Luke 20:27-38
Resurrection Relationships
Today’s scripture might hit some of you kind of hard. “What do you mean I won’t be married in heaven? I’ve been looking forward to seeing my spouse again. That’s all that keeps me going!” Or, “What does it mean to be like an angel? Am I going to be stuck playing a harp and wearing a white robe, sitting on a cloud?” No, I don’t believe the text is intending to say any of these things. Let’s look more into what Jesus is teaching here about the afterlife. But in order to understand the context, we need first to start with the Sadducees.
I pick on the Pharisees a lot, but the Sadducees were another religious political party in Bible times. They were more the aristocratic Jewish party. They controlled the high priests and most of the seats on the presiding Jewish High Council called the Sanhedrin. They liked to argue with the Pharisees, and really only came together with them over their common enemy, this trouble-maker rabbi from Nazareth named Jesus. “My enemy’s enemy is my friend,” right?
The Sadducees only believed in the first five books of the Bible, the Torah, and there they found no hints of an afterlife, a resurrection. This was their basic theological difference with the Pharisees, who believed strongly in a resurrection. You can remember their name and theology if you reflect on this: The Sadducees did not believe in an afterlife. That is why they were “sad—you see.”
It reminds me of a story I heard. The boss asked one of his employees, “Do you believe in life after death?”
“Yes, sir!” the new recruit replied.
“Well, then, that makes sense,” the boss said, “because after you left early yesterday to go to your grandmother’s funeral, she stopped in to see you.”
The story the Sadducees use in today’s scripture is probably a well-worn attack on what they consider the foolishness of resurrection. If there is an afterlife, and if people practiced the ancient Israelite custom of “Levirate marriage” prescribed in Deuteronomy 25:5—that is, to give your deceased brother a survivor to carry on his name—then who is going to be married to whom in heaven? What a mess!
Never mind that polygamy had not been practiced among the Jewish people for hundreds of years by this time, nor that Levirate marriage was an ancient law to protect the bloodline of a young developing nation. The Sadducees found it a convenient way to put Jesus to the test publicly on this matter of an afterlife.
And Jesus used it as an opportunity to teach on the nature of relationships in the life to come. He contrasted this age—the life we now have in the flesh on earth—with the age to come—the afterlife, particularly for those who are “considered worthy to take part,” i.e., those who have joined God’s family forever through their faith in a Savior, his only son. Jesus said of these “resurrection children” in verse 36, “They can no longer die; for they are like the angels.” He didn’t say we become angels; he said, we become like the angels in our immortality. We don’t even have the option of dying, because the whole notion of death will be wiped out in the new life ahead.
Now that could be really good if life in the hereafter is really rewarding. Or it could be really bad if the hereafter is boring or lonely without marriage. To understand better this next life, let’s look at some characteristics of our bodies in the hereafter.
For Jewish people, the body was very important; it was part of your soul, your basic identity. The surrounding Greek culture set up an artificial divide between physical and spiritual and suggested the physical was evil but the spiritual was good. Jews believed in a holistic person—body, mind, spirit all wrapped up into one soul. So what is this soul or living being going to be like in the afterlife? Consider what the Bible tells us:
1. Our bodies will be physical. We know this because of the first post-resurrection body we see in scripture, that of Jesus himself. Witnesses noted that he ate (Luke 24:43), probably to prove he wasn’t a ghost. And his disciples even touched him (1 John 1:1). Like Jesus we will have physical bodies, but they will differ in some significant ways from our current bodies. And the most notable is,
2. They will be permanent, immortal, imperishable. Our resurrection bodies will no longer age or decay. They won’t grow weak or feeble. The Apostle Paul contrasts our pre- and post-resurrection bodies in 1 Corinthians 15:42: “So will it be with the resurrection of the dead. The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable.” Our new bodies in heaven will always be healthy, fit, and strong. We will no longer have a need for doctors, nurses, therapists, rehab specialists, surgeons, home health aides, ambulances, or hospitals. No more!
3. Our new bodies will be recognizable, similar in some sense to our old bodies. For example, Jesus had scars after his resurrection (John 20:24-29). These gave proof to his disciples—even to doubting Thomas—that it was really him they were talking with.
4. And lastly, our new bodies will be spiritual. Even though they are physical, they will have a spiritual aspect to them, characterized no longer by sin but by the work of God’s spirit. In 1 Corinthians 15:44, Paul continues his contrast by stating, “It is sown a natural body, it is raised a spiritual body.” I’m looking forward to getting to know my dad in his new physical spiritual body, with all sin and selfishness stripped away. We will have all eternity to get to know one another, without any pride to interfere.
So if we will have physical, permanent, recognizable, and spiritual bodies in the afterlife, why won’t we have marriage? We know by principle that heaven is going to be a perfect place; after all, how could it not be if there are no more tears, sadness, sickness, or sin? So, if there won’t be any marriage in heaven, there must be something better.
Think about it: what is the purpose of marriage? I came up with intimacy, sharing of life, partnership, pro-creation of the species. And the Bible uses marriage repeatedly as a foreshadow of our relationship with Christ: he is the bridegroom and we are the bride. In fact, our entrance into heaven is marked by the image of a Jewish wedding feast, following a long period of betrothal—this present life—with the coming together finally of the bride and groom.
Heaven has no need for pro-creation, since our bodies will last forever. And we won’t need one single emotionally intimate life partner, because somehow we will all be partnered together into perfect intimacy with our bridegroom, Jesus Christ, worshiping before the throne room of the Father and serving him. For those married to a believer in this life, our honey bunch will become a very intimate brother or sister in the Lord.
Let’s close with Jesus’ own illustration. For proof of the resurrection, he takes the Sadducees to the example of the burning bush, which is conveniently found within their own sacred texts, the first five books of the Bible. There he points out that God says, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” God says, “I am...” God doesn’t say, “I was...”
Jesus concludes, “To [God] all are alive.” The long-deceased patriarchs of the faith are very much alive to God, as are our most recently departed Christian friends and relatives.
In Mark’s parallel rendition of this story, Jesus tells the Sadducees, “You are therefore greatly mistaken” (Mark 12:27). Listen, please don’t make the grave mistake of believing this life is all there is. How wrong you will be. There is something more, something beyond, something greater than we can even imagine, a place called heaven!
In C.S. Lewis’s “The Last Battle,” his final book in the “Chronicles of Narnia” series, one of the speaking animal characters describes heaven in these words: “I have come home at last! This is my real country! I belong here. This is the land I have been looking for all my life, though I never knew it till now. The reason why we loved the old Narnia is that it sometimes looked a little like this.”
Yes, we get little glimpses of heaven from time to time. Marriage at its best does this for us: it points us to an even greater possible intimacy with God and each other. The King James Study Bible says it well: “The fellowship of marriage, as high an ideal as this is in Scripture, will be superseded by the depth and diversity of new life in the presence of God. ... The emotional intimacy and affection of heart, now restricted only to one’s spouse, will be lawfully experienced with all citizens of heaven.”
Let us pray: “Heavenly Father, thank you for the beautiful picture of what awaits us in heaven. We don’t understand it all, but we know with you it can only be for our very best. Help someone to choose you today, Lord, to enter your holy family as they give their sin to you and ask you to come in and take charge through our Savior Jesus. Help those of us who already belong to you to truly live for you with eternity in mind, to make every day and every moment count, all while looking ahead to our true home.
Help us to say with the Apostle Paul (Philippians 3:20-21): ‘But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.’
To you be the glory, honor, and praise forever and ever, amen.
