The Line We Cheered
1 Corinthians 7:27-28 "Are you bound to a wife? Do not seek to be free. Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you do marry, you have not sinned, and if a betrothed woman marries, she has not sinned. Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that."
In 1996, Cameron Crowe wrote three words into a movie, and a generation memorized them. Near the end of Jerry Maguire, Tom Cruise’s sports agent walks into a living room filled with skeptical women and tells Dorothy, “You complete me.” The line outlived the film and became one of the clearest statements of our culture’s romantic creed: somewhere out there is a person who will finish you, and until that person arrives, you’re only a fraction.
Paul pastored hearts raised on the Roman version of the same story, and he wouldn’t preach it. In one sentence, he says it twice: if you marry, you have not sinned. Marriage is good. Marriage is honorable. Marriage is not a spiritual mistake.
Then he says the sentence I’ve never dared use in a marriage ceremony: “Those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that.” His word for “troubles” is thlipsis: pressure, distress, affliction… the same word the New Testament often uses for tribulation. Paul isn’t saying marriage is one long disaster. He’s saying marriage brings real pressures belonging to this present, embodied life. Paul isn’t against marriage, he’s against illusions.
Any married person can tell you Paul is right. Marriage has been one of God's kindest gifts to me, personally, and it has still cost what Paul said it would cost: the daily surrender of my own preferences. The long, humbling work of facing patterns I carried in from the family that raised me. The reflexes and old wounds I dragged through the door on my wedding day. The reality is that nobody completes anybody! Two incomplete people press on each other's oldest bruises, and grace performs surgery there for decades. Yes, it’s worth it. But it’s also work.
The completion myth oversells marriage, and it terrorizes the unmarried at the same time. In her book The Significance of Singleness, Christina Hitchcock recounts an interview conducted by journalist Kate Bolick. Bolick spoke with several single women in their early twenties. When she suggested that they might still be unmarried at thirty-nine, one of them whispered with alarm, “I don’t think I can bear doing this for that long.” But that’s the sound of a culture that has turned a good gift into a god.
So, Scripture gives married and unmarried believers alike a better sentence: “You have been filled in Him” (Colossians 2:10). This isn’t a promise that life in Christ will never feel lonely or unfinished. This is a promise that nothing needs to be added to Christ in order to give you spiritual fullness, identity, or standing before God. Remember, the most fully human person who ever walked the earth never married. Jesus proves that marriage is not required for a complete human life.
The married among us can stop demanding godhood from a person with a fallen nature and a bad back, and the unmarried among us can stop reading their lives as a waiting room. Christ has already said, in earnest, the words the movie could only wish were true.
Our standing, identity, and fullness were secured through His death and resurrection and are ours through union with Him. A spouse may share that life with us, but no spouse can supply it. And that frees every seat in the room. The married among us can stop demanding godhood from a person with who battles their flesh and a bad back, and the unmarried among us can stop reading their lives as a waiting room. Christ has already made true what the movie could only turn into a wish!
Today: Tell God where you’ve quietly handed another person (present or future) the job of completing you. Then hand the position back to the One who has already filled it.
Prayer: "Lord, I confess I’ve asked people to be for me what only You can be. Thank You that in Christ I am already filled, already whole, and already home. Teach my heart to live in the fullness and wholeness of the gospel. In Jesus’ name, Amen."
-PK