What happens to marriage in heaven?
Difficult Bible Passages: Matthew 22:30, by Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch.
[…] the institutions of marriage and family are one of God’s key social institutions, and in this life they are vitally important. They serve various functions, but two core reasons for marriage are procreation and companionship. Thus we speak of the procreative and unitive purposes of marriage.
In the next life procreation will no longer be needed, and companionship and intimacy will be incomparably superior in all dimensions to what we know here. So not everything found in this life necessarily extends into the next life. That is not to diminish marriage in this life, but to point to that which is superior coming in the next.
And of crucial importance here is that marriage certainly does not disappear altogether in the afterlife. In Scripture we read about the marriage of the Lamb and his Bride. All of God’s people – whether they were single or married in this life – will be part of that incredible, eternal marriage. That will indeed be a match made in heaven.
So human marriages, as important as they can be, are really just a foretaste of the real and more vital wedding to come. In this sense the temporal picture or type of marriage in this life is no longer needed in heaven, since the permanent reality will be there instead…
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