LUKE 20: 27-39 [JESUS’ LAST WEEK SERIES]
SONS OF THE RESURRECTION
Here is the final attempt in Luke to confound Jesus by arguments. It is only here that Luke’s gospel mentions the Sadducees. In order to question the Resurrection, a belief held both by Jesus (14:14) and the Pharisees (Acts 23:8), the Sadducees raise a far-fetched example. The Sadducees ask Jesus about a theoretical [levirate] marriage where a wife has seven men. It is obvious they do so in order to justify their disbelief in the resurrection.
Questions about life after death are as old as man himself. There have always been and will always be those like these lay and priestly intellectuals who hold that the natural world and some authority, for them it was the Torah, for us science, deny the resurrection of the dead. But the resurrection is real and Jesus, the Son of the Living God, will prove its reality in less than a week. God is the God of the Living not the dead (CIT).
I. THE RESURRECTION DENIED, 27.
II. THE RESURRECTION BELITTLED [DISPARAGED], 28–33.
III. THE RESURRECTION SUPPORTED, 34–40.
Verse 27 introduces another group of Jesus’ enemies. “There came to him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection,”
The Sadducees denied all supernatural occurrences. They refused to even face the clear implications of OT teaching about the future state and were skeptical of the nature of personal future existence related to rewards or punishment. [They also did not believe in angels, demons, or spirits (Acts 23:8) or the inspiration of the Old Testament other than the Torah or the five books of Moses.] These intellectual skeptics controlled much of the religious and political affairs in first century Israel.
II. THE RESURRECTION BELITTLED, 28–33.
The Sadducees begin their attack in verse 28 by quoting from the Law of Moses. ‘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.’
The question on resurrection was not to elicit information but to find a way to make Jesus look foolish by presenting an extreme hypothetical case. The quote from Deuteronomy 25:5 (Ruth 4:1-12) centers on levirate marriage where a brother was obligated to marry his brother’s widow and raise children for the deceased. The Jewish custom of “levirate marriage” [from the Lat. levir, “husband’s brother,” “brother-in-law”] provided for the remarriage of a widow to the brother of a husband who died childless. The purpose of the remarriage being to provide descendants to carry on the deceased husband’s name & care for his widow (Deut 25:5–6; Gen 38:8). Preserving the line of descent also kept land in the family which limited social disruption. [ p 326.]
The proposed conundrum is found in verses 29-32. ‘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.
They take their swing at Jesus by poking fun at the teaching of the scriptures which they know He believes are fully inspired. Their hypothetical case is seven dead men, one dead woman: no children.
Verse 33 is the clincher meant to stump Jesus or at lest embarrass Him for what He believed theologically. ‘In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.”’
Whose wife in the resurrection that everyone talks about would she be? The example had been worked out so that no brother had an advantage over the other because none left an heir. Since all seven qualified themselves as husbands equally, they felt that the doctrine of the resurrection had to be rejected as illogical if not absurd.
The Sadducees made this ancient remarriage instruction the basis for an absurd argument that assumed that the idea of resurrection involves sexual reunion with one’s earthly partner(s). They assumed that the resurrection must be lived in the monogamous relationship God requires on earth.
III. THE RESURRECTION SUPPORTED, 34–40.
In verses 34 & 35 Jesus once again refutes His opponents with the wisdom of God. ‘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,
Jesus first demonstrates the flaw of equating this age with the coming age for the present Age contrasts sharply with the Age to come. Afterlife is a new paradigm of existence. It is not legitimate to project earthly conditions into the future state. He refutes their premise that the situation and conditions governing this present age will continue into and govern the coming age. After the resurrection relationships change. This could be taken to mean that there will be no marriage in the resurrection [Martin, J. A. (1985). Luke. In J. F. Walvoord & R. B. Zuck (Eds.), The Bible Knowledge Commentary: An Exposition of the Scriptures (Vol. 2, p. 256). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.]. Since there is no longer death in the age to come, the reason to procreate through marriage will cease (Gen 1:28). Thus marriage as we have known it will cease to exist [Stein, Robert. Luke. New American Com. Broadman. 1992. Nashville, TN. p 500.] More probably though Jesus intended that all human relationships are lifted up to such a high level in heaven that the exclusiveness of marriage will not be a factor in heaven as it is on earth. The continuation of earthly relationships though is implied in 1 Thes. 4:17–18. [Marshall, I. H. (1994). Luke. In D. A. Carson, R. T. France, J. A. Motyer, & G. J. Wenham (Eds.), New Bible commentary: 21st century edition (4th ed., p. 1012). Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press.]
Let’s chase a rabbit for a moment for it is a well-worn trail. Granted that our wedding vows include the phrase “til death do we part” many happily married believers do not want their God-given union to end in heaven. Will intimacy, love, fellowship and partnership between married Christians end at death? The NT does not give a complete answer to this question. It assumes that whatever is needed for love, fellowship, and whatever is necessary for joy and blessedness will be provided in the age to come. Though the state of the inhabitants of that world we cannot express or conceive (1 Co. 2:9), believers will lack no good thing, Yet some of the lesser blessings of earth will end because they are replaced by the greater blessings of heaven. Apparently this is true of the sexual experience as we know it (Gen 1:28). Yet we believe “that if anything good in this age is not carried over in the age to come, it is because it will be replaced by something far, far better.” [Stein, p 501.]
