Knowing The Word Luke 20:27-40

Sadducees Ask About the Resurrection

20:27 There came to him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, 28 and they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man's brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children. 30 And the second 31 and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. 32 Afterward the woman also died. 33 In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.”

34 And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, 35 but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, 36 for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. 37 But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. 38 Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.” 39 Then some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” 40 For they no longer dared to ask him any question.

Comments

The Sadducees were conservative, aristocratic, high-priestly Levites, who were worldly-minded and very ready to cooperate with the Romans, who enabled them to maintain their privileged position in Jerusalem. They rejected the oral tradition that meant so much to the Pharisees, accepting only the written Scriptures, which was actually more in line with Jesus. They denied the doctrine of the afterlife, however, with rewards and punishments beyond the grave, considering them as new-fangled ideas brought in from Persia after the canon of the Hebrew Bible was established. They desired to inquire of Jesus’ position of an afterlife by posing their deceptive question of the seven-times married woman. The strange situation referred to levirate marriage that prevented a family line from dying out. When a man died childless, his brother was to take in his widow and raise up children for him. (See Deuteronomy 25:5-10.) They asked the question because they believe there was no answer possible.

According to Jesus, the Sadducees failed to see that life in the age to come will be different from this age. Life in heaven will be significantly different from anything on earth. When place and time cease to matter, human relationships will be totally different. Here Jesus spoke only of the saved. Resurrection will be their means of attaining to the life to come. People come together in marriage to preserve the human race, but where there is no death in the age to come, reproduction will no longer be necessary. Jesus then showed that the resurrection is implied in the Old Testament and that the Sadducees have it wrong. If God were the God of the dead, of non-existent beings, then he would not be God!

Application

Is the understanding of no marriage in the age to come disappointing or appealing to you? I like to share a family story to help people understand. A Christian aunt was married to a man who seemed not to be a believer when his wife was alive. After her death, he joined a grief group at a nearby church. There he met a widow, who was a Christian. Eventually they married. He came to faith and transformed before our eyes. They both died and now all three of these people are with Jesus. Who is whose spouse? Is it the first person they married or the second or . . . ? What a conundrum!

There is no marriage in heaven, not because marriage is unimportant, but because life is different, relationships are different in the age to come. Marriage, actually, foreshadows the relationship of Christ with the Church. When the age to come is fully ushered in, then everything will be fulfilled, and just like the temple in Jerusalem, marriage will cease to exist. There are no conundrums in heaven because Christ will be all in all.

Prayer

Lord, help me to see the greater picture when I get bogged down in the perplexing details of life. Even though I cannot understand exactly what all the age to come will entail, give me hope and faith to know that it will be even more amazing than I can hope for or imagine because it is all planned by you.