Luke 20:27

Luk_20:27-38

There were, therefore, seven brethren

The world to come

I.

THAT THERE IS ANOTHER WORLD. Our Lord calls it that world. It is evidently opposed to this world (Luk_20:34); the children of this world. We know a little of this world. Oh that we knew it aright! Oh that we saw it with the eyes of faith! The world of which we speak is a world of light, and purity, and joy. There is no night there (Rev_21:25). Hell is eternal darkness; heaven is eternal light. No ignorance, no errors, no mistakes; but the knowledge of God in Christ begun on earth is there completed; for we shall know even as we are known (1Co_13:12).

II. IT WILL BE A GREAT MATTER TO OBTAIN THAT WORLD. Notice our Saviours words, they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world. Oh, it will be a great matter to obtain that world I It will be a matter of amazing grace and favour. And oh, what a matter of infinite joy will it be!

III. SOME KIND OF WORTHINESS IS NECESSARY TO THE OBTAINING OF THAT WORLD. They which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world. This worthiness includes merit and meetness; or, a title to glory, and a fitness for it. Both these are necessary. But where shall we look for merit? Not in man.

IV. THE RELATIONS OF THE PRESENT WORLD WILL NOT SUBSIST IN THE WORLD TO COME. Our Lord says, They neither marry, nor are given in marriage. This expression is not intended to disparage that kind of union; for marriage was ordained by God Himself, while yet our first parents retained their original innocence. But in heaven this relation will cease, because the purposes for which it was instituted will also cease. Nor shall the glorified need the aid of that domestic friendship and comfort which result from the married state, and which are well suited to our embodied condition; for even in paradise the Creator judged it was not good for man to be alone (Gen_2:18). But in heaven there will be no occasion for the lesser streams of happiness, when believers have arrived at the fountain. Oh, let us learn from hence to sit loose to all creature comforts.

V. IN THAT WORLD DEATH WILL BE FOR EVER ABOLISHED. This is a dying world.

VI. THE BLESSED INHABITANTS OF THAT WORLD SHALL BE LIKE THE ANGELS. They are equal unto the angels.

VII. THE RESURRECTION OF THE BODY WILL PERFECT THE BLISS OF GODS PEOPLE. They are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection; they shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead. (G. Burder.)

Lessons

Creatures on the brink of the grave should not forget it, nor refuse to look into it.

1. Be reminded that we have persons resembling the Sadducees in our own times. There are some who seek to subvert the leading truths of religion; and the method they pursue is very like that followed by the Sadducees of old. They rarely make the attack openly, like honest and generous assailants; but they start difficulties, and endeavour to involve the subjects of inquiry in inextricable perplexity.

2. Let us be suitably affected by the doctrines of immortality and the resurrection here taught.

3. Once more, let us improve this passage in reference to the endearing relations of life. We are here reminded that death is coming to break them all up, and that short is the time we are to sustain them. Far be it from us to regard them with indifference. Religion requires us to fulfil their duties with all affection and faithfulness. Yet, they are of very limited duration, and very little value, in comparison with eternity. (James Foote, M. A.)

The Sadducees silenced

I. GIVE SOME ACCOUNT OF THE SADDUCEES:--A small number of men of rank and affluence, who had shaken off such opinions and practices as they deemed a restraint upon their pleasures. They acknowledged the truth of the Pentateuch, but rejected the tradition of the elders. They also denied a future state, and believed that the soul dies with the body.

II. CONSIDER THE ARGUMENT OF THE SADDUCEES.

III. CONSIDER HOW JESUS CHRIST ACTED ON THIS OCCASION.

1. He removed the difficulty which had puzzled the Sadducees. They had not studied the Scriptures with sufficient attention, and a sincere desire of understanding their meaning. If they had done so, they could not have doubted of a future state. If, again, they had reflected on the power of God, they would have concluded that what might appear difficult or impossible to man, is possible and of easy accomplishment with God. He then explained the difficulty. It is to be observed, however, that He speaks only of the righteous. On this subject our Saviour reveals two important truths,--First, that the righteous never die; and, secondly, that they become like the angels.

