestly seeking brothers have been greatly frustrated in this pursuit. Still, the Bible's teaching requires me to encourage you to realize how vitally important it is (in the vast majority of cases) that you become married. If you have shied away from marriage, let me urge you to reconsider and (perhaps) to commit to the necessary growing up. If you have tried but met only frustration, let me encourage you to renew your prayers to the Lord and keep at it.'

By God's design, as seen in Genesis 2, a man is completed by a woman, and not just any woman, but by a wife. From this it follows plainly: It is vital for the well-being of almost any adult man that he becomes married. It is true that the apostle Paul identified a "gift of singleness" that he wished all men had (1 Cor. 7:7). He was referring to the ability some men possess to devote themselves to serving God without the encumbrances of marriage. So, unless you have the gift Paul referred to, it is imperative for your well-being that you be married, to move beyond the "not good" status of single adulthood.

This is an especially important message for young adult men today, who are bombarded with the opposite message. "Dude, don't get married!" their friends all say. When the first guy gets married after college, his male friends lament the occasion as if he had contracted a fatal disease. So while God says, "It is not good for men to be alone," men tell each other to avoid marriage like the plague. As always, however, God is the one who is right. The best thing that a young Christian man can do-I mean one who is able to meet the obligations of marriage, which implies he should be eligible for full-time employment-is to marry a godly woman.

In my opinion, and in keeping with the Bible's teaching, one of the biggest problems in the church today is the failure of young adult men to value and pursue marriage. This problem is played out in the frustration of Christian women in their twenties, whose God-designed bodies scream, "Babies!" and whose God-designed emotional make-up is geared for marriage, but who find practically no Christian men in their peer group who are ready for or interested in marriage. As a result of a male culture that fears marriage, men in their twenties and thirties slide into sexual sin (marriage, after all, is God's provision for lust; see 1 Cor. 7:9) and cultivate antisocial behaviors that perpetuate emotional and social immaturity. Today, when God looks on single males and says, "Not good," He undoubtedly has in mind a long list of truly "unfit helpers," among them the pornography, video games, sports obsessions, and empty pizza boxes that are intrinsic to so many young adult male lives, even among Christians.

Our society tells young adult men to deprive themselves of God's provision for their physical, emotional, and sexual needs so they can remain as immature and self-absorbed as possible, for as long as possible. You know what the Bible says about this: it just is not good.

—Richard Phillips, 'The Masculine Mandate: God's Calling to Men', 58