The God of the Living Text: Luke 20:27-40
Introduction: Theological Sabotage
In every generation, the truth of God's Word is assailed by those who wish to domesticate it, to trim its wild and supernatural edges, and to make it respectable in the eyes of the current intellectual establishment. These are the men who want a God, but not a God who actually does anything inconvenient, like raise the dead. They want a religion that provides a bit of moral structure for this life, but which makes no claims whatsoever on the next. These are the Sadducees, and though their party is long dead, their spirit is alive and well, occupying influential posts in our seminaries, denominations, and universities.
The Sadducees were the theological liberals of their day. They were the wealthy, the powerful, the priestly aristocracy who ran the Temple and collaborated with Rome. And like all good liberals, they had a very high view of their own reason and a very low view of God's Word. They were biblical minimalists, accepting only the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, as authoritative. And because they couldn't find a chapter and verse in Genesis through Deuteronomy that said, "Verily, I say unto you, there shall be a resurrection of the dead," they concluded that there wasn't one. No resurrection, no angels, no spirits, no afterlife. For them, when you were dead, you were dead. This life is all there is, so you had best make your accommodations with power and get comfortable.
So when they come to Jesus, it is not with an honest question. It is an act of theological sabotage. They bring Him what they believe is a foolproof "gotcha" question, a ridiculous hypothetical designed to expose the doctrine of the resurrection as logically absurd. They had likely used this little brain-teaser to humiliate the Pharisees in debate for years. But now they try it on the Word made flesh. They are attempting to use the words of Moses to trip up the God of Moses. This is like trying to drown a fish in water. What follows is a master class in debate, exegesis, and worldview demolition. Jesus does not just answer their question; He dismantles the faulty foundation upon which it was built.
The Text
Now some of the Sadducees (who say that there is no resurrection) came to Him, and they questioned Him, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that IF A MAN’S BROTHER DIES, having a wife, AND HE IS CHILDLESS, HIS BROTHER SHOULD MARRY THE WIFE AND RAISE UP SEED FOR HIS BROTHER. Now there were seven brothers; and the first married a wife and died childless, and the second and the third married her; and in the same way, all seven died, leaving no children. Finally the woman died also. Therefore, this woman, in the resurrection, whose wife will she be? For all seven had her as a wife.” And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage. For they cannot even die anymore, because they are like angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed in the passage about the burning bush, where he calls the Lord THE GOD OF ABRAHAM, AND THE GOD OF ISAAC, AND THE GOD OF JACOB. Now He is not the God of the dead but of the living; for all live to Him.” And some of the scribes answered and said, “Teacher, You have spoken well.” For they did not dare to question Him any longer about anything.
(Luke 20:27-40 LSB)
The Absurd Hypothetical (vv. 27-33)
We begin with the trap being laid.
"Now some of the Sadducees (who say that there is no resurrection) came to Him, and they questioned Him, saying, 'Teacher, Moses wrote for us that IF A MAN’S BROTHER DIES, having a wife, AND HE IS CHILDLESS, HIS BROTHER SHOULD MARRY THE WIFE AND RAISE UP SEED FOR HIS BROTHER...'” (Luke 20:27-28)
Luke makes sure we know who we are dealing with. These are the deniers, the materialists. They approach Jesus with a feigned respect, calling Him "Teacher," but their intent is to discredit Him. They begin by citing Scripture, which is a favorite tactic of heretics. They appeal to the law of levirate marriage from Deuteronomy 25. This law was a gracious provision from God in the Old Covenant to protect a widow and to ensure that a man's family line did not die out. It was a law deeply concerned with legacy and inheritance in the face of death.
They then construct their elaborate, far-fetched scenario of seven brothers marrying one woman, all dying childless, and then the woman herself dying. The scenario is intentionally ludicrous. This woman has a catastrophic effect on the local male population. But the point for them is not plausibility; it is the logical conundrum they believe it creates. "Therefore, this woman, in the resurrection, whose wife will she be? For all seven had her as a wife" (v. 33).
Their mistake is a fundamental one, common to all skeptics. They assume that the next life, if it exists, must operate by the exact same rules and structures as this one. They can only imagine the resurrection as a simple resuscitation, a continuation of this world with all its current institutions, just without the dying part. Their argument is this: If the resurrection is real, and if the law of Moses is from God, then you have an intractable conflict. God's law creates a seven-way marriage tie that cannot be resolved. Therefore, the resurrection must be a fiction. It is a clever trap, if your opponent is a mere man.
A Different Age, A Different Order (vv. 34-36)
Jesus immediately identifies and corrects their foundational error. He doesn't get bogged down in the details of their silly story. He goes right to the rotten presupposition underneath it.
