When Marriage Meets Resurrection: Love Beyond This Life
Before breath, before birdsong, before blood, there was God. Alone but not lonely, full of glory and joy, He spoke. And the words that left His mouth were not small. They carried weight—the kind of weight that can hold galaxies and form light itself. So it was that time began. And in the folds of that first holy darkness, He separated the night from the day, sky from sea, earth from everything else. He ordered it with His fingers like a weaver setting a loom. Then He stooped low and pressed His hands into the dust.
The man was not born. He was formed—shaped from the עָפָר מִן־הָאֲדָמָה (afar min-ha’adamah), the loose earth beneath heaven’s breath, clay pressed and sculpted by the hands of the Infinite. But he didn’t come alive until God did something more than shape. He bent down, and from the depths of Himself, He exhaled נִשְׁמַת חַיִּים (nishmat chayyim)—the breath of lives—into the nostrils of this silent form. And in that moment, the man’s chest rose for the first time. The eyes opened. He was now נֶפֶשׁ חַיָּה (nefesh chayyah)—a living soul (Genesis 2:7).
But the story doesn’t pause there. God looked at this living soul—this vibrant, breathing creature made in His image—and said something that catches the heart off guard: “It is not good…” (Genesis 2:18). Not good for him to be alone. Not because the man lacked God, but because the man was made in God’s image—and God is never solitary. The love within the Godhead is shared, overflowing, a communion of presence and delight. And man, made to reflect that divine togetherness, needed another.
So God caused a deep sleep to fall over the man—not a nap, but the kind of sleep that descends when something holy is about to be made. From his side, not his head, not his heel, God drew out a צֵלָע(tsela‘)—a rib, yes, but more than a bone. A piece of his frame. Flesh that beat with the same blood. And from it, God sculpted her. And when the man awoke and looked—really looked—at her, he didn’t speak analytically or with detachment. He sang. Bone of my bone. Flesh of my flesh. She shall be called woman, for she was taken out of man (Genesis 2:23).
And over them both, God spoke again:
“Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother and cleave—דָּבַק
(dāvaq)—to his wife, and they shall become one flesh—בְּשָׂר אֶחָד
(basar echad).” (Genesis 2:24)
דָּבַק(dāvaq) isn’t casual. It’s the word you use when something is glued, fused… fused, so tightly that nothing can separate it without damage. It’s the way Ruth clung to Naomi, refusing to let go. And בְּשָׂראֶחָד(basar echad)—this “one flesh”—isn’t merely about bodies. It’s identity. It’s the miracle of separateness becoming unity, like two branches twisted so tightly together you can’t find where one stops and the other begins.
Marriage was never just about sharing a roof or a name or children. It was a covenant—בְּרִית(berith)—an earthly symbol of a deeper, eternal promise. A reflection of something older than Eden: the relationship between God and His people. Again and again, the prophets describe Israel as a bride, sometimes faithful, sometimes wayward, but always beloved. Yahweh calls her His כַּלָּה(kallah), and His love, even when brokenhearted, is always חֶסֶד(chesed)—unshakable, unflinching, never-ending (Hosea 2:19–20).
But even that most sacred union, the covenant of man and wife, carries within it a clock. It belongs to this world—the one where death still whispers through hospital rooms and grief lingers on pillowcases. And so we ask, sometimes quietly, sometimes through tears: What happens to marriage when death is no more? What happens when the trumpet sounds, and the dead rise, and everything that is broken is suddenly whole?
Jesus answered that question—not with cold theology, but with divine clarity. When the Sadducees tried to trap Him, bringing up the woman with seven husbands, He replied:
“You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection—ἀνάστασις (anastasis)—they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like the angels of God in heaven.” (Matthew 22:29–30)
ἀνάστασις (anastasis) means to rise up again, to literally come back to life. It’s not a figure of speech or a metaphor—it’s the real thing: resurrection. And in that resurrected state, Jesus says that γάμος (gamos)—which means earthly marriage—won’t be necessary anymore. Not because love is erased, but because its purpose will be fulfilled.
