The 4B Movement and Matthew 22:36-40: What Love Requires
Short answer: The 4B movement is a contemporary social movement, originating in South Korea, in which some women decline dating, marriage, sex, and childbearing with men. Scripture never mentions it; it is not a Bible topic. But the Bible does speak to the loyalties behind any movement. When Jesus was asked which commandment is greatest, he answered with love for God and love for neighbor, and Matthew 22:36-40 says the whole law hangs on those two. That answer does not map neatly onto 4B, either as endorsement or as simple rejection. It judges every movement, including this one, by whether it forms people who love God wholly and treat neighbors truthfully. It also warns against letting any cultural cause, however understandable, become the thing that defines us.
What the 4B movement actually is
The 4B movement takes its name from four Korean words beginning with the same sound, each naming a refusal: no dating, no marriage, no sexual relationships, and no childbirth with men. It emerged in South Korea in the mid-to-late 2010s alongside a broader feminist wave responding to documented inequalities in wages, household labor, and workplace treatment, and to high-profile violence against women. Some participants frame it as a personal boundary; others as a collective political statement. Estimates of how many women practice it vary widely and are difficult to verify, so readers should be cautious about statistics they see online.
It is worth saying plainly that 4B is not a monolith. Participants differ in motive, intensity, and religious conviction. Some are reacting to real harm. Some are making a calculated choice about their own lives. Some are making an ideological argument about men, marriage, and society as a whole. Treating every person who uses the label as holding identical beliefs is inaccurate and unkind. Careful teaching begins by describing the movement fairly before evaluating anything about it.
The movement has also traveled. Through social media it reached audiences far outside Korea, especially after political events that drew international attention. In those new settings the four refusals are often detached from their Korean context and used more loosely, sometimes as a general posture of disengagement from men. That drift matters, because a specific protest in one culture is not the same thing as a universal rule for life, and Scripture addresses the underlying questions rather than the label.
Why Matthew 22:36-40 is the right starting point
The setting is a test. A religious expert asks Jesus which commandment in the law is greatest. Jesus does not rank the Ten Commandments or pick a ritual regulation. He goes to Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and Leviticus 19:18 and joins them: wholehearted love for God, and love for neighbor as oneself. Matthew 22:36-40 records that everything else in the law and the prophets hangs on these two. That is a remarkable claim about structure, not just priority.
This means the greatest commandments are not merely the most important rules among many. They are the load-bearing center from which the rest derive. Any ethic that claims to be Christian has to be tested here. Does it produce love for God that is total, involving heart, soul, and mind? Does it produce love for neighbor that is concrete rather than sentimental? A movement may be politically effective, personally protective, or emotionally satisfying and still fail this test. Matthew 22:36-40 is therefore not a slogan to attach to a cause but a plumb line laid against every cause, including causes we sympathize with.
Notice also who is speaking. Jesus is the one being tested, and he answers with Scripture he expects his questioner to recognize. He is not inventing a new ethic; he is reading Israel's law as it was always meant to be read. So when Christians today evaluate 4B, or any social movement, they are not free to invent a Jesus who agrees with their preferences. They are bound to the Jesus who answered this question in this way, and to the texts he quoted.
Deuteronomy 6:4-5 and total allegiance
The first command Jesus cites begins with a confession: Deuteronomy 6:4-5 says, "Hear, Israel: Yahweh is our God. Yahweh is one." That is a statement about who God is, and it grounds the command that follows: love him with all your heart, soul, and might. Biblical love for God is not a feeling that rises and falls. It is covenant loyalty, exclusive and total, the kind of devotion that shapes what a person does with their body, their money, their time, and their future.
This has direct bearing on how any of us frames our lives. If God is one, then no created good can take his place at the center. Marriage is a good gift, and so is singleness. Children are a gift. Work, safety, and bodily autonomy are real concerns worth caring about. But none of them is God. A person can make an idol out of romance, and a person can make an idol out of rejecting romance. The first commandment forbids both, because it forbids anything that displaces wholehearted love for the one true God.
