One of the wonders of heaven is that we will have an increased capacity for love. Couples will be many times more in love with each other than they ever were on earth. In comparison, their earthly love will seem as tame as a ‘romance’ between five-year-olds. And yet the astounding thing is that everyone else in heaven will thrill this former couple as utterly as they thrill each other. Everyone will be so head-over-heels in love with everyone else as to render unthinkable an exclusive relationship such as marriage.

In heaven you will have unbelievable closeness with people of both genders. Everyone will beam with delight to see you. No one will be the slightest reserved, shy, snobbish or prejudiced. You will feel connected, understood and accepted like no one on earth has ever experienced. The warmth, intimacy and depth of eternal relationships will be literally out of this world. It is my conviction that the mental clarity we will enjoy means no one will ever be tongue-tied or left groping for words. This, combined with increased understanding, emotional wholeness, transparent honesty and divine love will make deep, intimate communication effortless. Heavenly relationships will be so much more fulfilling than earthly ones that for anyone in heaven to want marriage would be like an adult wanting a pacifier.

Heaven will be the place where dreams come true – where the honeymoon never ends and where people are more exciting and loving and perfect than we dare hope. And that’s just each other. The joy we will find in Jesus is indescribable.

There will be marriage in heaven – our marriage to the Son of God. It is then that our love for Jesus will be consummated in eternal bliss, bringing us to realms of exquisite joy and never-ending fulfillment.

Once, when I was thinking of those who have happy marriages, out of thin air came the words, ‘They have received their reward in full.’ These are the words of Jesus spoken about those who receive the little, earthly pleasures that many of us hanker after but will miss out on heavenly rewards (Matthew 6:2,5,16). The way this came to me implied not the slightest criticism of those blessed with marital happiness, it is just some people are rewarded in this life and some are rewarded in the life to come, and those who are rewarded down here end up with the least.

In the age to come the huge reversals promised by Jesus will take place. The last will be first. The downtrodden will be exalted. Not only will beggars like Lazarus in Jesus’ parable (Luke 16:19-28) find themselves in heaven, and many who had lived in luxury find themselves in hell, but even among the born again there will be a vast range of different rewards, depending upon how we have lived this life (1 Corinthians 3:12-15; Galatians 6:7-8; Matthew 12:36-37). Every believer who has missed out on companionship, romance, marital happiness, having children or whatever, will be extravagantly compensated. What had previously seemed sacrifices will turn out to have been the most cunning investments. Not only will every tear will be dried, but sorrow will be swallowed up by uncontrollable, never-ending joy. The only regret will be over not having sacrificed more.

One of the many shocks awaiting us is that when all is revealed it will turn out that the ones to be envied are those whose reward is limited to the next life. They will receive many times more than those who currently seem happiest, provided they do not lose some of their eternal compensation by having the wrong attitude while on earth, such as resenting God for deferring their reward. The wait builds within us spiritual treasures – such as greater faith – that nothing else could achieve.

There are those who have happiness down here, and there are those who surrender that happiness so that they can invest it in superior, future happiness. Missing out on earthly joys is like sacrificing much to invest $10,000 in a heavenly bank account, and in the next life being able to withdraw it as a $1 billion.

A huge handicap most of us face – and this is certainly true of me most of the time – is that we are so earthly-minded that we cannot so much as imagine any heavenly reward that could even equal – much less surpass – the marriage of our dreams. Despite our weak imaginations, however, such rewards exist and they can be yours. Scriptures such as the following hint at the magnitude of heaven’s compensation for what we might miss out down here, but it is beyond description.

Romans 8:18 I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.

1 Peter 4:13 But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed.

2 Corinthians 4:17-18 For our light and momentary troubles are achieving for us an eternal glory that far outweighs them all. So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

We intensify our torment by daydreaming, wishful thinking or pining for earthly gratification. We are not intentionally cruel to ourselves, it is just that, like a drug, the very thing that offers fleeting comfort, inflames our frustration. In the long run it will turn out much more fulfilling to follow Scripture’s advice:

Colossians 3:2 Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things.

The damage done by longing for earthly gratification can be repaired by developing a deeper longing for the Lord. Displace fleshly yearnings with spiritual yearnings. Not only will this lower our frustration, it will foster a desire that will propel us forward spiritually. Moreover, even though continually thinking this way is far from easy, it is simply getting our thoughts to line up with reality.

