For many people, the closest relationships they have on earth are their family relationships. Their closest friend is a brother or sister, a husband or wife, or perhaps even a father or mother. God himself created the idea of families and their innate bonding powers. The father-son relationship on earth is patterned after God the Father and his Son. When a family is a family of believing Christians, it is natural to long for a reunion of that family in heaven. My father and mother were both followers of Jesus. They are both now in heaven. I will rejoice to see them someday. Will I know them in heaven as my parents? Yes. But how we relate to one another in heaven will change.
On one occasion, Jesus was questioned by the Sadducees. This Jewish religious group did not believe in a future resurrection as did Jesus (and the majority of the Jews in Israel). They attempted to trick Jesus with a hypothetical question about a woman who had a husband who died. After she remarried, her second husband died. This happened with seven husbands. Then the woman also died. “Whose wife will she be in the resurrection?” they asked. The Sadducees thought they had won the argument. Jesus replied, “At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven” (Matt. 22:30).
Married couples will remember and celebrate in heaven the relationship they had on earth (if it was a loving and harmonious relationship). But their relationship in heaven will change. How will their relationship change? All believers will become our closest friends and companions, just like our wife or husband was on earth.
Once, “Jesus’ mother and brothers came to see him, but they were not able to get near him because of the crowd.” Jesus used the circumstances to teach spiritual truth. “My mother and brothers are those who hear God’s word and put it into practice” (Luke 8:19–21). Ultimately, we do not lose an earthly relationship; we gain multiple heavenly relationships. There will be just one big family in heaven.
Some lament the fact that there is no marriage in heaven. Others are disillusioned that there must be no sex in heaven either. God actually created the sexual relationship between a man and a woman to be a picture of the intimacy that people can have spiritually with Christ. Paul wrote, “A man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh. This is a profound mystery. . . .” By “become one flesh,” the apostle was speaking of the sexual relationship in marriage. Then he added, “But I am talking about Christ and the church” (Eph. 5:31–32). In other words, sexual pleasure was designed to capture the intensity of the believer’s joy in a relationship with Jesus. In the Bible, Jesus is called the bridegroom and his followers are called the bride. So the sexual relationship on earth foreshadows the relationship Christian believers will have with Christ in heaven. No one in heaven will ever miss earthly marriage, for we will all be married to the Lord.
The best marriages on earth are the ones in which both spouses are progressing in their relationship with Christ on earth. The closer they move toward God, the closer they move toward one another. This closeness to Jesus will just continue in heaven and become deeper. Why wouldn’t a married couple’s relationship continue to become deeper and deeper as well?
Will there be sexual expression in heaven? The Bible doesn’t speak to this directly. Sex was created by God before sin came into the human race. So sexual expression would not be excluded from heaven because it was evil. In heaven there will be sexual distinction. Those who were female on earth will be female in heaven. The same will be true for males. Jesus was a man and is a man for all eternity in his resurrected body.
God’s creation of sex was for pleasure, but it was also for procreation. In heaven, there will be no bearing of children, no reproduction. It seems likely that this pleasure will be taken away and replaced with other, new desires, perhaps unknown and unrevealed to us yet. We can be sure of this: Whenever God replaces something in heaven with what we have had on earth, it is always a major upgrade. It will always be something far better!
FOR FURTHER STUDY
Matthew 22:23–32; Mark 10:29–30; Ephesians 3:14–15; Revelation 19:7–9; 21:9