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NOTES
Imagine a man who lives until he is 90. He was married to his first wife for 40 years until she passed. Then he married again for 20 years until she passed. Then he dies. All three go to heaven. Now which woman will he be married to? Neither.
Introduction
So, will people be married in heaven? In short, no. People will not be married in heaven. Now, I say that not because I have some private and special insight into the mysteries of God. It’s not like I’ve taken a stroll along the heavenly streets and noticed that nobody is holding hands or has a wedding ring on. I say people won’t be married in heaven because that is what God’s Word says. God addressed the topic of marriage clearly and thoroughly. So I want to take time in this first piece on marriage to summarize two biblical passages that illuminate God’s plan. And you might be a little surprised by what you hear. Because, in fact, God gave human marriage a temporary purpose. In just a minute, we’ll explore what that means and why He did so .
First, though, I want to distinguish heaven from the new creation. Heaven is the place where God lives. God’s presence saturates heaven—although it’s not limited to heaven. People in heaven are constantly aware of God and enjoy God. Every sensory experience—see, touch, taste, hear, smell—points to him. When God created the earth, he kick-started a plan to make earth like heaven. To bring heaven to earth. To make heaven and earth one. That plan is still in motion with Jesus as the centerpiece.
The Bible says the earth will eventually be a new creation. One day Jesus will wrap up human history and take it into it’s final, forever chapter. A conclusion that has no end. Life as we now know it will not always be the same. The resurrected Lord will raise up His people. He will give them new bodies. He will lift the curse that blankets the whole earth. Christ and all the resurrected will live on a curse-less, pain-less, death-less new earth in eternal union and bliss. That is the new creation. Not every person will take part in the new creation. Only those who follow Christ by faith will do so. Jesus gifts that divine, priceless inheritance to those who want him and what he has to offer.
I emphasize that distinction between heaven and the new creation because that’s the focus of this series. In the first 19 posts, each of which are quite shorter than this one, I contrasted what I call heaven-aimed Christianity with new-creation Christianity.
Many Christians and non-Christians misunderstand Jesus, the Bible, church, and Christianity because they think Jesus wants to take people to heaven to live with him there forever. Wrong. Yes, people who die in the faith will go to heaven immediately, but they won’t stay there indefinitely. Eventually, they will inhabit a perfect earth with Christ and the redeemed. I once thought and lived like a heaven-aimed Christian and it nearly ruined me. That’s why I’m passionate about making the distinction. When I discovered new-creation Christianity, it reinvigorated my faith. It clarified my understanding of why God created the earth, why God sent Jesus, and why God created you and me. It clarified for me what’s wrong with the world and the redemption Jesus offers. New creation Christianity clarifies our place in God’s story. It also clarifies why God instituted marriage, which is the subject of this post—to which we now turn.
Did Jesus Address Marriage in Heaven? | Yes—Very Clearly!
Now, did Jesus address marriage in heaven? Yes. Did Jesus say people will be married in heaven? No. Jesus said people who are in heaven and will one day have new bodies on a new earth will not be married. That means if a man and woman are single when they die, they will not be married in heaven. They will never experience human marriage. That means if two Christians get a divorce and each die single, they will not be divorced in heaven nor will they be married.
In heaven, human marriage will be a memory. It will be a practice and concept from the past. Like a person in 1915 selling his horse to buy a Ford Model T. The horse is no longer needed and the person has moved on to something better. Marriage will one day have served its purpose and God’s people will move on to something better. Though, our memory of marriage will remind us of God’s wisdom and goodness, and we will celebrate God for it, even though humans will no longer need it.
The gospel of Matthew recounts the conversation Jesus had with his debaters in 22:23–33. Jesus’ opponents didn’t believe in life after death. They posed a thought experiment to trap him because they obviously thought he did believe in life after death. There were seven brothers. One married a woman, but that brother died with no children. By Jewish law, another brother was responsible to marry her, have children, and continue the name and lineage of the dead brother. But then, the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh brothers die. All seven die. All seven legally and morally married the same woman. None had children. Then, the poor woman dies. The opponents ask Jesus, “At the resurrection, whose wife will she be?”
Jesus began with a blunt attack. He said, “You’re wrong,” “You’re led astray,” “You’re aimless,” You’re mistaken,” “You’re deceived.” They asked him a question with fake sincerity. They assumed that once a person dies, he or she no longer exists. Jesus says, “Not so—death is not the end.” Jesus first insulted these religious experts by telling them they don’t know God’s Word and don’t understand the power of God. Then he addressed their specific question by saying, “For when the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage. In this respect they will be like the angels in heaven.” (Matthew 22:30).
What does it mean to be like the angels in heaven? Angels don’t produce offspring. Angels aren’t designed for reproduction. They’re designed to be in fellowship with God and each other. They’re designed to serve and enjoy God and each other. Angels don’t pair off to form a unique, ongoing bond. That kind of exclusive relationship doesn’t exist among the angels. Heaven was not created for marriage-like relationships. So Jesus says, at the resurrection (a future point in history when the dead rise), people will be like angels. Marriage will be a memory, a thing in the past. In other words, the institution of human marriage is temporary. It is limited to this stage of human history. God’s design for marriage will eventually fulfill its purpose and will no longer be needed . . . Which naturally leads to the next question.