"And Jesus said to them, 'The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage.'" (Luke 20:34-35 LSB)
Jesus draws a sharp distinction between "this age" and "that age," the age to come. The Sadducees' entire problem was a failure of imagination, a failure to understand that redemption ushers in a new order of reality. Marriage, as we know it, is an institution for this age. It is a temporary, though glorious, ordinance. Why was it instituted? To fill the earth and to be a living picture of the ultimate reality: the union of Christ and His Church. It is also an institution fundamentally shaped by the reality of death. The levirate law itself was a provision against the threat of death, a way to continue a family line.
But in "that age," the age of the resurrection, the conditions that make marriage necessary are removed. Jesus gives the reason: "For they cannot even die anymore" (v. 36). Where there is no death, there is no need for procreation to perpetuate the human race. The family of God will be complete. The purpose of marriage as a picture will be fulfilled because the reality will be present. We will not need the signpost of earthly marriage because we will have arrived at the destination: the marriage supper of the Lamb.
He adds that they are "like angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection." This does not mean we become ethereal, disembodied spirits. The resurrection is bodily. "Like angels" refers to the fact that angels do not marry or procreate. And being "sons of God" in this ultimate sense means we have fully inherited our Father's house and possess the eternal life that is His. We will not be setting up new households, because we will all be part of the one household of God.
The God of the Living (vv. 37-38)
Having corrected their faulty understanding of the resurrection life, Jesus now goes on the offensive. He will prove the resurrection to them from their own truncated canon, the books of Moses.
"But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed in the passage about the burning bush, where he calls the Lord THE GOD OF ABRAHAM, AND THE GOD OF ISAAC, AND THE GOD OF JACOB. Now He is not the God of the dead but of the living; for all live to Him." (Genesis 1:3 LSB)
This is a stunning piece of exegesis. Jesus doesn't point to a verse that says, "The dead shall be raised." He goes to Exodus 3, to the foundation of Israel's covenant relationship with God. When God appeared to Moses, hundreds of years after the patriarchs had died and been buried, He did not say, "I was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." He said, "I AM the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." He speaks of His relationship with them in the present tense.
The logic is profound and inescapable. God is the God of the living. He does not enter into covenant relationships with corpses or with people who have ceased to exist. His covenant is an everlasting covenant. For God to be the God of someone implies a living, ongoing relationship. Therefore, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, though their bodies were in the tomb, were alive to God. They were living persons in fellowship with their living God, awaiting the resurrection of their bodies.
The Sadducees' problem was that they read the Bible like flat-landed materialists. They read for rules and regulations, but missed the relational heart of the covenant. Jesus shows them that the very name of God, revealed to Moses, presupposes the reality of the afterlife. The resurrection is not some strange doctrine tacked on at the end; it is woven into the fabric of God's covenant identity from the beginning. "For all live to Him." From God's perspective, in the eternal now, all His saints are alive.
The Aftermath (vv. 39-40)
The effect of Jesus' response is immediate and decisive.
"And some of the scribes answered and said, 'Teacher, You have spoken well.' For they did not dare to question Him any longer about anything." (Luke 20:39-40 LSB)
The scribes, many of whom were Pharisees and believed in the resurrection, are delighted. They had been on the losing end of this Sadducean riddle for years, and now they have just watched Jesus dismantle it with surgical precision, using the very Scriptures the Sadducees claimed to champion. He has not only defended the resurrection, but He has also given them a new and powerful argument for it.
The Sadducees are silenced. The text says they "did not dare to question Him any longer." Their intellectual pride is shattered. They came to expose Jesus as a fool and were themselves exposed as men who, as Jesus says in Matthew's account, "know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God." They had tried to trap the Truth Himself in a web of words, and the result was their own public humiliation. This is what happens when the creature challenges the Creator. This is what happens when theological minimalism runs up against the robust reality of the living God.
Conclusion: Know Your Bible, Know Your God
There are two fundamental errors that Jesus exposes in the Sadducees, and they are the same errors that plague the church today. The first is ignorance of the Scriptures, and the second is ignorance of the power of God.
The Sadducees thought they knew their Bibles, but they only knew the surface. They read it like a flat legal text, not as the unfolding drama of God's covenant love for His people. We must not be like them. We must read all of Scripture as a unified story that points to Christ, and we must learn to reason from it, to see the profound implications of every tense of every verb God uses. Our Bibles are not an encyclopedia of religious facts; they are the very breath of God, living and active.
Second, they did not know the power of God. They could not conceive of a reality beyond their own material existence. Their God was too small, unable to act outside the predictable confines of this age. But our God is the one who created the cosmos out of nothing and who spoke to Moses from a bush that burned but was not consumed. And He is the God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead, an act which is the down payment and guarantee of our own resurrection.
The resurrection is not an appendix to the Christian faith. It is the whole point. It is the declaration that Jesus is Lord, that death has been defeated, and that God's covenant faithfulness extends beyond the grave into eternity. Because He is the God of Abraham, He is our God. And because He is the God of the living, we who are in Christ, though we may die, yet shall we live. He is not our God for a few decades, only to abandon us to the dust. He is our God forever. And because He lives, we shall live also.