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In this Ask Doug segment, Pastor Wilson responds to the question:
“Will there be sex in eternity? If not, then how will God redeem this fundamental area of our lives?”
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Ask Doug: Will there be Sex in Eternity?
- That Seamy Chain of SyllogismsMarriage is a political act, and not an individual choice. How you marry is a way of testifying to what city you belong to. Who defines marriage? The difficulty we are having in our generation in answering this question shows how theology shapes and drives everything. If God created the world, and put one man and one woman in it, married them to each other, […]
- Reading NotesThomas C. Oden has had an illustrious career during which he abandoned liberalism to become one of the leading evangelical theologians of our time, but Oden is not coasting. Recently appointed as director of the Center for Early African Christianity at Eastern University, he is devoting his prodigious energy to rehabilitating the Christian tradition of ancie […]
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Why does no marriage necessarily mean no sex?
I readdress Aaron’s question. What is the use of keeping ones sexual dna of male and female if sex is unavailable? Also, how do you assert that no marriage means no sex as Aaron questioned?
No marriage means no intercourse because marriage is a public covenant between two people surrounding a sexual relationship. One of the most foundational purposes of marriage is a sexual union between a man and a woman. Doug is correct that Jesus explicitly answers this question, but I think there is more clarification to be made. The whole point of human sexuality is to mirror the trinity and Christ’s love for his church. In Scripture, God is described in masculine terms. The church is described in feminine terms (e.g. the “Bride”). So, everything we do as sexual beings represents and says something about God and the Church. Men represent Christ, women represent the church. Christ marries his one church, so a man will marry one woman. Christ doesn’t marry a groom, so a man will only marry a bride, etc. This forms the basis for all sexual immorality. In eternity, these things are fulfilled. We are with our husband, Christ, as his complete, glorified Bride. The need for private man/woman relations is over. Some have speculated that the pleasure – or feeling – we experience in eternity with our union with Christ may be similar to sexual arousal/climax. Can’t say either way since Scripture is silent, but I don’t think it’s sacrilegious to assume that our sexual pleasure is also a representation of some aspect of eternity.
As to why we’ll keep our sexual DNA: i think the obvious answer is that in redemption God does not eradicate his creation or alter it. He heals it, and glorifies it. So, he made us men and women, we’ll stay men and women.
Tell me if I’m following this right. The argument is that once things are fulfilled, we won’t need the shadows or types. Therefore, because Christ’s union with his Church will be fulfilled, we won’t need the covenantal institution of marriage. This sounds plausible to me, but as Aaron and Moses suggested, it doesn’t seem to follow that intercourse is abolished. Perhaps the marital constraints of sex are abolished.
I seem to remember my pastor saying that C.S. Lewis suggested something to this effect. Sorry. I have no reference for you.
Well, in Perelandra, C.S. Lewis did suggest that masculine and feminine gender (as in language) were not reflections on objects of the idea of male and female sex, but that male and female sex were simply some of the things in creation that had masculine or feminine gender. So it is possible that in eternity we will no longer be so much male and female, but simply masculine and feminine components of the Church/Bride (just like in grammar, I as a whole am feminine, but if I were to refer to, say, my head alone, that may be in the masculine).
C.S. Lewis also mentioned in the same book the idea of a trans-sexual experience… one in which sex was unnecessary despite the possession of the organs thereof. So in eternity the idea of sex might be transcended, the sexual need not only fulfilled but engulfed, and we won’t think of sex in the glory of being wedded to Christ “any more than the view of Niagara Falls made you think of making it into cups of tea” (also Perelandra, somewhat paraphrased).
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