Lesson
Marriage and Union
Jesus said that in the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage. Most Christians take that to mean the bond between a man and a woman ends. I read it a little more narrowly: marriage as an institution ends, but God's first design, man and woman made for each other, is not thrown away. Here is why, and where I could be wrong.
October 9, 2026
The did not believe in the resurrection, and they came to Jesus with a story meant to make it look foolish. Moses said that if a man died without children, his brother was to marry the widow and raise up a son to carry on the dead man's name. So, they said, there were seven brothers. Each one married the same woman, and each one died. Then they asked, “In the resurrection, then, whose wife will she be of the seven?”
Jesus told them, “You are mistaken because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.” Then He answered the question:
In the resurrection, people will neither marry nor be given in marriage. Instead, they will be like the angels in heaven.
Mark gives the same answer. Luke adds something the other two leave out:
Jesus answered, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy to share in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage. In fact, they can no longer die, because they are like the angels. And since they are sons of the resurrection, they are sons of God.
That last part is what I want us to notice. When you bring eyewitness accounts together, one witness will often keep a detail the others skipped. Luke tells us what the likeness to the angels is about: “they can no longer die” .
How Most Christians Read It
Most churches read this as Jesus closing the subject. There is no marriage in heaven, and the relationship between a husband and a wife ends at death.
There are good verses behind that. Paul says “a married woman is bound by law to her husband as long as he lives” , and that she is released if he dies. The marriage that lasts is Christ and , the bride of the Lamb. Many pastors add that you will still know and love the people you loved here, without any of the hurt.
That is an honest reading of a real verse. If you hold it, I am not saying you are ignoring . I just think it goes one step further than Jesus did, and I want to show you where.
How I Come at This
I do not try to settle each verse on its own and then pick a side. I work from systematic theology: the Bible is one system, from one God, and every piece has to fit with every other piece. When two readings are both possible, I ask which one fits the whole better.
That is my main reason here. A union between man and woman that continues fits everything else far better than no union at all: a creation God called very good, a God who does not change, His image placed all through what He made, and a resurrection of real bodies. Taking the union away leaves pieces that no longer fit. The rest of this lesson is me showing how those pieces fit.
What Jesus Did and Did Not Say
Jesus named two things that stop: marrying, and being given in marriage. A man marries a wife, and a father gives his daughter. That is marriage as an institution, named from both sides, and it is exactly what the Sadducees' story was about: a widow passed from brother to brother so a dead man would still have an heir.
He did not say we stop being men and women. He did not say it becomes good for man to be alone.
Luke tells us why the marrying stops. No one dies anymore, so no one needs an heir to carry on a name. The whole reason for the law the Sadducees quoted is gone.
Being like the angels also does not mean losing our bodies. We are already spiritual beings, with souls, right now. The promise is a raised body: “What is sown is perishable; it is raised imperishable.” And it does not mean we will finally start focusing on God's glory. We are told to do that now. We are flawed and do not do it like we should, but that does not mean we do not do it. The new thing in Luke's account is that we can no longer die.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke all record Jesus' answer. Only Luke says they can no longer die, and that is what he ties the angel likeness to. Being like the angels does not mean losing our bodies, turning into angels, or starting to worship God for the first time.
The Union Came Before Marriage
Go back to Genesis 2. God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make for him a suitable helper.” He made the woman, brought her to the man, and they became one flesh. No father gave her away. No brother had died. No certificate was written.
God did bless them to be fruitful and multiply. But that is not the reason Genesis gives for making the woman. The reason it gives is that it was not good for the man to be alone.
Marriage, the way Israel and the church have had to practice it, took that union into a world with death in it. Daughters were given. Brothers raised up sons for the dead. A wife was bound while her husband lived. Moses allowed a certificate of divorce, and Jesus said that was “because of your hardness of heart. But it was not this way from the beginning.” Marriage went further than the union it started from, because death had come in.
So when Jesus says there is no marrying in the resurrection, I read Him as ending that later thing. "Whose wife will she be?" only works if marriage is still the system that assigns a woman to a household. Where no one dies, that system has nothing left to do.
To be fair, Matthew 19 is about divorce, not the resurrection. But it does show Jesus Himself separating the beginning from what came later.
In Genesis 2 God makes the woman and brings her to the man before there is any wedding law. The later laws (giving a daughter, the brother-in-law law, divorce, being bound until death) came into a world with death in it. Jesus ends those in the resurrection. He does not say the first design ends.
Why I Believe We Stay Men and Women
At the end of the sixth day God looked at everything He had made, “and indeed, it was very good” . That included man: “male and female He created them” .
