This extract is taken from Single Ever After: A Biblical Vision for the Significance of Singleness by Danielle Treweek, and is used with the permission of The Good Book Company.

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A little while ago I heard a pastor share an anecdote about an elderly married couple. They were visiting a new doctor for the first time and giving her their rather extensive medical histories. When the husband began talking about the time when he had had his appendix removed, the wife interjected: “No dear! You didn’t have your appendix out. That wasn’t you! It was me!”. The pastor said that this is what marriage ought to be like—a union in which the two parties are so co-mingled that they forget where one ends and the other begins.

So often we Christians hold marriage out to be the ultimate experience of relational oneness, where true “not-aloneness” is to be found. And so, by implication, those not part of such a union are like a pre-Eve Adam, doomed to perpetual aloneness. Singleness becomes tragic because it is seen to be the absence of that ultimate co-mingling.

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But Jesus speaks about a different oneness that ought to really matter to us Christians. Right before he was arrested, in the presence of his disciples, he prayed for the following:

My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am you. May they also be in us so that the world may believe that you have sent me. I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one—I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.

John 17:20-23

What is the oneness—the opposite to aloneness—that Jesus prays his followers will know? He does not pray for the one-fleshness of marriage, good as that may be. Instead, he asks his Father to grant to his followers the oneness that comes through believing in him. Our Saviour prays that we, his disciples, will know a oneness that echoes the closeness of his relationship with the Father. He prays that we may be brought to the oneness of complete unity—and that this oneness would enable the watching world to know that God sent Jesus into the world for the sake of love.

Can you imagine the impact it would have if church communities rejoiced in the oneness of being his disciples nearly as much as we rejoice in the one-fleshness of being married? Can you imagine what a difference it would make if we were to see the church (not marriage) as the place where none of us are ever alone? Can you imagine how God might use that to testify of his love to the watching world?

Singleness Is Not Another Word for Aloneness

In 2023, the Christian organisation Communio published a report titled “Nationwide Study on Faith and Relationships”.[1]The study concludes that the reason why unmarried churchgoers experience much higher rates of loneliness is because they are single. It says that marriage is “an essential relationship to construct a happy and successful life”.[2]

But as we have just seen, God’s word says that while marriage is an answer to human aloneness (at least in this creation), it is not the answer. Marriage is an expression of relational intimacy, but it is not the expression. Marriage is a way in which men and women image God in this world but it is not the only or even primary way they do that.

Singleness should never be another word for loneliness within the community of God’s people: those who Jesus prayed would be one. Contrary to popular Christian opinion today, the tragedy is not singleness itself. No, the real tragedy is that many of our church communities are places in which those who are single experience chronically higher levels of loneliness and relational isolation... simply because they are single.

Whether single or married, we are all part of the same body of Christ, co-heirs of the same gospel promises, brothers and sisters in the same family, and beneficiaries of Jesus’ oneness prayer. Because the gospel is very, very good news, not a single one of us is ever alone.

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[1] J.P. De Gance, Nationwide Study on Faith and Relationships, Communio (2023), https://communio.org/study/.

[2] As above, 15.   

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