I know there is no marriage in heaven, but will I recognize my wife and you and various friends?

This text is from a transcript of a talk by David Gooding, entitled ‘God’s Glorious Plan for Creation’ (2007).

Now this is a vexed question. You would think it was a simple question but I have found in my experience in several countries that it's not as simple as it sounds, because some people hope when they get to heaven they won't remember their husband, and would be embarrassed to meet him if he's up there, for all sorts of reasons! So the question is posed to me very often in the terms, 'Will we know each other in heaven?'

Since I've lived here in Ireland for nearly fifty years, I've learnt the skill of answering one question by another! You say to me, 'Shall we know each other in heaven?' Well my reply is a question, 'Shall we know ourselves?' Shall we realize that we were Joe Smith or whatever, or Jean Patrick or something, when we were on earth, or shall we be absolutely new, completely not us at all? Well it seems obvious to me what the answer is there. Of course you will know yourself.

Some people take the verse where God says, 'I will remember their sin no more' (Jeremiah 31:34) to mean that God so blots out our sins that he doesn't remember that we ever did them. That is not true, ladies and gentlemen. When the Bible says 'I will remember their sins no more' it's talking in the language of a law court. For a believer, God will never open the books and bring up the question of their sins and decide what punishment they must get. That will never happen. God has forgiven them: he's wiped out the debt. But God hasn't forgotten the fact we were sinners, nor shall we forget the fact that we were sinners either. We won't forget that for all eternity. As we hear the choirs of heaven saying, 'Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, who redeemed us to God by his blood' (see Revelation 5:9), we won't find ourselves saying, 'I wonder what on earth they're talking about.' Nor will God ever think, 'I wonder why my Son died on Calvary.' Of course not, we will remember that we did sin. It will enrich heaven. By his grace, God gave Christ, the Lamb of God, to die for us and bring us home to heaven.

In that same sense, we will recognize other believers. We will recognize the Lord. And says Paul, talking to some of his converts, 'you are my joy and crown' (see Philippians 4:1). When Paul stands there in heaven and sees so-and-so from Ephesus, and a couple there from Colossi, he will say, 'I remember I preached to them and they got converted.' They will be his crown of rejoicing. How could that be if Paul didn't know who they were and couldn't remember preaching to them?