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Did Jesus Teach Eternal Marriage? Matthew 22, Temple Sealings, and the Resurrection

LDS doctrine teaches that a marriage sealed by proper priesthood authority can continue eternally and is necessary for the highest exaltation. Yet Jesus says the resurrected 'neither marry nor are given in marriage.' Official LDS interpretation answers that no marriages are performed after resurrection and previously sealed marriages endure. An official LDS New Testament manual concedes that…

Published · Updated · By the HonestApologist editorial team · How we work

Few Latter-day Saint doctrines are more emotionally powerful than eternal families.

Temple marriage is not presented merely as a beautiful hope.

Doctrine and Covenants 132 teaches that a marriage sealed by proper authority and covenant can endure beyond death, while ordinary marriages terminate at death. Eternal marriage is also tied to exaltation.

That raises an obvious New Testament question.

Jesus was directly asked about marriage after resurrection.

What did he say?

The Sadducees’ challenge

Matthew 22:23–33, Mark 12:18–27, and Luke 20:27–40 tell the same basic story.

Sadducees, who denied resurrection, present Jesus with a reductio ad absurdum based on levirate marriage.

A woman successively marries seven brothers after each husband dies.

Then they ask:

In the resurrection, whose wife will she be?

Jesus answers that they misunderstand Scripture and the power of God.

In Matthew and Mark, he says that in the resurrection people neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven.

Luke’s version similarly contrasts “this age” with those who attain resurrection, describing the resurrected as no longer marrying in the ordinary way.

The standard LDS interpretation

The LDS Church does not ignore this passage.

Official teaching manuals explicitly address it.

A New Testament student manual argues that Jesus did not say marriages already sealed by God cease to exist. Rather, “marrying” and “giving in marriage” will not occur after resurrection. Eternal marital status must be established beforehand through authorized sealing.

Doctrine and Covenants 132 supplies the key:

  • ordinary marriage ends at death;
  • a sealing by divine authority can endure;
  • and the eternal covenant is connected to exaltation.

This is a coherent internal interpretation.

Jesus’ words are taken as a deadline for sealing rather than a denial of eternal marriage.

An unusually candid LDS admission

The same official New Testament manual says something important:

the doctrine of eternal marriage is not explicitly taught in the Bible.

That admission matters.

It avoids pretending that Matthew 22 naturally reads like Doctrine and Covenants 132.

Instead, the LDS interpretation depends on later revelation to tell the reader what Jesus meant.

This is exactly what restoration theology predicts: important truths were lost or incompletely preserved and later restored through Joseph Smith.

But it also identifies the burden of proof.

The doctrine cannot be established from the biblical text alone.

What is the natural reading of Jesus’ answer?

The Sadducees’ puzzle assumes that resurrection would simply extend present social structures forever.

Jesus rejects the premise.

Resurrection life is transformed.

The ordinary institution of marrying and being given in marriage does not simply continue unchanged.

That much is clear.

The disputed question is whether existing marriages nevertheless continue eternally.

Matthew does not explicitly say:

“all affection, identity, or relationship between earthly spouses disappears.”

So critics should not exaggerate.

But neither does Jesus say:

“sealed marriages continue, while only unsealed marriages end.”

That distinction comes from later LDS revelation.

Luke makes the contrast sharper

Luke 20:34–36 places “marrying and being given in marriage” among features of the present age and says those worthy of the resurrection cannot die anymore.

The passage emphasizes a transformed mode of existence.

Again, it does not directly answer every philosophical question about personal relationships in the new creation.

But it provides little positive support for an eternal-marriage ordinance necessary for exaltation.

Paul and the duration of marriage

Paul says in Romans 7 that marriage binds spouses while both live.

First Corinthians 7 likewise says a wife is bound to her husband while he lives, but if he dies she is free to marry another.

That creates another difficulty for a simple eternal-marriage theory.

Paul treats death as the end of the marital bond in the legal sense he is discussing.

A Latter-day Saint can answer that Paul is describing ordinary earthly marriage rather than temple sealing.

But once again, that answer depends on a category absent from Paul’s letters.

What about “what God has joined together”?

Jesus’ teaching in Matthew 19 strongly defends marriage.

He grounds marriage in creation and says humans should not separate what God has joined.

That establishes the sanctity of marriage in this life.

It does not state that every divinely joined marriage exists as a marital covenant after resurrection.

The same Jesus who strongly protects marriage in Matthew 19 gives the resurrection answer in Matthew 22.

Both texts must be held together.

What about binding and loosing?

LDS apologetics sometimes appeals to Matthew 16:19: what is bound on earth will be bound in heaven.

The passage certainly gives Peter significant authority.

Catholic and Orthodox Christians also take binding-and-loosing language very seriously.

Yet early Christianity did not infer from it the LDS system of celestial marriage and exaltation.

The existence of ecclesial authority does not by itself establish every later ordinance claimed under that authority.

The historical question is whether apostolic Christianity actually used that authority to teach eternal temple sealing.

The evidence does not show it.

The theological difference

Historic Christianity absolutely believes love survives death.

The communion of saints does not mean family members become strangers.

Resurrection restores persons, not isolated souls with erased histories.

But Christian hope centers final human identity in union with Christ and the transformed people of God.

Marriage is a sign of covenantal love and, in Ephesians 5, points beyond itself to Christ and the Church.

LDS theology gives marriage a different eschatological function: exalted male-female sealing is structurally tied to the highest celestial destiny.

That is a much more specific claim.

Final Verdict

Jesus does not teach the LDS doctrine of eternal marriage, and official LDS teaching materials acknowledge that the doctrine is not explicit in the Bible. The LDS reading can make Matthew 22 compatible with previously authorized sealings, but only after Doctrine and Covenants 132 is assumed.

That defense therefore avoids a direct logical contradiction while failing to establish the doctrine from Jesus or the apostles. The New Testament locates resurrection life in union with Christ and the transformed people of God; it never makes temple sealing or celestial marriage an ordinance required for the highest exaltation. Nor does the early Church preserve such a system.

The burden rests on Joseph Smith’s later authority claim. Without independent reason to accept that claim, eternal marriage is not a recovered apostolic teaching but a nineteenth-century addition read back into a passage that does not teach it.

Key Sources

Topic: Mormonism