Paul picks up the thread in 1 Corinthians 15, calling our current frame φυσικός (phusikos)—natural, earthy, tied to mortality. But the body to come will be πνευματικός (pneumatikos)—spiritual, not ghostlike, but animated by the Spirit of God, no longer vulnerable to age or death (1 Corinthians 15:44). We will be ἄφθαρτος (aphthartos)—incorruptible. δόξα (doxa)—glorious. δύναμις (dynamis)—powerful.
And in that state, there will be no more funerals, no more anniversaries cut short by diagnosis or distance. Marriage will have served its sacred purpose—procreation, companionship, reflection of divine union—and we will have stepped into the real thing.
Revelation 20 tells us there are two resurrections. The πρώτη ἀνάστασις (prōtē anastasis)—the first resurrection—is for those who belong to Messiah, who rise and reign with Him for a thousand years (Revelation 20:4–6). The second is for final judgment. But for those found in the Lamb’s Book of Life, even that day leads to eternal life (Revelation 20:11–15).
And in the age that follows, something breathtaking happens. The Bride appears—not a single woman, but a whole people, radiant and pure. The כְּלָלָה(k’lalah), the bride of the Lamb (Revelation 21:2, 9–10). No longer broken, no longer wandering. And this covenant is not bound by time. It is everlasting, sealed with the blood of the Lamb Himself.
Paul called it a μυστήριον (mystērion)—a mystery (Ephesians 5:32). Because even the most devoted marriage on earth is only a shadow of that eternal communion—the one where God שָׁכַן(Shakan)—dwells—with His people forever.
In the New Jerusalem, there is no temple, because God and the Lamb are the temple. There are no marriages, because we are all joined in one union—Christ with His people, and His people with each other, in perfect love.
“In My Father’s house are many rooms,” He said. “I go to prepare a place for you.” (John 14:2)
Not just space. Belonging. Not just shelter. Home. And in that place, grief will be foreign. All things new (Isaiah 65:17).
Even science, as limited as it is, offers glimpses of this greater hope. Entropy tells us everything breaks down over time—but resurrection shows us something stronger than that. Quantum entanglement is a way science describes how two things can stay connected no matter how far apart they are—even across time. And God, who holds the past and future in His hand, connects us in ways even deeper and more powerful than that.
So no—marriage in this life does not carry over into the next in the same form we’ve known it here. Jesus made that clear when He said that in the resurrection, people will neither marry nor be given in marriage (Matthew 22:30). But that doesn’t mean love is erased, or that the bonds we cherished are meaningless. Far from it.
Because the love that earthly marriage bore—the soul-level connection it hinted at, the intimacy it shadowed like a faint outline, the longing it sometimes stirred in the quiet ache of loneliness or the deep joy of companionship—all of that is fulfilled, not discarded, in the age to come. What we experience now in marriage is not the full picture, but a glimpse. A whisper. A promise. Marriage here was never the destination—it was always the parable.
We often think of eternity as a continuation of this life, only longer. But Scripture paints something far richer. The love that waits for us in the presence of God is not less than what we’ve known here—it’s not colder, emptier, or more “spiritual” in the hollow sense. It is more. Deeper. Fuller. It is love untainted by fear or loss or miscommunication. It is ’ahavah (אַהֲבָה – love) in its purest form. It is agapē (ἀγάπη – divine, self-giving love) without interruption. It is a union that doesn’t end in separation, that doesn’t grow weary, that doesn’t require vows to be kept because no shadow of sin threatens to break them.
And it’s so much more than our mortal hearts could bear now. If we saw the weight and beauty of it too soon, it would undo us. Like Moses before the burning bush, or Isaiah before the throne, we would tremble, undone (Isaiah 6:5). But one day, with glorified bodies and unveiled eyes, we will see it. And when we do, everything we once feared losing will be found in its true form.
We will understand, finally, why nothing in this life—not even the sweetest, most beautiful earthly love—was ever meant to be the end of the story.
It was only ever the beginning. A seed. A shadow. A spark of the fire to come.
And THAT is…
top image done by perchance ai at my direction.
bottom image done by chatgpt at my direction