One thing we can tell about God from His creation is that it is highly logical. Some believers talk as if God created man in order to fail, so that we could be recreated into something better. If that were true, you could throw the old creation out and start over. But creating a situation just so it fails is not logical. What the Bible shows is that God gave man a real choice, because without the choice to do right or wrong, you have not really done either.
So I would argue the new heaven and the new earth will look a lot like the first creation put right: animals, plants, and the image of God on man. Paul says “the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay” . The One on the throne says, “Behold, I make all things new.” He makes things new. He does not say He is finished with the things He made.
There is also a logic problem if we deny it. If our soul is neither male nor female, and we get a genderless body in the resurrection, then the idea that there is no real difference between men and women turns out to be right in the end. That runs against the Bible from its very first chapter.
Then the question is, for what purpose? If heaven is one unending praise service, the way it is often presented, being a man or a woman does not really matter. I do not think that fits either. Praise and thankfulness will be real, because we will know who God is and what He has done. But the end of Revelation shows His servants serving Him in a city, and it says “they will reign forever and ever” . That looks like going back to the beginning: having a purpose, taking care of the earth, and maybe more than the earth. That last part is my own guess. No verse says it.
God's Image Is in the Union
Most teachers would say "it is not good for the man to be alone" is the reason God made the woman, and I agree. “It is not good for the man to be alone.” But I believe there is more to it than that.
God layers His triune image all through His creation. The way I picture it, the universe itself is space, time, and matter, and each of those is made up of three: a of trinities. This is my illustration, not a verse. The Bible does not describe space, time, and matter this way. You see the same kind of pattern in Christ and the church, the groom and the bride, with God the Father. And you see it in marriage: a man, a woman, and God. Jesus said, “what God has joined together, let man not separate” . God is part of that bond, not someone watching it from outside. I am not saying a husband and wife are the Trinity. God is one God in three persons, and we are His creatures. I am saying He puts the mark of who He is on what He makes.
And God does not change. He says, “I, the LORD, do not change” . “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever.” James calls Him “the Father of the heavenly lights, with whom there is no change or shifting shadow” . So I do not believe God will take that part of Himself out of the new creation. The new heavens and new earth will carry the same image of Him all through them, so He can be seen in what He made. I believe the union of man and woman is part of that.
"It Was Only a Picture"
A common teaching goes like this: marriage only points to Christ and His bride, the church. Paul does say, “This mystery is profound, but I am speaking about Christ and the church.” So once Christ and the church are fully joined, the picture is not needed anymore, and it goes away.
I see it differently. God puts His image in creation so that it always points to Him. Paul says “since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities, His eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly seen, being understood from His workmanship” . Everything He made points to Him, and that is not something that ends once it has done its job. It will not go away just because He makes the new heavens and the new earth. If anything, a creation without sin will point to Him more clearly, not less.
The picture and the real thing were never in competition anyway. The Christians in Ephesus were part of the bride of Christ and were husbands and wives in the same years. Paul told them, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave Himself up for her” . The bigger union did not cancel the marriages he was writing to. So when marriage as an institution ends at the resurrection, that does not prove the union between man and woman was only a picture getting ready to go away.
Where I Am Careful
I would not say tread lightly here. I would say do not be dogmatic, because anything we say about this is speculative. There is no chapter that says your spouse will still be your spouse, and here is how. Someone who stops at "they will neither marry" and goes no further is staying with the words he was given, and that is fair.
But the common reading takes a step too. It hears "no marriage" and concludes "no man and woman together at all." That is not a verse either. It is a conclusion drawn from one. I part from it because it costs us the original creation, and because Luke already told us what the likeness to the angels is about.
I will not describe what that union looks like. The Bible does not. Marriage here is tied to having children, and that part ends. What closeness looks like where no one dies, we are not told.
I also think we will still feel ups and downs. Not downs like in a world full of sin. Even the downs would be good, just not as good as the ups, because we would still feel the comparison. That is not a verse either. It is what I think a real creation, full of real differences, would feel like.
Can we imagine all of it? I do not think so, because sin taints how we think. “Now we see but a dim reflection as in a mirror” . But we can still get ideas from what God already made, unless you believe in out with the old and here comes the brand new.
If you see this differently, that is all right. Do what the Bereans did, who “examined the Scriptures every day to see if these teachings were true” . Whichever way you read it, the hope is the same: a raised body, no more death, and God making all things new.
The hope of His return itself: The Second Coming
This lesson's home is Prophecy.