The children of this age marry and remarry;
but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age
and to the resurrection of the dead
neither marry nor are given in marriage.
Our view of the age to come is significantly limited if we assume that it is basically just an infinitely elongated version of our present existence. The logistics of such a world seemed absurd to the Sadducees at the time of Jesus just as they do to modern skeptics with a similarly limited perspective.
According to Jesus the current function of marriage would no longer be relevant in the age to come when individuals would be like angels in that they would no longer die. Just as the full number of angels had been created and did not need constant replacement rates to continue to exist so too would humanity be in that age. That was not to say that the relationships between people who were married in this age would be any less intense or real. It only meant that the way those relationships were previously defined by procreation would no longer be the case. Parents and children too would still be related through their love for one another. But in heaven they were more defined as being together "children of God". The earthly fatherhood that was a symbol of divine paternity would give way to the fullness of the reality of being daughters and sons of the one who "gives all people life and breath" (see Acts 17:25), since "from him and through him and to him are all things" (see Romans 11:36).
All of the good aspects of the godly relationships people enjoyed on earth would continue in heaven within the communion of the saints as the deceased dedicated themselves together to divine worship and by their prayers advanced the peace and salvation of the world. But it was wrong to try and imagine the intermediary state before the resurrection of the body or even the resurrection of the body on the last day merely in terms of the limited way in which we understand this present age. Even if what the future age will be is hard to understand or conceptualize it should still be possibly for us to desire it based on the goodness of the one who has prepared it for us, around whom it is entirely centered.
That the dead will rise
even Moses made known in the passage about the bush,
when he called ‘Lord’
the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob;
and he is not God of the dead, but of the living,
for to him all are alive.
There is a degree of life within God that we have barely even guessed, one that far surpasses the facsimiles we have experienced so far. It might initially seem like union with him would be something less than the life we have now, with less varied and diverse goods to enjoy. But it is just the opposite. God is fullness. What we have seen thus far is merely shadow.
to know the love of Christ that surpasses knowledge, that you may be filled with all the fullness of God (see Ephesians 3:19).
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