Notice also that Jesus corrects their false assumption that everyone partakes in the resurrection. Only those considered worthy will attain the resurrection to life in heaven or in Abraham’s bosom. [“Worthy” probably has somewhat the same meaning as in Matthew 10:11, 13, where it apparently refers to a person or home honoring God and blessed by Him. Liefeld, W. L. (1984). Luke. In F. E. Gaebelein (Ed.), The Expositor’s Bible Commentary: Matthew, Mark, Luke (Vol. 8, pp. 1016–1017). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House.] The phrase indicates some difficulty in reaching after that age, and a danger of coming short. We must so run so that we may obtain. [Henry, Matthew, Commentary on the whole Bible: (p. 1897). Peabody: Hendrickson.]
Verse 36 continues Jesus’ teaching on what the afterlife is like. ‘for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.’
For they cannot die any more, since they, the “sons of the resurrection” we will be immortal like the angels (taking a dig at their theology which did not believe in spirits). Eternal life is actually the life of the age to come. [Note the link between “that age” in v. 34 and the “resurrection” in v. 36.] The transformation of the resurrection is what makes eternal life possible. The believer’s relationship as a child of God only becomes fully realized at the resurrection [after Christ’s return (Rom. 8:23;1 Cor 15:53-54)].
Jesus did not say that resurrected people become angels (or gods). His point was that the sons of the resurrection, like angels, will be immortal and share certain other characteristics of angels. This could refer to the absence of the sexual aspect of marriage without denying the continuation of mutual recognition and love. [The Greek syntax, however, places the comment about angels nearer to “no longer die” than to “neither marry.” This moves the emphasis from the issue of marriage to that of the nature of the Resurrection. Liefeld, Vol. 8, p. 1017.]
Having refuted the Sadducees’s attack on the resurrection, Jesus next argues in favor of the resurrection based also on the Books of Moses in verse 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.”
To deny the resurrection is to deny the teaching of Scripture. Invoking the authority of Moses, whom the Sadducees revered (rejecting later biblical writing), Jesus used the burning bush to reference Exodus 3:6 [There were no chapters or verses in the Scrolls of Jesus’ day.] where the Lord (the pre-incarnate Christ) employs the perpetual present to refer to Himself as “I AM the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.” If long after their death God is still the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob then they must be alive (Truly dead people cannot actively still have a God nor are they able to worship Him.). For only living people have a God. He shows that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not only going to rise, but are alive to God presently. Therefore their existence does not lie only in the past but in the future; and God is called, in their present condition, their God. The God who was Abraham’s God during his lifetime would not let death interrupt the relationship but would resurrect him. [Marshall, I. H. (1994). Luke. In D. A. Carson, R. T. France, J. A. Motyer, & G. J. Wenham (Eds.), New Bible commentary: 21st century edition (4th ed., p. 1012). Leicester, England; Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press.]
Jesus taught a conscious life immediately after death (16:19-31; 23:39-43). Since Abraham, Isaac and Jacob are still alive the Sadducean disbelief in life after death is refuted and since a bodiless existence is incomplete life after death continued existence finds its fulfilment in the resurrection (16:19-31;23:39-43).
Verse 38 is Jesus affirmation that those who take His Father as their God become living sons of the living God. “Now He is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to Him.”
Life is in God’s sovereign hands. Since He is still their God after their death and since only living people can still have a God, then there must be a resurrection. Even though those words [in Exodus] were uttered several hundred years after the last patriarch’s death, God was preserving them alive for future resurrection, “for all live to Him.”
At death the righteous are alive to God in some sense. Though all believers already participate in that life; its full expression, involving the resurrection of the body, seems to be when the new age has fully come (2 Cor. 5:1-5, 8; Phil 1:21-23;1 Thess 4:13-17).
Jesus argument is such that it even wins the approval of some scribes in verse 39. ‘Then some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.”’
Jesus’ answer is supported by some of the teachers of the law, who are happy to see the Sadducees lose their argument in such a biblical manner.
‘Look at me and you’ll find fault easily. Look at the person sitting next to you long enough and close enough, and you will find fault with him or her as well. But look at Jesus and you will find no fault whatsoever. No matter how carefully you scrutinize His teachings or study His actions, He will never disappoint or disillusion you. Not once.” [ J. (2003). Jon Courson’s Application Commentary (p. 400). Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson.]
In verse 40 we learn a result of the conversation with the Sadducees. ‘For they no longer dared to ask him any question.’
After Jesus’ response everyone was afraid to ask Him any more questions. Jesus’ wisdom has silenced all his questioners (Lk 13:17; 19:48; 20:19, 26).
IN CLOSING
It is common for those that design to undermine any truth of God to perplex it, and load it with difficulties. Those in our passage did not know the Scriptures regarding the future state nor the power of God, from which a thousand such difficulties vanish (Mk 12:24).
How precious are these glimpses into the resurrected state! There is no reincarnation or comic recirculating. Once this mortal life ends, we are accountable to God for what we have done with it (Heb. 9:27). Death is not the end, only the beginning. So the real question is: Has the living God become Your God through faith in His Son’s perfect life, debt canceling death, pardoning shed blood and overcoming resurrection?
