Marriage is Not Eternal
Traditionally wedding vows
have gone something like this:
"I, ___, take you,
___, to be my lawful wife/husband, to have and to hold from this day forward,
for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and health, until
death do us part.
Did you ever wonder why we
say, “until death do us part?” It’s because there will be no marriage in the
life after death. How do we know this? Because the apostle Luke tells us that
Jesus said so.
In Luke 20 some Jewish
leaders called the Sadducees came to Jesus asking him a resurrection question
related to the Old Testament law of marriage as established in Deuteronomy 25.[1] This
marriage law stated that when a man died leaving his widow childless, the man’s
brother was required to marry the widow. The Sadducees posed a hypothetical
situation to Jesus where a woman marries several brothers who each die leaving
her childless, and then she dies. They ask Jesus “…at the resurrection whose
wife will she be since the seven were married to her?”[2]
Now, this is an interesting
question, because the Sadducees didn’t even believe in the resurrection.
Perhaps they were trying to trick Jesus with what they thought was an
impossible question to answer. Nevertheless, Jesus replied:
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.[3]
Luke tells us that Jesus’
response astounded them. “Some of the teachers of the law responded, ‘Well
said, teacher!’ And no one dared to ask him any more questions.”[4]
Although no one asked any
more questions, I’m sure they burned with questions. I would have wanted to ask
questions. For example, “Why will the resurrected not marry or be given in
marriage?”
In The Resurrection
of the Son of God, New Testament scholar N.T. Wright offers this
explanation about why there will be no marriage for those resurrected: “The
logic of Luke’s version of Jesus’ riposte then depends for its force on two
unstated assumptions: (a) that marriage is instituted to cope with the problem
that people die; (b) angels do not die.”[5]
At first blush, it seems
unfathomable that marriage was, as Wright states, “instituted to cope with the
problem that people die.” Arguably the biblical purpose of marriage in general
should be understood to mean so much more than just coping with death. But
Wright’s statement must be understood in light of examining Jesus’ answer to the Sadducees. Old
Testament marriage law had to do with the importance of keeping the family line
going after the death of a spouse but before children could be born to the husband
and wife. The Sadducees’ question to Jesus comes from an assumption that the
main purpose in marriage was to be fruitful and multiply as stated in Genesis
1:28. In other words, at the time of Jesus, Jewish understanding of the laws of
marriage had to do, at least in part, with death when it attempted to interfere
with continuing family lines.
Jesus blows away their
understanding of marriage and the resurrection by explaining that at the
resurrection there will be no more marriage, “they can no longer die; for they
are like the angels.” Wright offers this explanation about the likeness to
angels:
The “likeness” in question is meant, not in the ontological sense
that the resurrected ones are now the same sort of creature as the angels, nor
in the locational sense that they are sharing the same space,
but in the functional sense that the angels do not marry.[6]
He concludes that we will
not be like angels in all respects, but only “that they are immortal.”[7]
Thus, we can conclude that
one of the reasons there will not be marriage in the after-life is because
there is no need for it. For Christians, death will be defeated.
There are other reasons for
biblical marriage, such as how it symbolizes Christ and the church[8] and
the wedding feast yet to come.[9] But
we will save that for another day.
[1] Deut. 25:5-10, “If brothers are living
together and one of them dies without a son, his widow must not marry outside
the family. Her husband’s brother shall take her and marry her and fulfill the
duty of a brother-in-law to her. The first son she
bears shall carry on the name of the dead brother so that his name will not be
blotted out from Israel. However, if a man does not want to marry his brother’s
wife, she shall go to the elders at the town gate and say, ‘My
husband’s brother refuses to carry on his brother’s name in Israel. He will not
fulfill the duty of a brother-in-law to me.’ Then the
elders of his town shall summon him and talk to him. If he persists in saying,
‘I do not want to marry her,’ his brother’s widow shall go up to him in
the presence of the elders, take off one of his sandals, spit in his
face and say, ‘This is what is done to the man who will not build up his
brother’s family line.’ That man’s line shall be known in Israel as The
Family of the Unsandaled.” All Scripture quotations from the New International
Version unless otherwise noted.
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