This side of heaven, being in love is an exciting high interspersed with inevitable disappointments, misunderstandings, frustration, and hurt. It might be nicer than being single but it is an elusive shadow of what our heart pines for. Built into our very being is a craving for perfection that nothing on earth can supply. Heaven alone offers the perfection we yearn for. There you will find superior excitement, superior satisfaction, superior intimacy, superior oneness – superior everything, with no downside.

If owning a brand new Ferrari causes a toy peddle car to lose some of its appeal, heavenly pleasures outclass the best that earthly romance offers. What we now think is the ultimate in red-blooded passion, thrilling adventure and heart-thumping excitement will be seen as boring child-play, once we taste the wonders of heaven.

Do you think the Creator of sex has reached his limit in his ability to give us pleasure and fulfillment? Do you suppose that in the infinity of the Almighty’s loving wisdom he has reserved for our heavenly reward that which is second rate relative to what he has already given fallen humanity? There is a spiritual ecstasy of which the highest sexual experience, the greatest romance, the most exciting adventure is but the faintest shadow. There are exquisite sensations and rapturous delights that so exhilarate, intoxicate and transport every fiber of one’s being that our present bodies and emotions would explode if subjected them. Pinnacles of pleasure beyond our dreams all revolve around loving and adoring Almighty God. Every Christian is destined for them. All we need do is remain faithful in this life, allowing ourselves to be captivated by the beauty of Jesus.

For anyone to lament there being no sex in heaven is like lamenting that there will be no Barbie Dolls. Everything wonderful that anyone has ever experienced on earth will be raised so many levels that so-call adult pleasures will pale in the same way as we currently look back on what seemed the most important thing on earth when we were four years old. If we keep our eyes on Jesus, mind-boggling things are ahead!

The following is taken from some fiction I’ve written about a man who saw parts of heaven (see Free Christian Fiction).

My spirit somehow caught the faintest glimpse of what it would be like to be simultaneously in love with multiplied millions of people, each of whom I found stunningly beautiful, fascinating and exciting, and all of whom were equally in love with me. Suddenly I had insight into the thrill of an eternity reveling in perhaps a billion never-ending relationships, each of which was more permanent, satisfying, uplifting and conflict-free than the best marriage ever known on earth. The intimacy was not sexual, but somehow even more wondrous. In this flash of awareness I seemed transported to a place where everyone saw me as witty and fun to be with. I was valued and famous and irreplaceable. They adored me in the most passionate, but God-honoring sense. And the feeling was mutual.

I sensed a world in which everyone was a hero, a megastar and highly desirable in everyone else’s eyes. I, and everyone else, felt the center of attention. Jealously was impossible because everyone’s happiness was wrapped up in everyone else’s happiness. No one could be honored without everyone else feeling so happy for that person that it felt to them all as if they themselves had been honored. The intensity of love, the ease of communication, the feeling of oneness and the appreciation of each person’s uniqueness soared beyond anything I had previously dreamed.

In what seemed like an explosion of revelation, I saw how so much changes when that which is perfect arrives. A caterpillar might be unable to imagine any greater pleasure than eating leaves. When it sprouts wings and tastes nectar, however, it never bothers to go back to eating leaves. Likewise, when we gain our new bodies, sex will be superseded by higher pleasures. As toys are the appropriate gift of a loving parent to a baby, marital relations are a beautiful gift from God. Nevertheless, babies grow up, and followers of Christ eventually burst through mortality into eternal pleasures. We will then miss earth’s highlights no more than we miss the teddy bear and the make-believe money of our childhood. What is necessary in a world of physical birth and death has no function in this place of perfection. Just as locks would be out of place in a world of perfect love, so would any exclusive relationship between people. As people cannot share secrets in a world where everyone already knows everything, so marriage could not exist in this world – not, of course, because marriage is not of God, but simply because that which is perfect has come.

Then, just when I had thought it impossible for anything to surpass what I was sensing, I somehow glimpsed love, fulfillment and never-ending excitement that were exceedingly higher still – knowing God on a level beyond my current comprehension.

Suddenly I understood why Scripture says no one has ever seen God and lived, even though other passages refer to people seeing God. It’s like my claim to have seen earth’s sun when I’m referring merely to the briefest glimpse from – get this – 93 million miles away, and even then it was far too blinding for me to properly take in what I was seeing. As my eyes would burn out long before I could gaze upon the sun’s full splendor, so my brain would fry long before I could truly behold God’s beauty. No wonder I almost died in that endless palace, trying to contain the ecstasy of the mere reflected glory of God. I would need an astoundingly superior body to have any hope of containing the excitement of truly knowing God, rather than being knocked senseless by a millisecond burst of his reflected glory from a million miles away. I am no longer surprised that Scripture says Daniel “was exhausted and lay ill for several days” after a mere vision of symbols and an angel.

