If you marry here on Earth and you go to heaven… do you both stay married in heaven? What about people who remarry?
13 Likes
Let Us Pray For You
Your prayer matters. Have thousands of Christians around the world offer a prayer on your behalf. Our unique prayer submission will spread your prayer to Churches, Shrines, prayer groups and holy sites around the world.
No. Jesus was direct about it in Matthew 22, at the resurrection people neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like the angels. The Sadducees described a woman widowed and remarried 7 times!
This bothered me when I first got married… the people who loved each other well here will still know each other there, and I suspect the bond will be deeper.
Biblically? No. Marriage is a covenant for this life, and death ends it… That’s why a widow or widower can remarry without it causing some conflict in heaven (see this thread).
Love and recognition still carry over though. I think every faithful relationship gets healed and completed within God’s bigger family.
From what I can tell, we don’t stay married in heaven. That scared me when I first landed on it!
Marriage here is a preview of closeness with God and once we’re there the preview is over… there’s no contest in heaven over which spouse gets kept.
The Sadducees didn’t believe in resurrection at all. The woman married 7 times was meant to make the whole idea look ridiculous, so Jesus doesn’t bother figuring out which brother gets her.
The ‘like the angels’ line is narrow. No marrying, no dying, so no need for the institution. He doesn’t say anything about forgetting anyone.
That’s what points to a deeper bond. Marriage has a lot of upkeep because we’re limited. Take the limits away and the knowing is still there.
The disciples recognized Jesus after the resurrection, so I have a hard time picturing eternity as a gathering of holy strangers.
Faithful relationships get healed and made whole there I think.
I think we probably can’t even picture what heaven is like because we compare it to what we know here on earth
The remarriage part still puzzles me a bit, but the disciples recognizing Jesus stuck with me so we’ll still know each other there.
I’ve heard pastors say it’ll be like brotherly love between spouses and they don’t know that. The Bible says there’s no marriage there and stops, it doesn’t say what your relationship with your spouse will look like after.
A guess is still a guess and I’d rather admit we don’t know yet. Soak up every bit of the marriage God gave you right now.
God gave me these feelings and He knows exactly where I’m at, so I let myself feel how much I love my husband right now. I think He’s fine with me loving my hubs this much.
I trust whatever He has planned beyond this life and still cherish what we have together today.
A parent with their kids or a husband with his wife… I’m convinced the special connections stay special and carry over. It’ll look different from marriage since there’s no marrying in heaven and we’ll love everyone.
Matthew 22, Mark 12 and Luke 20 side by side helped me. Same answer each time, in the resurrection people ‘will neither marry nor be given in marriage.’
So the remarriage question answers itself, no one is married there in the first place.
The levirate marriage detail made this click. A man married his brother’s widow to give the dead brother an heir. The 7 brothers is about legal claims, and ‘whose wife will she be’ is asking which brother has the claim on her. Jesus answers that the legal arrangement doesn’t carry over.
My mom asked me after my grandma remarried late in life. She wanted to know if Grandma will still love Grandpa and her second husband. If jealousy is gone there, I can’t see why loving both would be a problem.
“Neither marry nor are given in marriage” tells us there won’t be weddings in the resurrection and that’s all it tells us. Nothing in there says husbands and wives get pulled apart or sent off in different directions.
Some folks are reading more into Matthew 22 than it says.
Marriage matters so much that God used it as the picture for the real thing, Christ as the groom coming back for His bride. You and your husband get to step into that together.
The ‘it won’t matter because we’ll be with God’ line can sound like your marriage was disposable if you love your spouse. A lot of my anxiety about this came from putting my boyfriend above God without noticing.
There might be more marriage in heaven.
Adam and Eve were married in a “good” creation before the fall, and they were already close to God. So it seems like you can be fully in God’s presence and have a spouse at the same time. My guess is it would look more like what they had in the garden than like marriage now.
Couples who are really joined in Christ might still keep that union going there, just without kids. Everyone who was going to be born already has been, so there’s no need for more.
In heaven the kids and raising a family part is done, marriage here is tied to that so there’s no need for it. Fits with why remarrying after a spouse dies is fine too.
We’d still recognize each other, in different roles, with God at the center.