Question: Will we know one another in heaven, especially husbands and wives?
Answer: This question comes up quite often. This questioner is not the only one who would like to know the answer to this question. It may be that most of us are more or less curious about these matters at times, but in the main we may not get much satisfaction for our curiosity.
First of all, I would say to you as the Apostle Paul said in II Thessalonians 1:7, to some who were troubled about some things: “And to you who are troubled rest with us,…” He then went on to explain to them that when the Lord Jesus comes to judge the people, He will set all things in order and judge them properly according to their deeds. One thing we know is that God made us in the beginning, and now through salvation He has made us over again. We are “new creatures in Christ” and “partakers of the divine nature” (II Peter 1:4), and He knows exactly what it takes to fulfill the desires and longings of that nature because it is His own nature which He has given to us. He has fitted everything in heaven to that nature, so we can be perfectly assured that if we are accounted worthy to enter there, we will be perfectly and thoroughly satisfied with everything exactly as it is, however it may be. God has fixed that place to exactly fit the nature He has given us through salvation so that we will be sublimely happy, satisfied, and content with everything just as it is, so let us all bend all efforts to get there.
It appears certain from the holy Scriptures that our relationships with one another will not be the same in heaven as they are here on earth. Here, we have relationships in the flesh, but it will not be so there. In Matthew 22:23-33, there is recorded a conversation between Jesus and the Sadducees which touches on this very question that we are considering. The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection of the dead. These Sadducees confronted Jesus with what they considered to be an air-tight case against the resurrection of the dead. They referred to a statute in the law of Moses which said that if a man married a wife and died without having any children, that his brother was to take his wife and raise up seed unto his brother. In their story there were seven brothers, and one by one they all had the same woman to wife and none of them had any children, so she was married to all seven in order. Now all of them were dead, they said, and the woman also was dead. Their question was, “Whose wife will she be in the resurrection, because they have all married her in this life?”
Jesus answered the Sadducees straight from the shoulder, and said in Matthew 22:29-30, “…Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven.” This spells it out in black and white that there are no husband and wife relationships in heaven. Neither will there be any family relationships (father and son, mother and daughter, etc.) in that eternal world. Oh, how merciful, compassionate, and sympathetic God has been to arrange it this way! This is surely His divine wisdom. Many are familiar with the burden, grief, yearning, and longing in the heart for a wayward, erring loved one; and how anxious we are for them to come home and change their way of life. Oh, the unspeakable anguish that rends the heart when we see that loved one snatched away unprepared, and we know that there is no more hope they are gone, forever gone. To bear that same anguish of heart for long, long eternity is devastating just to think about. God has taken care of that with one stroke of His mercy, by just dissolving all human ties and bonds which we have in this life, so that if a son, daughter, spouse, or parent should be lost, it will not affect our happiness of heaven to any degree.
It is evident, however, that there is a way in which all of God’s redeemed ones will know one another, and apparently even without introduction. The first seven verses of the seventeenth chapter of Matthew record the incident of Christ’s transfiguration before three of His disciples: Peter, James, and John. Verse 3 says, “And, behold, there appeared unto them (Peter, James, and John) Moses and Elias talking with him (Jesus).” The disciples knew them and it is evident that they did, for in verse 4, Peter said to Jesus, “…Let us make here three tabernacles; one for thee, and one for Moses, and one for Elias.” He named them and wanted to build tabernacles for them, so it appears evident that he knew who they were.
This knowing of one another is knowledge of a different plane or elevation than the knowledge we have of one another in the flesh. I cannot explain just how it will be in that respect, for I have never been there to experience it first-hand, but a few scriptures guide my thinking which is not at all dogmatic. It seems to me that the knowing of one another in that eternal world will be in the spirit, and not in the flesh. I do not intend to convey the idea here that I do not believe that the resurrected saints will not have bodies and perhaps familiar, recognizable features. I believe they will, but I also believe that everything there will be on a spiritual level and it is in that realm that we will know one another.
Actually, that relationship begins here, when in salvation we come “…to the spirits of just men made perfect.” (Hebrews 12:23.) Salvation brings us into a unique and “knowing” relationship with every other blood-washed saint in the whole world. We fellowship and know them in the spirit. II Corinthians 5:16 says, “Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the flesh:…yet now henceforth know we him no more.” Colossians 3:11 says, concerning our relationship in Christ, “Where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free: but Christ is all, and in all.” Read also Romans 10:12, I Corinthians 12:13, Gal 3:28. These scriptures all teach us that salvation brings all born-again souls of every nation, tongue, and people (Revelation 7:9) into holy amalgamation in the spirit, and that their relationship and bond of fellowship is in the spirit and not in the flesh. By this we know that this knowing of one another in the spirit begins here, but it will be perfected over there and that will be the basis of all relationships in heaven.
