The God of the Living Text: Mark 12:18-27
Introduction: The Unbelieving Unbelievability Police
Every generation has its Sadducees. They are the respectable unbelievers, the cultured despisers of the supernatural. They are the materialists who are quite comfortable with a little bit of religion, so long as it knows its place and doesn't get any wild ideas about a world beyond this one. In Jesus' day, the Sadducees were the aristocratic, priestly party. They held power, they controlled the Temple, and they accepted only the first five books of Moses as authoritative, primarily because those books contained the basis for their civil and ceremonial authority. They were theological minimalists. They denied the resurrection, angels, and spirits. For them, when you died, you were done. Your legacy was in your children and your land, and that was that.
So when they come to Jesus, they are not coming for a friendly theological chat. They are coming to set a trap. Their goal is to make the doctrine of the resurrection look foolish, childish, and logically absurd. They want to show that belief in a future life is for the naive and the uneducated. They come with a carefully constructed hypothetical, a "gotcha" question designed to unravel the whole concept. They represent the perennial temptation to domesticate God, to shrink Him down to a size that fits within our limited, earthbound logic. They want a God who doesn't do impossible things, a God who doesn't break the rules of their tidy, predictable world.
But they have picked a fight with the wrong man. Jesus is not just a teacher who happens to believe in the resurrection; He is the resurrection and the life. And in His response, He does more than just win a debate. He dismantles their entire worldview with surgical precision. He exposes the two foundational pillars of all unbelief, and in so doing, He gives us the two foundational pillars of a robust and joyful Christian faith.
The Text
Then some Sadducees (who say that there is no resurrection) came to Jesus, and began questioning Him, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that IF A MAN’S BROTHER DIES and leaves behind a wife AND LEAVES NO CHILD, HIS BROTHER SHOULD MARRY THE WIFE AND RAISE UP A SEED FOR HIS BROTHER. There were seven brothers; and the first married a wife, and died leaving no seed. And the second one married her, and died leaving behind no seed; and the third likewise; and so all seven left no seed. Last of all the woman died also. In the resurrection, when they rise again, whose wife will she be? For all seven had married her.” Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are mistaken, that you do not understand the Scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. But regarding the fact that the dead are raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the burning bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I AM 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; you are greatly mistaken.”
(Mark 12:18-27 LSB)
The Absurd Hypothetical (vv. 18-23)
The Sadducees begin by appealing to Scripture, which is always the first move of a clever heretic.
"Teacher, Moses wrote for us that IF A MAN’S BROTHER DIES and leaves behind a wife AND LEAVES NO CHILD, HIS BROTHER SHOULD MARRY THE WIFE AND RAISE UP A SEED FOR HIS BROTHER..." (Mark 12:19 LSB)
They are referring to the law of Levirate marriage, found in Deuteronomy 25. This was a provision God made in the civil law of Israel to protect the family line and inheritance of a man who died childless. It was a good law for its time and place, designed to provide for widows and ensure the stability of property within the tribes. It was a law for this age, for this side of the grave.
But the Sadducees are not interested in the purpose of the law. They want to weaponize it. They construct a ridiculous scenario: a woman who marries seven brothers in succession, all of whom die childless before she finally dies. Their question is meant to be the checkmate: "In the resurrection... whose wife will she be? For all seven had married her."
You can almost hear the snickers. They think they have Jesus trapped. If He assigns her to one brother, it's unjust to the other six. If He assigns her to all of them, it's polyandry. If He says she has no husband, He contradicts the institution of marriage. Their trap is based on a fundamental, unstated assumption: that the life to come is nothing more than a simple continuation of this life, with all the same structures and arrangements. They have no category for a glorified existence. Their imagination is as dead as they believe the patriarchs are. This is the error of all rationalism: it projects the limitations of the present onto the possibilities of the future and calls it logic.
The Twofold Diagnosis (v. 24)
Jesus does not even bother to untangle their silly knot. He cuts right through it and exposes the faulty premises of their entire system. His diagnosis is swift, sharp, and universally applicable to all forms of unbelief.
"Is this not the reason you are mistaken, that you do not understand the Scriptures nor the power of God?" (Mark 12:24 LSB)
There it is. Every error, every heresy, every departure from the living God can be traced back to one or both of these two failures. You are wrong because you do not know what God has said, and you are wrong because you do not know what God can do. You have a low view of His Word and a low view of His power. You either have a Bible that is too small or a God who is too small. The Sadducees had both.