How can anyone describe something a million times better than the greatest earthly experience? All I can do is point, dumbstruck, at God – the warmest, most fascinating, most exciting Person in all existence. It is to be expected that intimacy with God should far surpass anything else, given the fact that he is the beautiful Mind behind all the other wonders. He is the inexhaustible Source of all love and goodness; the perfect and infinite Designer and Maker of every good thing anyone has ever enjoyed.

A mysterious certainty gripped my heart that not only is God a person, he is exceedingly more personal than we are, and with far deeper feelings and emotions. Alongside him, we are the cold, impersonal ones. God is as superior to us in intelligence, creativity and personality, as we are superior to a worm in each of those dimensions. Our current difficulty is in having the courage to get close enough to God to discover how thrillingly personal and lovable he is.

A lonely man I know always avoids any woman he is attracted to. His logic is that if he finds a woman desirable, so will other men. She will therefore have a choice of men, and he is convinced that no one with a choice of men would want anything to do with him. He believes his only hope would be with someone so undesirable that no one – himself included – would want her. Her predicament might make her so desperate that she might possibly lower herself enough to spend time with him.

You might find this attitude pathetic, but most of us are like that in the presence of some people. We feel there are people who are too cultured or beautiful or famous or rich or intelligent to want our friendship. If we feel this way about mere humans who might be marginally superior to us according to one or two measures, it’s no wonder we shrink from God who is in every way infinitely superior to us.

Even those of us who know that God accepts us as his children, still starve ourselves of many thrilling encounters with God because, deep down, we can’t believe someone so superior would really want to be best friends with us. We therefore keep aloof from God, breaking his heart in the process, and then we have the audacity to think it is God, not us, who is cold and aloof. In reality, God is so passionate about us that he makes it his business to familiarize himself with every hair on our head.

We rob ourselves of so much of the ultimate human experience – never-ending intimacy with the most delightfully uplifting Person in the universe – because we cannot believe God really wants it. That’s why faith is so crucial.

Many of us find this faith almost impossible to muster because we misunderstand what we are asked to believe. We are not expected to believe that we are worthy of God’s love – that would be ridiculous – but simply to believe that it is the very nature of the One who said “love your enemies” to love fervently those whom others find unlovable. We are not asked to try to delude ourselves into believing we are lovable, but merely to believe that God is superior to us in the ability to be head-over-heels in love with someone everyone else finds unlovable – just as superior to us he is in every other desirable way. Neither are we asked to believe that God’s love turns him into a crazed maniac who jettisons his commitment to truth, holiness and perfect justice by turning a blind eye to our sins. He is simply a God whose love drives him to remove our sins by executing justice for us on the cross and bestowing upon us divine holiness and power over sin.

It is not that God loves us because we are desirable but that since the God of the impossible loves us, he is able to transform us into people who are desirable.

Once we spiritually fuse ourselves to God through Jesus, there is no way that God’s superiority keeps us from enjoying him. On the contrary, it makes the relationship breathtakingly superior to any human relationship we could ever have.

Men differ from women and yet not only is that difference not insurmountable, it adds a whole dimension to marriage. Likewise, we differ from God, but that just adds wonder and excitement to our union with him. On the other hand, men and women are so alike that the similarity also makes marriage special. Likewise, we are very much like God. Not only are we in his image, we were literally made for intimacy with him. When God has completed his work of recreating us, restoring us to the splendor of his original intentions by removing from us all of sin’s hideous defects and deformities, the mix of similarities and differences between God and us will be exquisite. No companionship or union in the universe can equal it.

Postscript

Years after writing above, I finally felt God’s release to marry. I had passed my mid-fifties before I married and had sex for the first time ever. My marriage is exceptionally happy.