2. Our Saviour, then, having removed the difficulty which had embarrassed the Sadducees, and having at the same time communicated new and important information concerning the world of spirits, next proceeded to prove from Scripture the certainty of a future state. He argued from a passage in the Book of Exodus, where God is represented as speaking from the burning bush to Moses, and saying, I am the God of Abraham, of Isaac, and of Jacob (Exo_3:6). It is here particularly to be observed, that the force of our Saviours argument rests upon the words, I am the God. Had the words been I was the God, the argument would be destroyed.

IV. ATTEND TO THE INFERENCES WHICH WE MAY JUSTLY DRAW FROM THIS SUBJECT.

1. A difficulty arising from our ignorance is not sufficient to disprove or weaken direct or positive evidence.

2. Although a future state is not clearly revealed in the Books of Moses, yet it is presupposed, for the passage here selected can be explained only on the assurance that there is such a state.

3. From our Saviours declaration here, we also obtain the important information, that the righteous, after their removal from this world by death, do not sink into a state of sleep or insensibility; for the passage which He quotes implies that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, after death, remained alive, and still continued to acknowledge and serve God; for all these things are included in what our Saviour says. Now, the inference we draw is, that what is true respecting the patriarchs we may safely extend to all good men, that they are all in a similar situation.

4. While informed by our Saviour, in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, that immediately after death angels are employed to conduct the spirits of the righteous to paradise, we are also assured here by the same authority, that they shall be made like to the angels. When to these we add the passage quoted above, from the Epistle to the Hebrews, respecting the office of angels, it appears necessarily to follow that the righteous shall be elevated in rank and situation; for they shall associate with celestial beings, and consequently will receive all the benefits which can arise from society so pure and exalted. Nor can we help believing that while thus mingled with angels they will be engaged in similar duties and employments. (J. Thompson, D. D.)

The world to come

I. THAT THERE IS ANOTHER STATE OF BEING BESIDE AND BEYOND THE PRESENT STATE. None can deny the importance of the question, If a man die, shall he live again?

1. The traditions of universal belief. It is said that there is not, perhaps, a people on the face of the earth which does not hold the opinion, in some form or other, that there is a country beyond the grave, where the weary are at rest. Yet this universality of belief is no proof; it is but a mere presumption at best.

2. Certain transformations which take place in nature around us. Such as that of the butterfly from the grave of the chrysalis, and spring from the grave of winter. Such analogies, however, although appropriate as illustrations, are radically defective as proofs. The chrysalis only seemed dead; the plants and trees only seemed to have lost their vitality.

3. There is, again, the dignity of man. But while much may be said on one side of this question, not a little can be said on the other. Talk as you will, it has been said, of the grandeur of man--why should it not be honour enough for him to have his seventy years life-rent of Gods universe?

4. It is by the gospel alone that life and immortality have been brought to light.

II. THAT THE FUTURE STATE IN MANY IMPORTANT PARTICULARS IS WIDELY DIFFERENT FROM THE PRESENT STATE. They differ--

1. In their constitution. The children of this world marry, and arc given in marriage; but there will be nothing of this kind in heaven. The institution of marriage is intended to accomplish two great objects.

(1) the propagation of mankind. But in that world the number of the redeemed family will be complete, and hence marrying and giving in marriage will be done away.

(2) Mutual help and sympathy.

2. In the blessedness enjoyed.

(1) Negative. Neither can they die any more.

(2) Positive. They shall be equal unto the angels--in nature, immortality, purity, knowledge, happiness. It is further added, that they will be the children of God, being children of the resurrection. To the blessing of adoption several gradations appertain. What is spoken of here is the highest. The apostle refers to it in those striking words, Because the creature itself shall be delivered, etc. (Rom_8:21-23).

III. THAT BEFORE THIS GLORIOUS STATE CAN BE ENTERED UPON, CERTAIN PRE-REQUISITES ARE INDISPENSABLY REQUIRED. None can attain the world but those which shall be accounted worthy. Two things may be here noticed.

1. Our guilty persons must be accepted. That can only be done through the Lord Jesus--winning Christ, and being found in Him, not having on our own righteousness.

2. Our sinful nature must be renewed. Worthiness and meetness are often used as synonymous terms. Thus we read in one place, Bring forth fruits worthy of repentance; in another, Bring forth fruits meet for repentance. So with the worthiness in the passage before us; it is to be understood as indicating meekness for the heavenly inheritance. Now, nothing that defileth can enter there. Holiness of heart and life is an essential qualification. The pure alone shall see God. (Expository Outlines.)

