How true it is that the major source of pain in the earth (as well as of joy) often is in the area of relationships. It appears that our experiences with other people during our formative years have much to do with what we become, with how we behave. Psychiatrists and other behavioral specialists deal continually with tangled, destructive relationships.

Sometimes it seems that our main purpose on earth is to grow in constructive relationships; first with God and then with people. The individual who loves God with all his heart and his neighbor as himself is fulfilling all the Law and the Prophets.

Apart from loving, joyous, peaceful relationships the human organism does not function properly. One of the harmful aspects of a technical civilization is that "things" are given priority over people. A society that hopes to achieve righteousness, peace, and joy can make no greater mistake than to suppose that these goals can be attained by money, by things, by knowledge, by power. Righteousness, peace, and joy are attainable only through right relationships with God and people.

Man has been created male and female, which is to say, his whole personality and life is based on union with God and people. If God had created man male only or female only, his attainment of joy and peace would come about in a manner of which we cannot conceive. We cannot conceive of it because what we are is male and female. The thought of man being an "it" leaves us with a sense of incompleteness. We expect to see men and women, boys and girls, not "its," in the world to come.

In the resurrection people will be "equal to the angels," that is, they will be eternal spiritual beings. But men never will become angels and angels never will become men. The angels cannot be in union with God. There are no angels in the Wife of the Lamb. Man is unique among the creatures of God in that he is male and female, meaning he is capable of union. The union of the members of the Body of Christ with Christ and with one another appears in the form of the new Jerusalem. Angels, because of their different composition, cannot be included in the union of the Lamb and His Wife.

How the concept of male and female, of gender, will be carried beyond the grave we do not know. The animal aspect of male and female is a temporary arrangement, not destined to be carried forward to the new world. We are not certain if the abstract concept of gender will persevere into the new age. We understand that relationships based on flesh and blood are not to be carried forward. Even in the world we recognize that flesh and blood relationships are frail and faulty at best. But spiritual relationships, such as the relationship between the Lord Jesus and the believer, are eternal. They are carried forward intact.

To be continued.