A man e-mailed me asking whether, now that I am happily married, I still believe the contents of this webpage. “Absolutely!” I replied, flabbergasted that any would ask such a question. Hoping to make it even clearer, I added some quotes to this page from other parts of my writings:

God’s passion is that we experience divine joy – eternal glories beyond our present comprehension that make what we presently call happiness seem like plain sugar compared with an exquisite banquet. But we can partake of God’s joy, only if we first partake of his nature. For a cat to appreciate human pleasures, it would have to become human. Even a human child cannot fully enter adult pleasures until he loses childish tastes and irresponsibilities and becomes like an adult. Likewise, we can only truly enter the joy of the Lord (Matthew 25:23) by becoming like the Lord. And it is toward that end that God is constantly working.


A peep behind the curtains of death would give us a staggeringly different view of who is to be pitied and how fairly people are being treated. For years, people saw Lazarus languishing at the rich man’s gate, begging for scraps. But what they could not see was the once-rich man spending eternity begging Lazarus for a drop of water (Luke 16:19-31). Although we all deserve nothing but an eternity in hell, Lazarus deserved poverty no more than the wealthy deserve poverty. So that was rectified and he ended up abundantly compensated for his temporary discomfort. The rich man, however, had the opportunity to be generous but spent his money on himself. He, more than Lazarus, deserved to be a beggar. So that’s exactly how it ended up.

It is foolish for us to criticize the script God is writing until we have read the surprise ending. Much of both the good and the bad that happens to us on earth is undeserved, but when the perfection of God’s plan is fully unveiled, every mouth will be hushed.


If shown snap shots of new born babies, we would have no idea who to feel sorry for. Those who look shriveled up might turn out to be the most beautiful. Those who are crying might end up the healthiest and happiest. Those with a dumb expression on their face might end up being the most intelligent. Relative to eternity, what we see in an entire lifetime is but a snap shot. Until we enter eternity we have no idea who to pity.


How could anyone who has suffered horrifically be adequately compensated in the life to come? We know that for the apostle Paul, bouts of languishing in prison were interspersed with more stimulating activities, like five times reeling under the Jewish maximum number of lashes and three times being tortured with rods. He was so viciously and relentlessly pounded with rocks that he was presumed dead. If you’re afraid of flying and yet never been in a single plane crash, spare a thought for Paul. In the days before buoyancy vests, flares, radios and search planes, he was shipwrecked at least three times, once spending about twenty-four hours in the water (2 Corinthians 11:23-29). Such was his earthly reward for seeking to spread a message of love and rescue people from the horror of hell. Would you say Paul was one of those people who might possibly have reason for saying life has given them a raw deal? And yet with his astonishing list of sufferings fresh in his mind, he dismisses his tortuous existence as light, momentary troubles not worthy to be compared with heaven’s rewards (2 Corinthians 4:17; Romans 8:18; note also Matthew 5:11-12).

Paul sounds like a nut case. What makes him seem like he’s from another planet is that he had indeed visited another world. But what of the millions of us who, unlike Paul, have never visited heaven? How can we imagine a reward so stupendous as to completely swallow up the most horrendous earthly suffering and even make it seem worthwhile? It is so far beyond our current experience that in a desperate attempt to help provide a vague understanding, the Bible often refers to childbirth. When in the agony of giving birth to her first child, many a woman becomes determined never to have another baby. It seems beyond belief that anything would be worth enduring such pain. Nevertheless, the joy of motherhood makes the pain so worthwhile that later she would grieve bitterly if told she will be granted her former wish of never having another baby. Pain is still awful, but the final reward makes it so worthwhile that she actually chooses to embrace the pain.

But does it take a genius to realize that an all-powerful God would be so amazing that he can fully compensate those who have suffered horrifically in this life, even to the extent of making present suffering worthwhile?


Jesus spoke proportionally more about hell than anyone I know of. Nevertheless, he gave the impression that some of the most terrifying words anyone living happily could hear is, ‘You have your reward already’ (Matthew 6:2-5,16). He was speaking of people who were honored and seemed to have everything going their way and yet they were in a horrifying situation because, although they didn’t realize it, they had little to look forward to beyond the grave. They seemed to be enjoying the good life, but the best or worst earthly life has to offer is nothing, relative to eternity.

Our future reward is of immense importance to Jesus. For example, he said, ‘When you give a luncheon or dinner, do not invite your friends, your brothers or relatives, or your rich neighbors; if you do, they may invite you back and so you will be repaid. But when you give a banquet, invite the poor, the crippled, the lame, the blind, and you will be blessed. Although they cannot repay you, you will be repaid at the resurrection of the righteous’ (Luke 14:12-14).

What we call a lifetime is less than a blink in eternity.

