15 May Will we be married in the Kingdom of Heaven?
On earth, my favorite person is my wife Grace and my favorite place is wherever Grace is. We’ve been together since March 12, 1988. Thinking about life without her for one day, let alone eternally every day, sounds more like hell than heaven to me. Many people feel the same, which is why they wonder if they will still be married in Heaven. Obviously, the possible answers are yes or no, so we will consider each.
3 Arguments for Being Married in Heaven
- Despite Adam being a perfect person in a perfect place with perfect relationship with God, it was “not good” for him to be “alone”. Since our status in the Kingdom of Heaven will be like Adam, it won’t be good for us to be alone and unmarried either.
- God made marriage to reflect the Trinity so that a husband and wife, though more than one person, would become “one”. As God’s image bearers, we need to be in loving, unified relationship to best reflect the relational three Persons who are together One God.
- In Heaven, things pick up where the fall of Genesis 3 fell off. Marriage is not part of our sinful world but part of God’s perfect design plan for humanity.
2 Arguments Against Being Married in Heaven
- Perhaps in Heaven our relationship with God and all our relationships with one another will be perfect and deep enough to meet all our relational needs fully thereby leaving no need for one unique relationship like marriage. Furthermore, the friendship with our spouse can continue into eternity, perhaps in some even deeper way than marriage that is hard for us to conceive of in our broken world.
- The strongest argument against marriage came from some religious folks who hated the idea of resurrected eternal physical life in the Kingdom of Heaven who came to stump Jesus with a trick question in Matthew 22:23–33:
Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection, and they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man dies having no children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother.’ Now there were seven brothers among us. The first married and died, and having no offspring left his wife to his brother. So too the second and third, down to the seventh. After them all, the woman died. In the resurrection, therefore, of the seven, whose wife will she be? For they all had her.” But Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.” And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching.
Do you think there will be marriage in the Kingdom of Heaven? Why, or why not?
