Shall there be Sex in Heaven? Our Work in Heaven!

To mankind, there is no any other higher degree of pleasure and happiness than sex. Actually, it is the sacred of romance that can easily portray what we are going to explore now. According to the movie ‘the game of thrones’, ‘other than sex, there is no any other heaven known to man’. Oh yeah, this is entirely confusing but I am sure you are getting the words. To be open, sex is the closer definition and measure of pleasure a man can ever have (in this context, man stands for either man or woman).

We already have the knowledge of heaven; a restored life in a newly restored universe. We have seen that it is the time and place when we shall be living in full communion with our father, our God. You can expose yourself to all the details about heaven by reading this article. 

So let us examine what exactly will happen heaven: Shall there be something as sweet as sex? Shall there be sex itself? What shall we be doing there?

Our Work in Heaven: Worshiping God!

The bible is very clear that the only work we shall do in heaven is worshiping, praising and serving the Lord (Matthew 4:10; Rev. 22:3; Rev. 19:5-7). It is, theologically and romantically, safe to represent all that we shall be and do in heaven as WORSHIP! This because worshiping God entails almost everything. For example, let us consider the difference between worship, praise and serve.

Worship, Praise, Serve

To worship God is to adore him. It is to recognize his Lordship. According to the oxford dictionary, worship is the practice of showing respect for God. Oh my God! I don’t have right words to describe it. It is, according to gotquestion.org, ‘the art of losing self in the adoration of another’. When we worship God, we are surrendering to Him, recognizing his Kingship! Worship is an internal act of the heart, of the soul, of the whole person offering himself to God! Worship can be in silence, in words, in action, in nothing!

In the Bible, we are told that mountains, rivers, animals and all creation worship God (Psalm 66:4; Psalm 19:1; Romans 1:20). In other words, the Majesty of God; His power, glory, and essence of Him being God can be seen in all creation. And this is worship; recognition and reverence of God based on who He is, not what He has done!

On the other hand, praise refers to ‘words that show approval or admiration of somebody or something’. In other words, while worship is entirely of the heart, praise is usually of the mouth, either in words or songs or instruments or of heart too but in a mixed kind of way. To praise is to joyfully cite good attributes about somebody or something. In other words, to praise God is to joyfully sing His love, marvel at His work and revere Him for such great work.

In sadness, silence, agony and doubts, it may be hard (almost impossible) to praise the Lord. Yet, even in questioning the Lord and doubting His word or even refusing His word, He may still be glorified, worshiped! Worship is more about who He is (this is always stable) and praise is more about what he has done or said (this maybe unstable to us in some circumstances).

Okay, simply whatever work we do and is in line with God’s realm, can be called worshiping. It can be eating, drinking, thinking or singing, sex and any other work; it is all giving glory to God and thus worship, which is ultimately serving the Lord. Actually, it is nice to let you know in advance that we shall eat, wear clothes, drink and dance in heaven. For more about the difference between worship and praise, gotquestion.org got you covered!

Lastly, serving is a little complicated! Oxford dictionary has many definitions too! In my opinion, to serve is to meet a purpose. Actually, serving God (Joshua 24:15), to me, is a little higher than praising Him. While praising is about Him, to an extent (or better put, in some sense), it is ‘from us to Him’. On the other hand, serving God is meeting God’s purpose. And this can never be about us but about Him! No one can meet (or serve) God’s purpose on his own; ‘God demands from us that which He Himself can provide’.

John Piper takes time and expounds on the meaning of ‘serving the Lord’. Read his short article here. It safe to say that the only work we shall do in heaven is ‘worshiping the Lord’ for every other activity falls or ends in worship; Him being God!

 Love, Marriage, Sex, Worship!

Just as we can understand the value of the cross and the blood of Jesus by paralleling the scenario with the Old Testament’s animal sacrifices to God (the blood of the sacrificed sheep on the fire or pillar or altar), we can also understand the union of Christ and the church in heaven by considering the union of a man and a woman on earth! I am simply saying that the intimate relationship between the church (the bride) and Jesus (the bridegroom) can be understood from our human romantic relationships. This analogy isn’t my making; it is biblical!

Listen, when God created Adam, He saw it unfit for a man to be alone and so created Eve out of his ribs. A man without a woman is still a man without the other rib (incomplete). I am kidding! We have to modify this or we hurt the singles or unmarried ones.

I am saying that a man (the bride) is not complete unless made to unite with God or Jesus (the bridegroom). This longing for completeness is natural and divine and we cannot walk away from it. Even for the married ones, the longing stays! The romance here on earth is corrupted by sin and thus does not fully illustrate the pleasure (or worship) in ‘the church uniting or getting married to or getting ‘consummated’ (Psalm 119:96) in the love of Christ’.

