Whose Wife is She?
Luke 20:27-38
There is more to a question than the question itself. Sometimes they aren’t really looking for an answer. The classic question of this sort is “When did you stop beating your wife?” One immediately sees the trap in this question. No matter how one answers the question, the one who asks this question will turn it against you? If he answers affirmatively, then he is guilty of beating his wife. But if he were to answer that at some time in the past he stopped, then he is guilty. In other words, the question is a trap. So these type of questions cannot be answered directly.
Jesus had just finished silencing the Pharisees who had also Zealots and Herodians in their company. They had asked the question: “Is it lawful to pay tribute to Caesar or not?” If Jesus had answered yes, then the Zealots would condemn him. And if he said no, then the Herodians would arrest Him as a tax revolter. But Jesus, like usual, addressed the real issue behind the question by asking for a coin with Caesar’s head on it. He asked them to identify whose picture was on the coin. When they answered Caesar, He replied to give to Caesar what is His. More importantly, He told them to render to God what is His. He had escaped the trap.
Then the Sadducees took a turn to trap Jesus with a question. We are clued in of their bad intentions with the words “who deny there is a resurrection.” They preface the question with a story about seven brothers. The oldest married a woman but died without children. According to the Torah, the next eldest brother was to take the woman as a wife and beget a child in the place of his dead brother. To make it even more dramatic, it is said that there were seven brothers who all had the woman as wife and died without children. Then they asked Jesus the question: In the resurrection, whose wife shall she be?
b
They were not asking Jesus to judge between the claims of the seven brothers in the resurrection. After all, they did not believe in a resurrection. What they were really trying to do is to ridicule the idea of the resurrection. What kind of heaven would it be if all sorts of disputes like this had to be settled? Jesus could have answered, for example, that the oldest brother was to have her because he was the oldest. Then the answer would be: “That’s not fair to the other six!” Therefore the question was meant to entrap Jesus.
Jesus was well aware of the trap. He answers the basis for the question and not the question itself. He tells them of the basic purpose for marriage. He says that it is for this world in which people die, it is necessary for children to be born. This is why men and women marry and are given in marriage. Originally, marriage, sex and having children were the means of filling the earth. Afterward. It was necessary to replace those who died. The latter was only made necessary because of sin which brought death. Otherwise, marriage, sex and children would have ended when full population was reached.
Jesus tells the Sadducees that they were ignorant of the coming age. People won’t die there, so there is no need for marriage at all. Those who are accounted worthy of attaining the resurrection will be one large family. In this world, it is necessary and good that families share a special bond with each other, which leads to playing favorites. Parents are to be bonded to each other and need to care for their children. This is why a man shall leave his mother and the woman her home to become one flesh, a new family. Anything in this world which disrupts the plan of one man, one wife is sinful as it disrupts stability. One could add that the diversity of nations and peoples fulfill a similar purpose. But in the resurrection, there will only be one nation and one family. Therefore, the very basis of the question was invalid. It was based upon willful ignorance of the nature of the resurrection. For since all will be as the angels, there is no need for marriage and no dispute to resolve.
Jesus now addresses the resurrection itself. As the Sadducees only believed that the first five books of the Bible (The Torah) was inspired, Jesus answers them from the Torah. He proves that the Torah itself speaks of the resurrection and quotes the passage of Moses and the burning bush as an example. In this passage, God reveals Himself to Moses as “I AM that I AM.” Yahweh is the eternally existent one, the source of all life, the Creator of heaven and earth. All things live by Him and for Him. He is the one who created man from the dust of the earth. And what is more, He is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. The Scripture does not say “I was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” The present tense of the verb says that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are alive, even though they had died and were buried in the past. The Sadducees were silenced. The Gospels state that from that point, no one else dared ask a question.
Jesus was beyond being tripped up by insincere questions. But the Sadducees and the leaders of Israel already had another plot brewing. They had been contacted by Judas and had paid him to betray Jesus. If they could not trap Jesus by subtle questions, they though they could silence Him by death. How wrong they were. The resurrection would be boldly presented to them when Jesus rose from the dead on the third day. His resurrection is the proof of His person and the words which He spoke. Because He lives, we shall live also. This is the very power of God which the Sadducees denied,
As far as we are concerned, we get bombarded by insincere questions. The world is always trying to trap us in them. We live in a world which say there is an alphabet soup of genders. The world is full of conflicts. They will try to get us to answer these questions on these terms. But this is a trap. What we need do in response to these questions is to undermine the premise of there questions. They also are founded on whether there is a resurrection or not. It does not really matter what Jesus taught and to deny this very fact. We are, no more than Jesus called to be a judge or divider among people. It ultimately does not matter what political party we believe in. We are not called to give advice on how to improve society. What we need to proclaim is Jesus and the resurrection just like the apostles did.
This does not mean that we stay single and stop having children. It also does not mean that we should not be law-abiding citizens. But we do these things in the light of our resurrection and transformation. Everything we do should be anticipatory, as much as it is possible with us, of the coming Kingdom. This world is soon to pass away. We too, if the Lord does not return within our lifetime, pass away. But God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. If we lose everything in this life, He is still our God, and our life. There will be no disputes in heaven, so we should avoid being entangled in disputes down here.
The world will continue trying to find substitutes for God’s plans. Eternal life is replaced by retirement. Salvation is now a quality of life here and now rather than an eternal future reality. We are not sinners, just broken and needing a little help, and the government is always promising to do just that. They promise to fix the wearing of our DNA, so we can at least live very long lives. But there will still be wars and rumors of wars. Could you imagine having to listen to the nightly news for a thousand years? Will there be an end to political strife? What is a thousand years of broken relationships and divorces look like? Would this not be an eternal hell? But the world is not God. God will bring an end to it all. Heaven will be even better than anything we can imagine and hell worse.
The key to this passage is to attain to the resurrection. Jesus mentions that it is reserved for those who are worthy. But who is worthy? This question is an impossible one to affirm, except for the work of Jesus who died on the cross and arose on the third day. It is through Him we attain to the resurrection of the blessed. It is by this grace we are saved. So let us live in Him while we wait.
