Are you in a happy marriage that you hope will continue forever in heaven? Has your beloved husband or wife died, and you hope and pray that you will be able to rejoin him or her when it comes your time to die? Do you long for a loving and eternally growing marriage even if you haven’t yet experienced it yourself?
If so, you are certainly not alone. And the news is better than you’ve been told!
Traditional Christian churches teach that there is no marriage in heaven. In the previous article, “Didn’t Jesus Say There’s No Marriage in Heaven?” we looked closely at Jesus’ words to the Sadducees, which is where they got that idea:
The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection. (Luke 20:34–36)
That article made these three points, focusing mostly on the first one:
- Marriage in Jesus’ day, and throughout most of human history, was not what many people today think of as marriage: a relationship based on love and a union of mind and heart. Rather, it was a legal and social arrangement that granted certain rights and privileges to married people and their children. These legal rights and privileges are unnecessary in the afterlife. The marriage that doesn’t exist in heaven is legal marriage, not spiritual marriage.
- Jesus simply didn’t say that there is no marriage in heaven. He said people don’t get married in heaven. In other words, his statement was about the act of getting married, not the state of being married. And spiritually, we get married here on earth, not in heaven.
- Jesus says elsewhere that marriage was created by God from the beginning. And what God does is not temporary, but eternal. The human institution of legal marriage that exists on earth is temporary, and does not exist in heaven. But true spiritual marriage is made by God, and is therefore eternal.
In this second article in a series of three, we will expand on the second and third points, which were covered only briefly in the first article. In looking at the deeper meaning of Jesus’ words we will draw on the writings of Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772).
Whether or not you have already experienced a close and loving marriage relationship, here is the good news: true spiritual marriage does last forever. And people who long for it will experience it in heaven even if they don’t find it here on earth.
That is, we will experience it if we do the work of spiritual rebirth that is our primary task during our lifetime here on earth. In fact, that is the deeper meaning of Jesus’ words about marriage in the resurrection.
This is a huge topic! But if you truly want a deeper understanding of Jesus’ words, I invite you to settle in for a brain-bending and spiritually challenging read.
For more eternal marriage and spiritual rebirth, please click here to read on.
