The following was first published in the Mormonism Researched in September/October 2025. This is a free publication produced by Mormonism Research Ministry. To get a free subscription of the bimonthly newsletter, visit the website here.
To many Latter-day Saints, the doctrine of eternal marriage is an alluring part of their faith. But do marriages continue beyond this life and into heaven? According to the Bible, there are five reasons why the answer is no.
#1 – Jesus’ Teaching in Matthew 22
The Sadducees were a group of Jews that rejected a future resurrection. They attempted to trap Jesus in Matthew 22:23-28:
“Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man dies having no children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother.’ Now there were seven brothers among us. The first married and died, and having no offspring left his wife to his brother. So too the second and third, down to the seventh. After them all, the woman died. In the resurrection, therefore, of the seven, whose wife will she be? For they all had her.”
The Sadducees referenced an Old Covenant practice known as “Levirate Marriage.” According to that practice, a man was responsible to marry his deceased brother’s wife and have children with her to preserve their family’s inheritance (Deuteronomy 25:5-10).
Their goal was to humiliate Jesus by posing a tricky question that would have an unsatisfactory answer. But if the LDS understanding of eternal marriage is true, then this would not have been a difficult question for Jesus to answer.
The LDS answer would be that the woman would be the wife of whomever she was eternally sealed to in the temple. Yet notice what Jesus said: “You are wrong because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God, for in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like angels in heaven.”
Jesus did not believe marriage will exist in heaven. Some Latter-day Saints argue Jesus meant that nobody could get married in the resurrection. The verbs “married” and “given in marriage” are usually used when men and women are wed. Therefore, they argue, Jesus never taught that sealed marriages would cease to exist. He only stated that new marriages will not be performed.
While it is true that marriages will not be performed in the resurrection, this LDS argument fails to recognize the question that Jesus was asked. The Sadducees’ question had nothing to do with weddings, getting married, or sealings in the afterlife. They simply asked “whose wife will she be in the resurrection?” Jesus answered that she would not be married to any of them. Neither can she get married. Instead, they will all be like the angels who are not married.
If Jesus was only teaching that these individuals can’t get married in eternity, then He never addressed the Sadducees original question.
#2 – The Absence of Eternal Marriage in Scripture
If the LDS teaching were true, Matthew 22 would have been the opportune moment for Jesus to clarify a critical and essential ordinance like eternal marriage. Joseph Smith himself stated,
“Except a man and his wife enter into an everlasting covenant and be married for eternity, while in this probation, by the power and authority of the Holy Priesthood, they will cease to increase when they die” (History of the Church 5:391).
But Jesus makes no mention of this practice either in Matthew 22 or in any other teaching. There’s no mention of marriage after death anywhere else in the entire Bible or the Book of Mormon, for that matter. Instead of supporting the idea, the only biblical text that references this idea flatly rejects eternal marriage.
#3 – Better to be single?
The apostle Paul did not teach that marriage was essential to receiving the fullness of eternal life. In fact, he taught that it was better to stay single when he wrote in 1 Corinthians 7:8-9,
“To the unmarried and the widows I say that it is good for them to remain single, as I am. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to burn with passion.”
If marriage really is an essential prerequisite for exaltation as Latter-day Saints claim, then this teaching is absurd. It would be leading people away from obedience to the Gospel ordinances. Paul said that some people—those who could control their passions and desires—should remain single to be singly devoted to Christ. Lest someone be led to think Paul is misunderstood here, he doubled down later in the same chapter:
“. . . Are you free from a wife? Do not seek a wife. But if you do marry, you have not sinned, and if a betrothed woman marries, she has not sinned. Yet those who marry will have worldly troubles, and I would spare you that . . . I want you to be free from anxieties. The unmarried man is anxious about the things of the Lord, how to please the Lord. But the married man is anxious about worldly things, how to please his wife, and his interests are divided . . . So then he who marries his betrothed does well, and he who refrains from marriage will do even better” (1 Corinthians 7:27-28, 32-34, 38).
Paul likely gave this instruction because of the tumultuous nature of the early church. Even if Paul’s statements were exceptional and not normative, why would an apostle ever recommend singleness if eternal marriage is essential to one’s exaltation in the celestial kingdom? In what scenario would it be better to limit people’s progression? Paul’s teaching would not be compatible with the doctrine of eternal marriage.
#4 – The Marriage Covenant Ends at Death
In Romans 7:2-3, Paul used marriage as an illustration of the Christian’s relationship to the Law. In that section, he stated,
“For a married woman is bound by law to her husband while he lives, but if her husband dies she is released from the law of marriage. Accordingly, she will be called an adulteress if she lives with another man while her husband is alive. But if her husband dies, she is free from that law, and if she marries another man she is not an adulteress.”
The marriage covenant lasts until death. After that, it no longer applies. Paul used this illustration to show how, in Christ, Christians have died to the Law. Believers are no longer under the Law because that covenant relationship was severed by death in Christ.
If faithful Christian marriage extended beyond death, then Paul’s illustration falls apart, as Christians would still be under Law. Paul said a similar thing in 1 Corinthians 7:39: “A wife is bound to her husband as long as he lives. But if her husband dies, she is free to be married to whom she wishes, only in the Lord.”
We have no reason to think that Paul believed in marriage as an eternal ordinance of the Gospel. Every single time he spoke about the issue, he acknowledged that the marriage relationship is dissolved upon death.
#5 – Marriage Illustrates Christ and the Church
In an LDS framework, marriage is arguably the most essential relationship of the eternities. Many Latter-day Saints believe that Heavenly Father is married to a Heavenly Mother. This makes marriage an institution that transcends creation.
Yet the Bible teaches that God invented marriage to be an illustration. Paul writes in Ephesians 5:22-32:
“Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior…Husbands, love your wives, as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her, that he might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word, so that he might present the church to himself in splendor, without spot or wrinkle or any such thing, that she might be holy and without blemish…’Therefore a man shall leave his father and mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh.’ This mystery is profound, and I am saying that it refers to Christ and the church.”
God intends marriage to refer to Christ’s love for the Church. It serves as an illustration. As a husband and wife become one flesh, Christians are united to Christ through faith. Just as a husband leads, shepherds, loves, and sacrifices for his wife, Christ does the same for the Church. As a wife submits to her husband, the Church submits to the headship of Christ.
Marriage is not an eternal principle nor is it an integral part of one’s exaltation. God created marriage to be a divine illustration and mystery that points to Jesus and His love for His people by what He did on the cross. When Christ returns and believers dwell with Him for eternity, the purpose of marriage will have been fulfilled. Christians will experience the fullness of joy in the presence of God for all eternity.
Conclusion
In a video used at many temple open house events, Apostle Jeffrey R. Holland declared, “I don’t know how to speak about heaven in the traditional, lovely, paradisiacal beauty that we speak of heaven; I wouldn’t know how to speak of heaven, without my wife or my children. It would not be heaven for me.”
But Psalm 73:25-26 says, “Whom have I in heaven but you? And there is nothing on earth that I desire besides you.” Holland says that he can’t speak of heaven without his wife and children, but this Psalm says the exact opposite.
Heaven is heavenly because it’s where God is. It is also a place where believers will be united to other faithful believers from every era of history. When Christians look forward to heaven, they’re not thinking about it as the loss of an earthly relationship but rather as the gain of everything they were created to enjoy.
In Christ the believer can be fully and eternally satisfied. David wrote in Psalm 16:11 that “in your presence there is fullness of joy; at your right hand are pleasures forevermore.” For Christians, then, the presence of God is enough.