Good question. We won't be married in heaven according to Jesus, which to me implies the break down of familial relationships as we know them, Also, we will be given "spiritual" bodies, which means we won't be corrupted by "the flesh" or sin. Further, it will be in our heart to sing God's praises endlessly, which is in none of our hearts now.
So, we will over flow with love, but in resurrected bodies. I think this leaves no room for family and friends as we know it, as then love is divided and given to people. In heaven, there will be no sun or moon, but only God as it's light. How can we think of anything else?
I am fond of stating a basic belief shared by all the major Bible believing Christians AND orthodox Jews in this manner: Heaven is a nice place to visit, but we are not going to want to live there.
Yes we will have some form of temporary dwelling in Heaven immediately upon our physical death or rapture. Yet this is NOT the ultimate state. We are of Earth's dust made, and to dust we shall long to return even in Heaven. When Adam was made perfect before the fall, yet there was something "not good" about Adam's state. Think about that, a perfect man in communion with God and YET, "it is not good for the man to be alone." Adam needed company, and that company was integral to his FLESH.
So no, even in Heaven we will think of something else besides God. We will indeed enjoy the fellowship of others, including those who were on Earth our biological family.
Besides that, those in Heaven now long for various things yet in the furture. Here is one such example,
Rev 6:9 When the Lamb broke the fifth seal, I saw underneath the altar the souls of those who had been slain because of the word of God, and because of the testimony which they had maintained; 10 and they cried out with a loud voice, saying, How long, O Lord, holy and true, will You refrain from judging and avenging our blood on those who dwell on the earth? 11 And there was given to each of them a white robe; and they were told that they should rest for a little while longer, until the number of their fellow servants and their brethren who were to be killed even as they had been, would be completed also. (NASB)
These are perfected saints in glory, in full communion with God and yet, like Adam, their joy is not yet complete! This is what the Bible says, not me. How it is that with full communion with God yet we shall desire more is quite beyond my philosophy to explain, but my Faith rests on the Bible, not my own sophistry, and on this the Bible is clear. Even more, the Second Person of the Trinity wanted more than the Eternal bliss of that communion. Does not Paul declare that for the "Joy set before Him Christ endured death, even death on a cross"? What could possibly be something more than the Eternal bliss of the trinity? Marriage to His bride; that's us folks, us. How it could be that Jesus the only Son of God, begotten and not made before the creation of timespace could so llok foward to fellowship with such vermin like myslf that He would humiliate Himself to swaddling clothes and even suffer the imputation of all the sins of the elect is again COMPLETELY beyond my ability to explain. Yet again, the Bible is clear about this also.
Lastly, we also look foward to the resurrection of the FLESH. Even those in Heaven, saints, angels and indeed the whole of creation, the very ground we walk upon, groans looking foward to the creation (re-creation) of the New Heavens and the New Earth.
Folks, Jesus is the first fruit of this event, and Jesus had fish for breakfast with the Apostles after His resurrection.
As for me, I have already placed my order for peperoni pizza with onions for when the New Jerusalem comes physically down from Heaven to a physical New Earth after the burning of the current timespace by what Peter calls "elemental fire" I am expecting delivery to whatever flat I am assigned in the New Jerusalem. It will be the Joy of God and the privilege of an angel to deliver said pizza to a former disgusting worm such as me that somehow (oh what Amazing Grace indeed) will be redeemed into someone worthy to live in that glorious city!
Stop spiritualizing what the Bible makes very clear is physical. Eschew the gnostic dualism that plagues the Church and learn from the Hebrews to value the physical world. The world that God repeatedly declared good and even very good.
JR, the madman
