Luke 20:27-40 (NIV) Some of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus with a question. “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and have children for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a woman and died childless. The second and then the third married her, and in the same way the seven died, leaving no children. Finally, the woman died too. Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”
Jesus replied, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy of taking part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection. But in the account of the bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”
Some of the teachers of the law responded, “Well said, teacher!” And no one dared to ask him any more questions.
The Pharisees had fallen before Jesus, as had those who had planned to trick Him into saying something that could be used to accuse Him before the Roman governor. Now came the Sadducees.
The Sadducees were the Jewish party from which all of the priests came, and from which the high priests were selected. They accepted only the five books of the Law (Genesis through Deuteronomy) as authoritative, so their theological perspective was very narrow, and they were unwilling to include later revelations of God, His character, and His plans as revealed through the prophets and the Psalms.
Their agenda was different than the others who had approached Jesus recently, in that it was more theological. Jesus regularly preached on the future resurrection from the dead, which the Sadducees did not accept. In fact, since the Law did not specifically talk about an “afterlife,” they taught that this life was all that there was, and so any blessings or penalties that God wanted to bestow on someone would be given in this life.
They presented to Jesus what they considered the best logical argument against the resurrection. (They had no theological argument, since you can’t really argue theologically from the silence of Scripture.) Their argument was based on the biblical practice of levirate marriage, found in Deuteronomy 25:5-10. If a man died without leaving any children to inherit his property and to carry on his name, the man’s brother was obligated to marry the woman, and the first child that she had would be considered the child of her first husband for the purpose of inheritance and for carrying on the man’s name in Israel.
The Sadducees presented the case where seven successive brothers had married the same childless woman. Their point was that, if there really was a future resurrection, it would cause all kinds of logistical problems, because all seven men had been legitimate husbands of the woman. So in the resurrection, there would be a terrible tug-of-war for marital rights that could even become bloody – unthinkable in God’s kingdom!
Jesus answer focused on two points. First, the future state of the resurrection is qualitatively different from the present world, and institutions like marriage will not be a part of it. And people themselves will be different, more akin to angels than what we now think of a the human state. They will no longer be subject to death and aging, so they won’t have to have children to support, and eventually replace them. Thus human logic can’t accurately judge or predict the future state of resurrection life.
The second point is that the Sadducees weren’t as familiar with even the Scriptures that they accepted as they believed they were. He directed them to Exodus 3:6 and 15, where Moses encountered God at the burning bush. In those verses God stated, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” As always, God chose His words carefully. He did not say that He WAS the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, but that He IS their God, clearly indicating that these men were currently alive in His presence, though they had died in the world. Thus their own Scriptures supported Jesus’ theological position, and spoke clearly against their own.
Father, it is no great surprise that Jesus was the ultimate authority on the afterlife, since He came from Your presence to become incarnate on earth. And it is no surprise that He knew the Scriptures better than the Sadducees and all of the scholars of His day, since He had a hand in writing them. Help me to never rely on my own human reasoning or on human logic in spiritual matters or in interpretation of the Scriptures, but to rely solely on You and on the insights that You give through Your Spirit. Amen.