Since I used my stand-by marriage analogy in the previous post, let me modify it slightly before Frank Turk says something about it. I do this because I know the illustration is not exact. Let me modify it so that it is exact.
Suppose that marriage exists, just as it does today, but with this difference. Everyone who is married is objectively married, just like now. But suppose there is a subset of these married folks who know (as a gift of God, lest anyone boast) what marriage was really all about. These people enjoy what might be called a marital election, and were promised continued marriage in the resurrection, forever and ever. Right, I know that’s not true. This is an illustration.
If this were the case, and were known to be the case, we would have all the same wrangles about what it means to be “really married” that we do now about what it means “to be really a Christian.” There would be people who would argue that adultery now is all right, just so long as you weren’t married in the ultimate sense. “I mean, if God hasn’t elected me to marital bliss, what difference does it make?”
The issue is this: this status of ultimate marital happiness would be God’s secret and mysterious work. It would not alter the nature of the marriage vows here and now. All married couples here would be married in exactly the same way, and with exactly the same obligations. Some of them would have God’s mysterious blessing that would enable them to understand this. But whether they understood it or not, they would all have exactly the same obligations, until death parted them.