Deuteronomy also shows that this love was never meant to stay private. Israel was to teach these words to children, talk about them at home and on the road, and bind them as reminders. Love for God was a whole-life orientation, practiced in ordinary routines. So the question a Christian should ask about 4B is not only whether its specific refusals are permissible, but whether the posture it forms in a person's heart leaves room for undivided loyalty to God. That is the deeper issue.
Leviticus 19:18 and the neighbor you did not choose
The second command comes from a holiness code full of practical instructions about harvests, wages, courts, and honesty. Leviticus 19:18 says, "'You shall not take vengeance, nor bear any grudge against the children of your people; but you shall love your neighbor as yourself. I am Yahweh." The command is embedded in everyday ethics, not in romance. It forbids vengeance and grudge-holding, and it requires active good toward the neighbor, whoever that neighbor turns out to be.
Jesus made the scope of neighbor unmistakable in the parable that follows the lawyer's question in Luke 10. The neighbor is not the person who shares your gender, your politics, or your grievances. The neighbor is whoever is near and in need, including someone from a group you might expect to dislike. That is uncomfortable for everyone. It cuts against treating an entire category of people as the problem, whether the category is defined by sex, class, ethnicity, or anything else.
This does not mean Scripture requires anyone to date, marry, or have children with anyone in particular. It does not. Loving a neighbor as yourself is not a command to enter romantic relationships. But it does rule out contempt. It rules out revenge and grudges. It requires that a person's posture toward the opposite sex, even in disagreement or self-protection, remain honest, non-deceptive, and free of dehumanizing speech. That standard applies to men as much as to women.
Does 4B conflict with Scripture, or overlap with it?
Some elements of the movement overlap with things Scripture itself values. Choosing not to marry is honored in Scripture; Paul treats singleness as a genuine and useful calling, not a failure. Refusing sexual relationships outside marriage is exactly what Christian teaching requires. Escaping an abusive relationship is not sin. Recognizing injustice against women is right, and the prophets repeatedly condemn violence and oppression. So a Christian should not reflexively condemn every choice associated with 4B. Several of its refusals, considered individually, are compatible with faithful Christian living.
Other elements raise real concerns. A permanent refusal of men as a class goes beyond personal decision into judgment about a category of people made in God's image. A framework that treats marriage and childbearing as inherently oppressive conflicts with Scripture's consistent description of marriage as a good gift and children as a blessing. And any ideology, secular or religious, that asks for final allegiance is functioning as a rival to Deuteronomy 6. The problem is not the four refusals as such; it is the possibility of a total identity built on them.
Faithful Christians differ here, and honesty requires saying so. Some would counsel young women to leave an unhealthy dating culture, guard their bodies, and pursue singleness or marriage freely. Others would emphasize engagement, reform, and the goodness of family life. Both can appeal to the same commands while weighing prudential choices differently. What neither can do is baptize hostility toward a whole class of neighbors, because Matthew 22:36-40 will not allow it.
Romans 13:8-10 and what love actually owes
Paul restates the same ethic for a Gentile church. Romans 13:8-10 says, "Owe no one anything, except to love one another; for he who loves his neighbor has fulfilled the law." He then lists commandments against adultery, murder, theft, and coveting, and concludes that love is the fulfillment of the law. Notice the logic: love is not a vague feeling but the thing that produces concrete obedience. It is a debt that is never fully discharged.
This passage clarifies a common confusion. People often treat love and rules as opposites, as though commandments were the hard, cold thing and love were the soft alternative. Paul says the opposite. The commandments exist to protect the neighbor, and love is what keeps them. That means a person can be socially progressive or traditionally minded and still miss the point if their posture toward actual people is contemptuous. The test is not the label but the fruit.
Romans 13 also reminds us that this love is owed, not optional. It is a continuing obligation, not a mood. So when a movement, any movement, trains people to see others primarily as threats, obstacles, or categories, it is working against the very law it may claim to care about. The command cuts both ways and lands on every reader, not only on the people we find easiest to critique.