Regarding the imperfections in our earthly romance, John Eldredge advises us:

“Don’t let your disappointing experiences cloud your understanding of this. We have grown cynical, as a society, about whether intimacy is really possible. To the degree that we have abandoned soul-oneness, we have sought out merely sex, physical sex, to ease the pain. But the full union is no longer there; the orgasm comes incomplete; its heart has been taken away. Many have been deeply hurt. Sometimes, we must learn from what we have not known, let it teach us what ought to be. God’s design was that the two shall become one flesh. The physical oneness was meant to be the expression of a total interweaving of being. Is it any wonder that we crave this? Our alienation is removed, if only for a moment, and in the paradox of love, we are at the same time known and taken beyond ourselves”.

I am afraid he is saying we are in ‘small heaven’ during sex.

There is worshiping during sex!

“To give yourself over to another, passionately and nakedly, to adore that person’s body, soul, and spirit-we know there is something special, even sacramental about sex. It requires trust and abandonment, guided by a wholehearted devotion. What else can this be but worship? After all God employs explicitly sexual language to describe faithfulness and unfaithfulness to Him. For us creatures of flesh, sexual intimacy is the closest parallel we have to real worship” – John Eldredge, in the book, Desire!

Now, let us look at another Scholar, Peter Kreeft: “The spiritual intercourse with God is the ecstasy hinted at in all earthly intercourse, physical or spiritual. It is the ultimate reason why sexual passion is so strong, so different from other passions, so heavy with suggestions of profound meanings that just elude our grasp”.

Eh do not think that these people I am quoting are just speakers, they are men of God, the forefathers of our faith.

What are these men saying?

There is such a thing as ‘sexual intimacy’ even in the spiritual world (can we call it spiritual sex?) and thus Christ takes analogy of a man and a woman in romance as the perfect parallel example of the church and God in romance, Christ and us in marriage (Ephesians 5:31-32; Revelation 19:7-8; Revelation 19:19) .

Simply put, there will not be physical sex as we know it but there will be spiritual sex (not really, not spiritual!) or romance. Well, all I am trying to say is that our union with Christ in paradise shall be perfect in all senses and forms, full of pleasure, devotion and trust and surrender and worship far beyond what we have ever experienced during romantic physical sex or beyond our imaginations! (What no eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived-1 Corinthians 2:9).

And since we already know that the very best of whatever we have here in this life is just a glimpse or a sip of the greater good in the life to come, then ‘spiritual’ sex or romance with God or that love affair in the life to come will be much deeper, satisfying, exploring and all-encompassing than romance we have ever enjoyed here. And ultimately, it will be the true worship; more than sex!

Sex is prophetic!

‘It is a mystery almost too great to mention, but God is the expression of the very things we seek in each other. For do we not bear God’s image? Are we not a living portrait of God? Indeed we are, and in a most surprising place-in our GENDER” – John Eldredge.

Man and woman are different and thus the souls that God poured into them both must be different though from the same God. And since a man and a woman in romance are one body (Ephesians 5:31, Genesis 2:24), then Christ and the church are one body too (this time not in a physical love affair but in an all-encompassing ‘spiritual’ love affair that I cannot be able to describe). John E. continues: “We bear His image as men and women, and God does not have a body. So it must be at the level of the soul-the eternal part of us-that we reflect God”.

Writing about sex, Mike Mason says, “For many people, certainly, sex is the most powerful and moving experience that life has to offer, and more overwhelmingly holy than anything that happens in church. For great masses of people, sex is the one force which can actually tip men and women completely off their accustomed centers of gravity and lift them, however briefly, right out of themselves” (The mystery of marriage).

Alexander enhances this: “Our hearts live for an experience of worship that fills our beings with a joy that is so deeply in awe of the other that we are barely aware of ourselves”. Mark the words, ‘barely aware of ourselves’. That is the essence of worship!

That is the power of romance. A man will give all, including himself in exchange for such romance. By understanding the power, the sweetness, the glory and soul-fulfilling pleasure experienced in sex (though brief and usually entangled in sin, the corrupted nature); we can easily imagine the heavenly satisfaction or consummation in God’s perfect love. 

Summary and Conclusions

For centuries, the temple and its sacrifices were at the heart of worship, but once Christ came and offered Himself as the ultimate sacrifice, the temple system and its sacrifices were no longer needed (John 4:22-23). According to Rand Alcorn, they were ‘copies of the heavenly things’, and the earthly temple was only a ‘copy of the true one’ in heaven (Hebrews 9:23-24).

In the same way as above, marriage relationship is a picture of our relationship with Christ (Ephesians 5:31-32). Marriage on earth is the only analogy or illustration of marriage in heaven! Once we are present with Christ, the illustration will no longer be needed; true and complete marriage shall happen. We will have the reality, which is far better than any earthly representation. This is why Jesus is called the Bridegroom, the Church His Bride, and our celebration in heaven the Wedding or marriage (John 3:29, Mat 22:1-14, Revelations 19:7-9).

NB: About boredom, Our work in heaven in the name of worshiping the Lord (God who is eternally endless) shall be so diverse that it will take us eternity while doing it and joyfully.