Asexual in Heaven
I readily admit I have some pretty far-out ideas sometimes. More than once I’ve left a whole Sunday School class wide-eyed after my teaching, but I feel like I got a little confirmation on one of my ideas last week from an article on Christianity Today.
First, let’s take a look at a story in Matthew Chapter 22. The religious leaders had asked Jesus whose wife a woman, who has (following the Law) been married to one or more of her deceased husband’s brothers, will be in heaven. Jesus answered, “For in the resurrected state neither do [men] marry nor are [women] given in marriage, but they are like the angels in heaven. (Mat 22:30 AMP) I deduced from this and further study, that while we do not become angels when we die, we will take on some of their characteristics. Now even though angels in the Bible have male names, I am of the opinion they are sexless when it comes to how we typically determine male and female, so I have contended that once we get to heaven and receive our glorified bodies we will no longer be male or female. I’ll spare you my other ideas on our glorified bodies for now.
The article in Christianity Today was discussing the issue of women and men and whether they are equal with each other or complimentary. I’m not even going there, but one passage got me to thinking back on Matthew 22. The article’s author writes, “When God created humankind in his image, he created them to be male and female (Gen. 1:27). It is often said that men and women bear the image of God equally. But it might be more accurate to say that men and women bear God’s image together. Men and women collectively reflect the divine image; one without the other is incomplete. In addition, the Book of Genesis affirms men and women’s joint mandate to exercise dominion over creation. Men and women share this responsibility; neither can fulfill God’s mandate alone.”
I don’t want to put words in this author’s mouth, but the sentence, “Men and women collectively reflect the divine image; one without the other is incomplete,” made me wonder if perhaps God in His fullness is both male and female. I’m not talking anatomical here or saying God is transgender. I mean the way we think, feel, act – our spirit and soul. So then if men and women collectively are the image of God, when we get to heaven and become like Him, we are, in the gender sense, both male and female or neither male nor female, which ever way you want to look at it.
If you think this sounds crazy, just review 1 John 3:2; “But friends, that’s exactly who we are: children of God. And that’s only the beginning. Who knows how we’ll end up! What we know is that when Christ is openly revealed, we’ll see him–and in seeing him, become like him.”(The Message) Other translations are very similar. Understand I’m just sharing the ramblings of my mind. They are either brilliant or totally nuts, but I dream of the day when I stand in Heaven and say, “See, I told you so…”
from my notebook 