As a teenager, did you ever come across one of your teachers in the wild? Or maybe as an adult you live in the same town where you grew up and occasionally pass a familiar face at the grocery store. A generally familiar face. When you push your cart down the aisle and see an elderly man reaching for a box of cereal, it takes your brain a second or two to realize that this individual taught you history for several semesters. Out of context, without his classic white polo and without a whiteboard behind him, you almost fail to identify him.
As his student, you never thought much about his life outside of the classroom. He had one, of course, but you only saw him in the school setting. It didn’t cross your mind that he would have the same needs as anyone else or adhere to many of the same daily and weekly rhythms as your own. You mentally filed him away much like we file away historical figures from a textbook. The memories are black-and-white still images imprinted with a few bolded facts, not a multidimensional character fleshed out in living color.
Do you ever think about Jesus in a similar way? It’s easy to picture Him in major moments, those that photographers would have captured if twenty-first-century paparazzi had followed Him around. But, metaphorically speaking, would you be surprised if you saw Him at the grocery store?
When I started reading Incomparable, the new book of fifty readings by Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, I was immediately drawn to the depth of all of the different aspects of Christ that she pointed to. Jesus is not a one-dimensional figure, but an unmatched Savior: fully God and fully man.He’s someone we can study all our days and still only scratch the surface of who He is.
We think we know Him. If our former history teacher gave us a pop quiz, we’d be able to identify the following facts based on the bullet points of His life:
- Jesus, the Son of God, lived on earth as a real man. (True)
- Jesus enjoyed being with children, but He didn’t have biological kids of His own. (True)
- Jesus was not married. He had close friends but not the companionship of a spouse. (True)
But what if the pop quiz had a back page . . . on which it asked for an explanation of how Jesus’ status as a single man contributed to the life He lived? “Jesus lived a daily life,” Nancy writes. “Midmornings. Afternoons. Late nights. All of it.”1 The way Jesus approached the ordinary, everyday struggles of being an unmarried man have extraordinary implications for those of us who are single today—if we’re willing to consider Him.
Consider His Singleness
The fact that Jesus was single is something we often acknowledge but fail to pay much more attention to. “We just think that, well, He was God, so He didn’t need a wife. He was God, so He didn’t need His own children,” Nancy explains in Incomparable. “But Jesus was also a man. And as a man He felt all the normal human desires we feel. He lived His young-adult years experiencing the natural longings of anyone His age, and He continued to experience them as He neared thirty and beyond.”2
Can you picture thirty-year-old single Jesus? He was a guest at His friends’ wedding, making small talk with childhood friends and hugging the newly married couple. He attended dinners, where He’d dive into discussions with men who were husbands and fathers, a role He knew He’d never have.
“We can only assume,” Nancy says, “that the thought of a family life might have appealed to Him, even though He was here on a unique mission.”3 That idea makes my heart ache. We tend to think of Christ’s suffering in terms of what He encountered on the cross, and while that is more than worth our attention, it’s also true that Jesus experienced the daily losses some of us know well. He carried the burdens of life, from caring for a sick family member to meeting all the needs that accompany ministry life, without an earthly partner to share His load. At the end of the day, He would have taken off His sandals, felt the weight of silence of an empty room, and curled up in bed alone.
“Consider [Jesus],” the book of Hebrews tells us. Consider Him, “so that you won’t grow weary and give up” (Heb. 12:3). Because He has endured similar struggles—and He has overcome.
Consider His Longings
Back to our pop quiz. You’re likely familiar with Hebrews 4:15, which says, “We do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who has been tempted in every way as we are, yet without sin.” We can understand the truth that Jesus never sinned as a fact. The harder question is, “Why does that realization bring us hope and encouragement?” Here’s how Nancy answered:
Because all of us have longings. All of us have things we lack, things we want, even things we believe we legitimately need. And these things—marriage and family included—can consume our focus and attention, especially when we have to live without them. It’s easy for us to make idols of our longings and use them to justify all kinds of unhealthy or even sinful thoughts and actions.
But Jesus never did this. He never gave natural desires the authority to become demands. He never used them as an excuse for making moral compromises or disobeying the Father in any way.4
But we do. I’ve personally seen how singleness tests my willingness to submit to God’s will without compromise, and time and again, I’ve failed. But consider what Jesus did when He was bombarded by unmet longings:
He didn’t suppress them. He didn’t deny they existed. He simply trusted His needs to His Father. He found satisfaction in His Father’s companionship. Rather than chafing at being single or at the physical, emotional, or relational sacrifices He was called upon to make, He embraced and delighted in His Father’s will. That was enough for Him. It satisfied Him.5
In Incomparable, at the beginning of each devotional about Jesus, Nancy includes a verse. The day dedicated to Christ’s singleness includes Psalm 40:8. As you read it, imagine Jesus reciting these words on an ordinary day—as a single man, in a quiet moment where He’s caught kneeling on a dirty floor, entrusting His deepest longings to the Father, and praying these words with a fully submitted heart: “I delight to do your will, my God, and your instruction is deep within me.”
Delight. Jesus modeled it first—He proves it’s possible. Through grace, we get to experience it as well.
Realizing we have a Savior who has walked that path and understands that feeling can do a lot to help us handle it in healthy, godly ways. We have the incomparable Christ as a living example, assuring us that we can submit our unfulfilled longings to the Father. We can forfeit pleasures that are afforded to others. And we can tap into a revitalizing joy that lies before us (Heb. 12:2), even if we’ve hoped for our cup to be filled another way.6
Consider His Mindset
Consider Him. That’s the command Nancy exhorts us to adhere to as single women.In Incomparable, she says to consider the mindset Christ brought to His mission: “I have come to do your will” (Heb. 10:9)—and to ask for His help to make it your mindset as well. And, she suggests, regardless of what your present circumstances may be telling you, cling to the promise that in the end you will find, as Jesus did, that . . .
- in God’s will is “the path of joy.”
- in His “presence is abundant joy.”
- in His “hand are eternal pleasures.” (Ps. 16:11)7
Jesus is incomparably more than a historical figure framed in black-and-white images. Encountering Him enables you to live out your singleness in vibrant shades of color, and considering Him will fill your life with deeper shades of hope and grace.
1 Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, Incomparable: 50 Days with Jesus (Chicago: Moody Publishers, 2024), 41.
2 Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, Incomparable, 41–42.
3 Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, Incomparable, 42.
4 Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, Incomparable, 42–43.
5 Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, Incomparable, 43.
6 Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, Incomparable, 43.
7 Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, Incomparable, 44.
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