What Was God’s Purpose for Human Marriage? | Back to the Beginning
What was God’s original purpose and goals for marriage? The answer is given at the beginning of the Bible in Genesis chapters one and two: the creation of earth and life on earth. It’s important to keep in mind these chapters focus more why God created it all versus how God created it all.
In Genesis chapter one, we read why God created humanity in general, which is important to know before we can understand why God marriage in particular. First, we read he created men and women in his image: male and female (Genesis 1:26–27). To be in God’s image means they both equally represent God’s authority and presence. Both equally reflect God’s character. Both are designed to equally relate with God, to communicate with God, to be with God, to enjoy God, to obey God. That’s what it means to be in God’s image. To be in God’s image is our primary identity and purpose. We can fulfill that purpose without getting married. So each person has full dignity and worth without being married.
Immediately after his creation, God issued commands to the human race who would collectively fulfill a larger purpose beyond the individual level. Those commands reveal how the human race functions corporately. Genesis 1:28, “Then God blessed them and said, ‘Be fruitful and multiply. Fill the earth and govern it. Reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and all the animals that scurry along the ground.’” God blesses them by giving them the ability and command to produce life and fill the earth. We also notice God designed humans to co-own the earth with God, to co-rule it as representatives of God, and to spread his presence as reflections of God. Like mirrors and ambassadors. So how will humanity produce life and fill the earth? That’s where marriage comes in.
Genesis 2 addresses the origin and meaning of marriage. God created a garden, the Garden of Eden, as his special location on the earth. That garden was his throne room so-to-speak. He placed Adam in the garden to organize and enhance its features, to protect it from unwelcome creatures, and to expand its borders. But the man couldn’t do it alone, so in Genesis 2:18, we learn, “Then the Lord God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him.”A few verses later, God created Eve, and the author writes of marriage in Genesis 2:24, “This explains why a man leaves his father and mother and is joined to his wife, and the two are united into one.” God designed men and women to come together, to pair off as a union between one man and one woman in the lifelong bonds of marriage, and to fulfill his mandates to them, which we he gave in Genesis 1 and 2.
God is abundant in life. He is life creating, life giving, life sustaining. Since we are in his image, he made it so that we can produce life, like him, on earth. That’s not to say God is biologically sexual or that he is male or female. But, within the bonds of marriage, we possess the means to reflect his life-giving nature in that specific way within this world where he created us. When the text said, “I will create a helper for the man,” it means that men and women were created for each other and need each other to fulfill God’s greater purpose for the human race. Before God, individual men and women are equal in dignity, equal in status, and equal in importance. All humans at their base-level humanity have an equal function in their relationship to God, in their relationship with each other, and in their responsibility to oversee this planet.
However, within the human race, men and women function differently according to the Bible. God made men and women to correspond to each other. That God instituted marriage indicates that God’s purpose for humanity requires a task bigger than what individuals, without marriage, can do. A man or woman can’t fulfill it alone. They need each other. But there must be balance. God didn’t design men and women to be fully dependent on each other nor did he design them to be fully independent of each other. He made them to be complementary counterparts of each other as partners, as co-laborers, who are made for God, for each other, and for the earth.
Now get this: the project of marriage, of partnering together to raise children, start a family, and work on the earth was not meant to be an unending project. Once the earth was populated at the amount God intended, once humanity had organized, protected, enhanced, and expanded the Garden of Eden, once humanity established civilization and had spread the presence of God all over the world, the next stage of history would have set in . . . God would have given them immortal bodies and eternal life. At some point in that process, as civilization progressed, they would have received clothes and been granted access to the tree knowledge of good and evil as they all live among each other and learn how to lovingly and justly relate to each other. Forever, they would have been in communion with each other and him. Marriage, then, would no longer have be needed. It would have fulfilled its purpose.
The whole goal of the project was aimed at the unification of heaven and earth. As humans partnered with each other and with God, the fulfillment of the creation project would have culminated with God’s presence filling and enveloping the whole earth. God and the human race would have been one to enjoy each other forever. But the very first humans, Adam and Eve, created their own purpose, designed their own goals, and chose their own methods. They allowed the serpent into the garden and listened to its voice rather than trusting and obeying God. So God withdrew his presence. He cursed the whole creation project. But that didn’t mean he wanted the earth to be forever cursed, as we now experience it. That didn’t mean withheld all his goodness from the project and that we are completely abandoned. It meant that evil corrupted it even though it would continue on. But there was more at work in God’s purpose and goals for creation and for human marriage, which later came to light in Jesus Christ.
CONCLUSION
The Bible teaches that what Jesus did 2,000 years ago actually reveals God’s deeper purpose for human marriage. That’ll be in the next post. But to summarize and end this one, Jesus said people in heaven are like angels who neither marry nor are given in marriage. That point indicates that a human marriage is not necessarily an eternal relationship. It is temporary in God’s plan. Yet, that doesn’t mean we belittle or demean marriage. Because, as we saw in Genesis chapters 1 and 2, marriage is vitally important in God’s plan. We explored why God created marriage and the possible reason why Jesus said it was temporary. However . . . God’s eternal plan lies hidden in every human marriage which Jesus’s life, death, and resurrection brought to light. More on that in the next post. I’m Aaron Massey. See you next time.