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She stood over her deceased husband crying as he lay in the hospital bed. I will never forget this story I heard from a visiting pastor, David, when I was 18.
David stood by her side. She must have been 85. She was married to a man for at least 4 or 5 decades until he passed. But this was not the man she stood over. After her first husband died, she remarried the man who would also die before her time came.
As the weeping continued, David finally asked, “Is there anything I can do?” Then she revealed the reason for her tears.
She said, “I feel bad, pastor. I was married to my first husband my whole life, but when we get to heaven, I want to be married to him.” She pointed to her second husband whom she married only several years prior. She cried either because she felt guilt for wanting to be married to her second husband instead of her first or she cried because she believed she would be married to her first husband without the option of being married to her second. And she would know both of them.
What a dilemma.
* * *
Thankfully the Bible does not leave us in the dark regarding whether we will be married after we die or not. In fact, this question burdened those who lived almost 2000 years ago compelling some to ask Jesus his thoughts.
A group came to Jesus quizzing him, “To whom is a woman married after she dies if she’s been widowed 7 times?” The group was called the Sadducees and they actually didn’t even believe someone lived after they die in this life. They wanted only to make Jesus look stupid.
Jesus said that people who are resurrected neither marry nor are given in marriage and that they become like God’s angels in this matter. Who knew that angels don’t marry? Now you do.
Everyone resurrected will be single and loving it.
But what if we want to be married? Will we know our spouses from this life?
* * *
Yes—we will know our spouses from this life. We will not be void of all knowledge we gained before we die.
Concerning the first question, we will probably not want to be married once we’re resurrected.
Physical, emotional, relational, and any other desire that marriage now satisfies will be satisfied in a greater capacity by the sheer virtue of having a resurrected body and living among resurrected people. So even though we won’t have physical relations in our resurrected bodies, all pleasure received through our senses will be greater than anything we can even imagine while in our current bodies.