Their ignorance of Scripture was not that they couldn't quote Deuteronomy. They could. Their ignorance was that they didn't understand its scope, its purpose, or its trajectory. They read it flatly, as a mere civil code, and missed the deeper truths it pointed to. Their ignorance of God's power was that they could not conceive of a reality beyond their own material experience. They thought the resurrection, if it were to happen, would have to play by the rules of the old creation. Jesus will now correct them on both counts, in reverse order.
The Power of God and the Age to Come (v. 25)
First, Jesus addresses their failure to understand God's power by correcting their impoverished view of the resurrected life.
"For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven." (Mark 12:25 LSB)
The resurrection is not a resuscitation. It is a transformation. It is not just more of the same; it is an elevation to a new and glorious mode of existence. Marriage is a creational ordinance, given for this age for two primary purposes: procreation ("be fruitful and multiply") and as a living picture of the ultimate reality of Christ and His church (Ephesians 5). In the resurrection, both of these purposes will be gloriously fulfilled and therefore rendered obsolete.
There will be no need for procreation because the full number of the elect will be gathered in, and we will have eternal life, no longer subject to death. The family of God will be complete. And there will be no need for the picture, the signpost, of marriage, because we will have the ultimate reality. We will be in the presence of the Bridegroom, participating in the great marriage supper of the Lamb. To ask "whose wife will she be?" in heaven is like standing before the sun and asking which candle you should use to see by. The shadow is fulfilled by the substance.
To be "like angels" does not mean we become sexless, ethereal spirits. We will have glorified, physical bodies. It means we will be like them in this specific respect: our existence will be unmediated by the institution of marriage. Our focus, our worship, our fellowship will be directly with God. It's also a subtle jab, because the Sadducees didn't believe in angels either. Jesus affirms both the resurrection and the existence of angels in one breath, dismantling their skepticism with the power of God.
The Testimony of Scripture (vv. 26-27)
Having addressed the power of God, Jesus now turns to their ignorance of the Scriptures. And He does so by going right to their turf: the book of Moses.
"But regarding the fact that the dead are raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the burning bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I AM THE GOD OF ABRAHAM, AND THE GOD OF ISAAC, AND THE GOD OF JACOB’?" (Mark 12:26 LSB)
This is a masterstroke of biblical interpretation. The Sadducees claimed there was no proof of resurrection in the Torah. Jesus shows them it was staring them in the face the whole time. He takes them to Exodus 3, where God reveals Himself to Moses. Hundreds of years after the patriarchs had died and been buried, God does not say, "I was the God of Abraham." He says, "I AM." The verb is in the present tense.
The logic is inescapable and profound. God is the God of the living. He does not enter into covenant with corpses. He does not define Himself by His relationship to dust. If God is, in the present, the God of Abraham, then Abraham must, in the present, be alive to God. The covenant relationship between Yahweh and His people is not severed by something as trivial as death. Death is an intruder, an enemy, but it does not have the final word over those who are in covenant with the great I AM.
Jesus then drives the point home with a final, devastating conclusion:
"He is not the God of the dead, but of the living; you are greatly mistaken." (Mark 12:27 LSB)
Their mistake was not a minor exegetical quibble. It was a fundamental misunderstanding of the character of God and the nature of His covenant. To deny the resurrection is to believe that death has the power to turn God's people into "the dead," and thus to turn God into a God of the dead. But our God is the God of the living. This means that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are alive now, in spirit, awaiting the day when that covenant promise extends to their bodies as well, when they will be raised in glory.
The Sadducees came with what they thought was clever logic, but Jesus answered them with grammatical, covenantal truth. They were "greatly mistaken" because they had a God who was too small and a Bible they had not truly read.
Conclusion: Our Great Mistake
The error of the Sadducees is alive and well today. It is the error of every Christian who lives as though this life is all that matters. It is the error of every church that has traded the power of the gospel for political influence or social respectability. It is the error of every theologian who tries to strip the Bible of its miracles to make it more palatable to a skeptical age. Any time we shrink God's power or ignore God's Word, we become modern-day Sadducees.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead is the ultimate demonstration of both the power of God and the truthfulness of Scripture. It is the Father's great "AMEN!" to the finished work of the Son. It is the guarantee that our faith is not in vain and that our dead are not lost. Because He lives, Abraham lives. Because He lives, we shall live also.
Therefore, do not be mistaken. Do not be like the Sadducees, with their cramped imaginations and their earthbound hopes. Know the Scriptures. Read them, devour them, believe them. From Genesis to Revelation, they testify to the God who raises the dead. And know the power of God. Trust in the God for whom raising a body from the dust is a trivial matter. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. And because of the resurrection of His Son, our Lord Jesus, we who believe are truly and eternally alive.