Married Or Not? More Follow Up

Q

I found your website 9 months ago and look forward to reading it on a daily basis. It is awesome and have learned so much.However I have to disagree with you on your stand on living together without being married.. How do you explain what the bible says that fornicators will not enter the kingdom on God? Also, since fallen angels had sex with mortal women, and we will be like the angels, does that not mean that when we go to heaven, we will also have sex?

A

Fornication is defined as sex outside of marriage. (Adultery is one kind of fornication.) To be guilty of fornicating the parties would not think of them selves as a married couple and perhaps never intend to marry. So the question is at what point is a couple married? Until governments started issuing marriage licenses, couples were considered to be married when they held themselves out as such. (Remember, governments don’t issue marriage licenses for moral or religious reasons, but for legal ones.)

Sometimes there were public ceremonies, but in many cases the marriage was simply a mutual decision followed by behavior consistent with that of a married couple. Even today one of the tests of common law marriage is whether the surrounding community thinks of the couple as being married based on its observation of their behavior. Since God judges our actions by the motives of our heart, the real test is whether the couple truly believes they are married. If they do then having sex does not make them fornicators.

As for having sex in heaven, the Lord only said there will be no marriage there (Matt. 22:30). We assume that means there will be no sex. But before you start feeling bad, remember that everything we experience in heaven will surpass everything we’ve known on Earth. We won’t regret the loss of sexual relationships.

Fallen angels engaged in sexual activity with human women, something forbidden by God, and have spent over 4000 years in prison for doing so while awaiting judgment (2 Peter 2:4, Jude 1:6) Their experience can not be used to support the view that we’ll have sex in Heaven.