How to think about movements without surrendering to them
Christians live in a world of competing movements, and 4B is one of many. The biblical pattern is neither blanket endorsement nor blanket rejection. It is discernment: test everything, hold fast to what is good, and refuse what is evil. A movement may correctly identify a real wrong, as the prophets did, while proposing a remedy that forms the wrong kind of person. Both can be true at once, and a careful reader should be willing to say both.
Practically, that means asking what a movement does to your loves. Does it increase your love for God, or does it slowly replace him with a cause? Does it make you more truthful and merciful toward the people around you, or more contemptuous? Does it help you forgive, or does it train you to hold grudges? These questions are not abstract. They are answered in how you speak about men and women you have never met, and in how you treat the person in front of you.
It also means holding your own convictions with humility. You may conclude that certain refusals are wise for you and still refuse to make them a law for everyone. You may conclude that a movement has real insight and still decline to give it your soul. Matthew 22:36-40 leaves no room for a total identity that is not God. Everything else, including every worthwhile cause, hangs on him and not the reverse.
Biblical fidelity check
What these passages establish is clear: God alone is to be loved with the whole person, and the neighbor is to be loved as oneself, and these two commands are the hinge on which the rest of the law hangs. They also establish that love fulfills the law rather than abolishing it, and that singleness is a legitimate calling in Scripture. They do not establish a position on the 4B movement, which is a modern social phenomenon the biblical writers never addressed. They do not tell anyone whom to date or marry. They do not require marriage, and they do not forbid it.
A common misreading is to treat Matthew 22:36-40 as a general mandate for whatever a culture calls love. That reading collapses the command into approval of any strong feeling or any cause framed in caring language. It is wrong because Jesus quotes specific texts about loyalty to the one God and about refusing vengeance and grudges toward real neighbors. His love is defined by God's character, not by our preferences. The other misreading is the reverse: using the commands to condemn every personal boundary, as though loving a neighbor required unlimited access to your life. Scripture nowhere teaches that.
Other passages that speak to Matthew 22:36-40
Jesus' answer draws on Israel's law and echoes through the New Testament. Deuteronomy roots the command in God's identity and Israel's daily teaching, and the renewed covenant calls for hearts marked by God rather than outward conformity alone. Leviticus places love for neighbor inside a holiness code that also addresses bodily practices and the treatment of the vulnerable, which is why careful readers distinguish enduring moral commands from cultural specifics. The Sermon on the Mount shows Jesus intensifying the same ethic of the heart, and Romans shows Paul applying it to ordinary obligations. See Deuteronomy 10: Renewed Tablets and Heart Circumcision, Deuteronomy 1: Moses Rehearses Israel's Journey and Failure, The Beatitudes Explained: Matthew 5:1–12 Meaning, and Are Tattoos a Sin? Leviticus 19:28 in Context.
Frequently asked questions
Does the Bible say anything about the 4B movement?
No. The 4B movement is a modern social phenomenon, and Scripture never mentions it. What Scripture does address are the underlying questions: whom we love supremely, how we treat neighbors, whether marriage and singleness are honorable, and what forms our identity. Matthew 22:36-40 gives the greatest commands, and Romans 13:8-10 shows that love fulfills the law through concrete obedience. Applying those passages requires wisdom, because the Bible gives principles rather than a ruling on this particular movement.
Is it sinful for a Christian woman to choose not to marry or have children?
No. Scripture treats singleness as a legitimate calling, and Paul commends it for those who are able to receive it. Marriage is presented as a good gift, but it is not commanded for every person. A decision not to marry, made for wise and honest reasons, is not sin. What Scripture does address is motive and posture: whether the choice flows from love for God and neighbor, or from contempt, fear, or revenge toward a whole category of people.
Does loving your neighbor mean you must date or marry someone you do not want to?
No. Loving your neighbor as yourself, as Leviticus 19:18 commands, requires honesty, mercy, and the refusal of vengeance and grudges. It does not require romantic access to your life or your body. Personal boundaries are not inherently unloving. What the command rules out is contempt, deception, and dehumanizing speech toward others, including people you have no intention of marrying. Christians apply this differently in practice.