Mercy weaves the veil of secrecy over the future

Once, we have somewhere read, there was a gallant ship whose crew forgot their duties on board by the distant vision of their native hills. Many long years had passed over them since they had left their fatherland. As soon as one of their number caught, from the top mast, the first glance of his home-scenes, he raised a shout, Yonder it is! yonder it is! That shout shot like electricity through every heart on board, all sought to catch the same glance, some climbed the masts, others took the telescope, every eye was on it, and every heart went forth with the eye; every spirit was flooded with old memories and bounded with new hopes. All thoughts of the vessel on which they stood, and which was struggling with the billows, were gone; they were lost in the strange and strong excitement. The vessel might have sprung a leak, run on shore, or sunk to the bottom for ought they thought about her. The idea of home filled and stirred their natures; the thought of the land in which their fathers lived and perhaps their mothers slept; the land of their childhood, and the land of a thousand associations so swallowed up every other thought, that their present duties were utterly neglected. Somewhat thus, perhaps, it would be with us, were the particulars of the heavenly world made clear and palpable to our hearts. The veil of secrecy drawn over them is woven by the hand of mercy. (D. Thomas, D. D.)

Reticence of the Bible in regard to heavenly happiness

Casper Hauser was shut up in a narrow, dimly-lighted chamber when a little child. He grew to manhood there. He never saw the earth or the sky. He knew nothing about flowers or stars, mountains or plains, forests or streams. If one had gone to him and tried to tell him of these things, of the life of men in city or country, of the occupations of men in shop or field, the effort would have been a failure. No words could have conveyed to him any idea of the world outside of his cell. And we are like him while shut up in these bodies. The spirit must go out of its clay house before it can begin to know anything definite about life in the spirit world. (Christian Age.)

Equal unto the angels

Equality with angels

Glorified saints are equal to the angels.

I. IN THEIR DIGNIFIED POSITION.

II. IN THEIR SUBLIME WORSHIP.

III. IN THEIR UNDECAYING STRENGTH (Psa_103:20; Zec_12:8). Like angels, the dead in Christ shall henceforth excel in strength. Weariness and fatigue shall be for ever unknown.

IV. IN THEIR MINISTERING SERVICE (Heb_1:14).

V. IN LOVING OBEDIENCE. We read of angels that they do His commandments, hearkening to the voice of His word.

VI. IN THEIR EARNEST STUDY OF THE MYSTERY OF REDEEMING LOVE. Speaking of the Gospel and its priceless privileges and blessings, Peter says, Which things the angels desire to look into (1Pe_1:12).

VII. IN THE JOYFUL INTEREST WHICH THEY FEEL IN THE SALVATION OF SINNERS.

VIII. IN THEIR IMMORTAL YOUTH. Angels grow not old, as men on earth do. They wear no traces of age; revolving years tell not on them. (P. Morrison.)

Equality of men with angels

I. MEN ARE CAPABLE OF BEING MADE EQUAL TO THE ANGELS. That man is capable of equalling the angels in the duration of their existence, may be very easily shown. Originally he was, like them, immortal. But what man once possessed, he must still be capable of possessing. Equally easy is it to show that man is capable of being made equal to the angels in moral excellence. The moral excellence of creatures, whether human or angelic, consists in their conformity to the law of God. Originally he was perfectly holy; for God made man upright, in His own image, and this image consisted, as inspiration informs us, in righteousness and true holiness. Man is then capable of being made equal to the angels in mural excellence. Man is also capable of being raised to an intellectual equality with the angels, or being made equal to them in wisdom and knowledge. The image of God in whack he was created, included knowledge, as well as righteousness and true holiness. He was, as inspiration informs us, but little lower than the angels. But this small intellectual inferiority, on the part of man, may be satisfactorily accounted for, without supposing that his intellectual faculties are essentially inferior to those of angels, or that his mind is incapable of expanding to the full dimensions of angelic intelligence. It may be accounted for by difference of situation, and of advantages for intellectual improvement. Man was placed on the earth, which is Gods footstool. But angels were placed in heaven, which is His throne, His palace, and the peculiar habitation of His holiness and glory. They were thus enabled approach much nearer, than could earth-born man, to the great Father of lights; and their minds were, in consequence, illuminated with far more than a double portion of that Divine, all-disclosing radiance which diffuses itself around Him. If the mind of an infant can expand, during the lapse of a few years, to the dimensions of a Newtons mind, notwithstanding all the unfavourable circumstances in which it is here placed, why may it not, during an eternal residence in heaven, with the omniscient, all-wise God for its teacher, expand so far as to embrace any finite circle whatever? Little, if any, less reason have we to believe that he is capable of being made equal to them in power. It has been often remarked that knowledge is power; and observation must convince every one that it is so. Mans advances in knowledge have ever been accompanied by a proportionate increase of power. A knowledge of metals gave him power to subdue the earth. But we have already seen that man is capable of being made equal to the angels in knowledge. Again, man is capable of being raised to an equality with the angels in glory, honour, and felicity. The glory of a creature must consist principally in the intellectual and moral excellences with which he is endued; and we have already seen that in these respects man is capable of being made equal to the angels.

