Mark 12:24-27 24Jesus said to them, “Are you not mistaken about this, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God? 25For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. 26And as for the dead that they rise, have you not read in the book of Moses at the bush how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? 27He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are greatly mistaken.”
Jesus now gives his response to the Sadducees about the wife of the seven brothers. Their question had two wrong assumptions to it. Jesus introduces those assumptions in verse 24 and then explains the fault of these in verses 26-27. First, they did not know the Scriptures. The Bible for the Sadducees was the Torah, so Jesus appeals to this part of the Old Testament in his response to them using a literal form of interpretation. The key to interpreting verse 26 is in the tense of the verb in the quote from Exodus 3:6: I am. The present tense of this verb assumes that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were alive and not dead. God’s promise to them was still active when God spoke to Moses. The logic is clear that God could not be the God of the dead who do not exist anymore. When God makes a promise, like he did to the patriarchs, then that promise remains after death. Therefore, there must be some existence after death.
Second, the Sadducees underestimated the power of God. The God who creates all things can certainly recreate anything he chooses through resurrection. Death has no power over the one who is sovereign over all eternity. The Sadducees had created their own safe “god” that fit their own agendas and interpretation and were badly mistaken in their assumptions. Our interpretations of the Bible are often influenced by our presuppositions. We will find what we want to find and neglect or reject passages that challenge these presuppositions.
Resurrected life will be different than life on earth now. Jesus breaks the typical understanding of resurrected life in verse 25. Jesus compares the new human situation to like the angels in heaven. Luke notes in Acts 23:8-10 that the Sadducees did not believe in angels, so Jesus was confronting another false assumption in his response to them. The Bible does not say a lot about how angels live in heaven, but Jesus gives the insight that they are not married. One of the primary reasons God created marriage was for reproduction (Genesis 1:28). Logic suggests that angels do not reproduce like God created Adam and Eve to do since there is no need for reproduction in a heavenly and eternal existence. Jesus does not address human relationships in heaven in his response, only the matter of marriage; therefore, we should not speculate on this topic and be cautious about any doctrines that say something different. The Sadducees could not respond to the logic of Jesus’ answer to them. He clearly showed them that resurrection was assumed from the earliest part of the Bible and is an example of the power of the Almighty God of the living.
Beyond imagination
For older posts, click here.