Most of us focus so much on the here and now that we lose sight of the there and wow! A distorted view of reality leads to a distorted life. The apostle Paul was headed for a stupendous heavenly reward precisely because he could say, ‘If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men’ (1 Corinthians 15:19). Most of us have such comfortable lifestyles that we can barely imagine why anyone would pen such words. Supposing we are getting the best of both worlds, we are actually frittering away our heavenly reward like a child with no sense of the value of money tricked into squandering his inheritance, buying ice-cream for $100,000 a cone.

The bulk of Jesus’ teaching was devoted to urging us to store up treasures in heaven. We’re so busy trying to store up ‘legitimate’ pleasures on earth, however, that we don’t even have time to realize how far we have strayed from the mindset Jesus tried to instill in his followers. He preached his heart out, and most of us are still too drugged by ease and comfort to undergo the mind shift we desperately need. No wonder he said it was so hard for the rich to leave everything and follow him. He kept preaching, ‘Deny yourself’ and we keep gorging ourselves and envying those who have even more. ‘Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things,’ pleaded Paul (Colossians 3:2). He longed for those with marital joys and responsibilities, or who grieve earthly losses, or who benefit from earthly gains, to act almost as if these events were not happening. The pressures of everyday life should not be so important to us, ‘For this world in its present form is passing away’ (1 Corinthians 7:29-31). Endure hardship, he urged, as a soldier who never gets entangled in civilian affairs (2 Timothy 2:3-4). The words bounce off and we switch on the television.

So often, the church has needed persecution to shake it out of its infatuation with the here and now, in order to gain the right perspective and the passion that results. ‘ . . . he who has suffered in his body is done with sin,’ wrote Peter to people who were wondering why they were suffering persecution (1 Peter 4:1). How long will we tempt God to resort to this means? We have no inkling of how much we are missing out on and how much we are ruining our future inheritance as we settle down in the drunken stupor of lukewarmness. For how long can God love us and not in his grace send us suffering when nothing else seems to set our gaze heavenward?

A while after the revision, I received yet another e-mail asking the same question. This time it was from a woman who considered herself spiritual. Her marriage lacked the sexual fulfillment she had known in her previous failed marriage. She wrote:

Now that you are married, with all the wonders of physical intimacy you now enjoy, do you still think there is something in heaven that could possibly compensate for what I’ve been so robbed of all my life? Like what ? What ethereal thing could come close to making up for this?

Sigh! That’s as small-minded as a heroin addict believing that a heaven without heroin would be hell; as pitiful as a pedophile’s idea of heaven being an endless number of children to defile or a sadist thinking he would prefer hell to an eternity of having no one to torture.

As Scripture tells us:

1 Corinthians 2:9  . . . No eye has seen, no ear has heard, no mind has conceived what God has prepared for those who love him

I passionately understand how pain distorts our perspective and makes it hard to think of anything else, but how our infatuation with the temporal must break God’s heart! “Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things,” he pleads (Colossians 3:2). I’m reminded of 2 Timothy 3, “People will be lovers of themselves . . . lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God having a form of godliness but denying its power,” and Romans 8:6, “For to be carnally minded is death; but to be spiritually minded is life and peace” (KJV).

To my shame, I must confess that despite being a virgin and a loner, for decade after decade, I was a sex and romance addict, in the sense that it seemed utterly impossible to be happy on earth without them. (For more on this, see Why I’ve Never Married). I at least had the sense to realize that heaven will be as superior as a butterfly’s life differs from a grub’s. Heaven will be fulfilling; it was my time down here that was torture.

Most addicts need endure only a few weeks of the torment of denying themselves before they find peace. I prayerfully tried my hardest, but my torment lasted many decades. Perhaps my thought-life (daydreaming) kept feeding the addiction or maybe my wonderful Lord, who truly has my highest good at heart, simply used the experience to refine me. Whatever the reason, I’d prefer decades of torment if that’s what it takes to transform me from being a lover of pleasure to a lover of God. It might have taken decades of sheer willpower in putting God’s pleasure above my own but finally I’m so in love with God that I no longer have to force myself. Finally, every part of me wants not my own pleasure, here or hereafter, but the matchless joy of putting a smile on God’s face. That might seem as unfathomable to you as it did to me when I began the journey so long ago, but the agony is totally eclipsed by the final joy not the temporal feeling of being in love with a woman, but the eternal joy of being in love with God.

Related Webpages

Hurting? God Cares

God Isn’t Fair?

You Can Find Love

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