II. THAT IN THE FUTURE WORLD, GOOD MEN SHALL BE MADE EQUAL TO THEM IN EACH OF THESE PARTICULARS. The fact that men are capable of being made equal to the angels, goes far to prove the truth of this proposition. From the appearance of Moses and Elijah on the mount of transfiguration, it seems evident that they possessed power of various kinds, of which we are destitute. They had power to descend from the mansions of the blessed, and to return, and also, as it should seem, to render themselves visible or invisible, at their pleasure. Indeed it is certain, that in some respects at least, the powers of the righteous must be greatly increased, or they would be unable to sustain that far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, and honour, and felicity, which is reserved for them in the future world. There is a dreadful counterpart to this truth, which, though not mentioned in our text, must be briefly noticed. Every argument, which proves that good men are capable of being made equal to the holy angels, may justly be considered as proving, with equal clearness, that wicked men are capable of equalling the fallen angels, who kept not their first estate. (E. Payson, D. D.)

In the resurrection saints are as angels

I. IN HEAVEN THE SAINTS ARE HOLY AS THE ANGELS ARE HOLY.

II. IN HEAVEN THE SAINTS, LIKE THE ANGELS, SHALL ENGAGE IN BECOMING ACTS AND EXERCISES.

1. I say acts and exercises, for while heaven is to be a place of rest, it is not to be a place of idleness. In heaven the saints are to be as angels, and angels, we know, are active in the service of God.

2. In particular, the saints, like the angels, engage in singing the praises of God.

3. Further, the saints, like the angels, are engaged in contemplating the works of God, and especially His wonders in providence and redemption.

4. Yet further, in heaven the saints, like the angels, are engaged in works of love. The angels, we have seen, are actively employed in the service of God. The whole method of the Divine procedure, so far as it comes under our view, seems to be carried on by a system of means or instruments. God fulfils His purposes by agents employed by Him who are blessed themselves and conveying blessings to others, who are happy and diffusing happiness. Even in inanimate creation on earth we find that nothing is useless; everything has a purpose to serve: the stone, the plant, the animal, every part of the plant and animal has a purpose to serve; it may be an end in itself, but it is also a means towards another end. The ear aids the eye, and the touch aids the ear and eye, and every member aids every other; it is good in itself, and is doing good to others. But these inanimate objects perform their work unknowingly, unconsciously. It is different with angels and the spirits of just men made perfect. They perform their allotted work knowing what they are doing, and blessed in the doing of it. Modern science shows us how much material agency can do. Take, as an example, the electric telegraph, which is every day carrying messages past your place. A methodical action is performed at one end of a wire, and in a few moments an intelligent communication is given at the other end, hundreds of miles away. It is a proof of the capacity of body. We know that our Lords body after His resurrection appeared and disappeared, and acted no one could tell how. But in the resurrection our bodies will be like His, spiritual and celestial. They will therefore be fit ministers to the perfected spirit--not, as here, hindrances at times, but always helps, and ready to fulfil the will of the spirit. (J. McCosh, D. D.)

