A lot of people might have reservations about knowing Jesus in an intimate way, as two lovers would know each other. Many people have always related to Jesus in a reverent, honorable, but distant way. One of the prevailing ways of thinking of the boundaries of intimacy is that God is on his throne and we are before him and that's that and we are to worship him from that distance with all that we are...But there's more to us and God than that.
When I first became a Christian over 9 years ago I struggled with a passage in the Bible:
At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. - Matthew 23:30 (NIV)
At the time I was still waiting for God to bring me my wife, but I was also excited for when he would return for us. That verse above crushed me though. I did not want to just go to Heaven and miss out on ever having a wife, or never have physical intimacy with my wife, or never have children. And all I had with God was this distant and reverent relationship; I was zealous for him but had no idea what intimacy with him was like. I struggled with that for a year, until I came across some book in the discount section at a bookstore called Journey of Desire by John Eldredge. In it there is a chapter where Eldredge is asked a question by some career-single women, who thought there was little chance that they would ever marry in this life, at a retreat, "Is there sex in heaven?" They didn't want to miss out on joy.
But what's the answer?
God wrote out the interplay of love, passion, desire between a man and a woman. He gives us this incredible picture of oneness in marriage, intimacy, joy; but what does it really mean? Is it just for our own happiness and have no connection to intimacy with God? That would be antrocentric.
The Spirit wrote through Paul:
“For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.” This is a profound mystery—but I am talking about Christ and the church. Ephesians 5:31-32 (NIV)
God is surprising us by saying all that he made in marriage, romance, love, desire, intimacy, sex, etc between a husband and a wife, all of that is like an image in the mirror of the kind of relationship he desires with us. It's not just like it, but it's far deeper, far more close than marriage here. The Bible is a romance and God is our Heavenly Lover who is trying to woo our hearts through his invisible Holy Spirit whom he sent to be with us in this world.
True, intimacy is hard when our Lover is physically gone and we can only be close with his Spirit whom we cannot touch and we cannot see. He promises though that one day we will!
Your eyes will see the king in his beauty and view a land that stretches afar. Isaiah 33:17 (NIV)
Jesus called himself our Bridegroom when he was on Earth (Matthew 9:15; John 3:29). He is pursuing a love relationship with us, a romance that will literally take our breath away
God wants to be pursued. Remember Genesis 1:27? We are made in the image of God. "In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them." We bear the image of God as men and women. And it's not just in our bodies, it's in our souls. God is Spirit (John 4:24), so how we image him as men and women must be in our spirits. Like any woman, God wants to be pursued. He wants to be wanted. He wants to be desired. He wants to be worshiped. And so he wants us to play our part in this relationship:
Truly, you are a God who hides himself - Isaiah 45:15 (NASB)
And he wants us to come find him.
How hard this is though here on earth. We cannot see him, cannot touch him, embrace him, hold him, kiss him, smell him, hear his voice, hear his words, go to a coffeehouse and have coffee with him and talk for two hours and cultivate deep emotional intimacy. We are limited. And on top of that, we must deal with the world which offers us a base, albeit quick solution to our problem of desire: a watered down sinful version of what we need from our God. That morphs into all sorts of sin from pornography to random sex to deep emotional heart addictions. It's tough, there's no getting around it.
But God wants our romance. And he'll do anything to get it. Even send his Son to die and rescue us. And oh we will get our romance with him. That's what Heaven is for. One day we will marry him (Revelation 19:7-9).
“In that day,” declares the LORD,
“you will call me ‘my husband’;
you will no longer call me ‘my master. - Hosea 2:16
But until then, Jesus, our Lover, wants us to hope for him.
For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what they already have? - Romans 8:24 (NIV)
If we make him our fulfillment of our hearts' desires, our Portion (Psalm 73:26), and rejoice in him, he will give us the desires of our heart in our romance with him forever (Psalm 37:4) and also in life, either here or in eternity. What we have coming with him is a wonderful love. I can only imagine trillions of years into eternity, how we will sit down as a family and look through all the memories we've had with our Beloved. And rejoice in knowing we have an eternity more of them to come.
But what of the original question? Is there sex in Heaven? Of course. Hebrews 8:5 says:
They serve at a sanctuary that is a copy and shadow of what is in heaven (NIV, in reference to the temple)
As we are images of God, earthly marriage is an image of our heavenly marriage with Jesus, so earthly intercourse is an image of the spiritual intercourse we will share in with God. The joy, the ecstasy, the utter abandonment and trust and giving of the heart and complete nakedness of earthly intercourse are an image of the ecstasy and rapture to come in the spiritual intimacy with Jesus. What is worship? Worship is all of the things above plus utter abandonment, complete adoration of the other in such an unveiled bare way that the other is lifted up as our own God as we our lost in the ecstasy and rapture of loving the other. What else does that sound like? Sex? I think the best ansewer to if there is sex in heaven is, "Yes, we will worship God in Heaven. Thank you!"
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