I recently preached on the Christian teaching of sex. One aspect that I didn’t have time to address was the end of sex. In the gospels, when asked about marriage in heaven, Jesus responds rather curtly that “they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven,” (Mark 12:25; Matt 22:30; Luke 20:34-36). This is a striking answer. Didn’t God design marriage? Why must it pass away since through marriage we enjoy so many earthly joys like companionship, family, and sex?
Apparently, since Paul understands that marriage ultimately points to the heavenly model of Christ’s love for His Bride, the Church (Eph 5:22-33), when we arrive in heaven we will no longer need the metaphor of marriage. We will have reality.
But does that mean that when we go to heaven there will be no sex? Apparently. It is difficult to wrap our minds around this, though. Sex is probably the apex of bodily pleasure in life. Will heaven then be a down-grade to the pleasure we experience in this life?
In response, I have found no better answer than C.S. Lewis’:
“The letter and spirit of scripture, and of all Christianity, forbid us to suppose that life in the New Creation will be a sexual life; and this reduces our imagination to the withering alternative either of bodies which are hardly recognizable as human bodies at all or else of a perpetual fast. As regards the fast, I think our present outlook might be like that of a small boy who, on being told that the sexual act was the highest bodily pleasure should immediately ask whether you ate chocolates at the same time. On receiving the answer ‘No,’ he might regard absence of chocolates as the chief characteristic of sexuality. In vain would you tell him that the reason why lovers in their carnal raptures don’t bother about chocolates is that they have something better to think of. The boy knows chocolate: he does not know the positive thing that excludes it. We are in the same position. We know the sexual life; we do not know, except in glimpses, the other thing which, in Heaven, will leave no room for it.
Hence where fullness awaits us we anticipate fasting. In denying that sexual life, as we now understand it, makes any part of the final beatitude, it is not of course necessary to suppose that the distinction of sexes will disappear. What is no longer needed for biological purposes may be expected to survive for splendor. Sexuality is the instrument both of virginity and of conjugal virtue; neither men nor women will be asked to throw away weapons they have used victoriously. It is the beaten and the fugitives who throw away their swords. The conquerors sheathe theirs and retain them.”
– C.S. Lewis, Miracles, “Miracles of the New Creation”
Marc Sims 