The mortal and the immortal

Ours is a dying world, and immortality has no place upon this earth. That which is deathless is beyond these hills. Mortality is here; immortality is yonder! Mortality is below; immortality is above. Neither can they die any more, is the prediction of something future, not the announcement of anything either present or past. At every moment one of the sons of Adam passes from this life. And each swing of the pendulum is the death-warrant of some child of time. Death, death, is the sound of its dismal vibration. Death, death, it says, unceasingly, as it oscillates to and fro. The gate of death stands ever open, as if it had neither locks nor bars. The river of death flows sullenly past our dwellings, and continually we hear the splash and the cry of one, and another, and another, as they are flung into the rushing torrent, and carried down to the sea of eternity. If, then, we would get beyond deaths circle and shadow, we must look above. Death is here, but life is yonder! Corruption is here, incorruption is yonder. The fading is here, the blooming is yonder. Blessed words are these: Neither can they die any more. It is not simply, Neither shall they die any more, but neither can they die any more. Death, which is now a law, an inevitable necessity, shall then be an impossibilty. Blessed impossibility! Neither can they die any more! They are clothed with the immortality Of the Son of God; for as the Head is immortal, so shall the members be. Ah, this is victory over death! This is the triumph of life! It is more than resurrection; for it is resurrection, with the security that death can never again approach them throughout eternity. All things connected with that new resurrection-state shall be immortal, too. Their inheritance is unfading. Their city, the new Jerusalem, shall never crumble down. Their paradise is as much beyond the power of decay as it is beyond the reach of a second serpent-tempter. Their crowns are all imperishable; and the white raiment in which they shine shall never need cleansing or renewal. (H. Bonar, D. D.)

Moses showed at the bush

The living God of living men

I. GOD IS THE GOD OF ALL MEN, HOWEVER DIFFERENT FROM EACH OTHER THEY MAY BE. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to name three men so closely related to each other, and yet so conspicuously different from each other, as were Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Abraham is of the grandest heroic type--heroic in thought, in action, and, above all, in that faith which is the inspiration both of the highest thinking and of the noblest forms of conduct. But what a falling off is there in Isaac! He hardly seems his fathers son. Quiet, thoughtful, a lover of ease and good fare, with no genius for action, his very wife chosen for him as if he were incompetent even to marry himself, unable to rule his own household, unable even to die--it would almost seem, when his time was come, that he fades out ofhistory years before he slips his mortal coil. Jacob, again, strikes one as unlike both his father and his grandfather. We think of him as timid, selfish, crafty, unscrupulous, with none of the innocence of Isaac, little or none of the splendid courage and generosity of Abraham. What I want you to mark, then, is the grace of God in calling Himself, as He did for more than a thousand years by the mouth of His servants the prophets, the God of each and all of these three men. Different as they were from each other, they are all dear to Him. He has room enough in His heart for them all. Rightly viewed, then, there is hope for us and for all men in this familiar phrase. If God is not ashamed to call Himself their God, may He not, will He not, be our God too, and train us as He trained them, till all that is weak and selfish and subtle in us is chastened out of us, and we recover the image in which He created us?

II. GOD OUR FATHER WILL NEVER LET HIS CHILDREN DIE. The text our Lord quoted was this: To Moses at the bush--between four and five hundred years, that is, after Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were dead--Jehovah had said, I am,--not I was--the God of Abraham, and of Isaac, and of Jacob. But how could He still be the God of these men if they had long been extinct? He is not the God of dead men, but of living men. The three patriarchs were very certainly not living in this world when God spoke to Moses. They must, therefore, have been living in some other world. Dead to men, they must have been alive unto God. Obviously, then, men do not all die when they die.

1. Because our Lord saw in God the God of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, He inferred that these men could not die; that even when they did die, they must have lived on unto God. And that after all is, I suppose, the argument or conviction on which we all really base our hope of immortality. Art Thou not from everlasting, O Lord my God, mine Holy One? We shall not die. The eternity of God implies the immortality of man.

2. But our Lord at least reminds us by His words of another ground for hope. Nature has many symbols which speak of a life capable of passing through death, a life which grows in volume, in power, in beauty, by its submission to death. Every spring we behold the annual miracle by which the natural world is renewed into a richer, lovelier life. Year by year it emerges from its wintry tomb into the fuller and more fruitful life of summer. We may not care to base any very weighty arguments on these delicate and evanescent yet continually-recurring symbols; but, nevertheless, they speak to our imagination and our hearts with a force and a winning persuasiveness beyond that of logic.

III. What is to hinder us from arguing that, if God is still their God, and they still live unto Him, then GOD MUST EVEN NOW BE CARRYING ON THE DISCIPLINE AND TRAINING WHICH HE COMMENCED UPON THEM HERE, and carrying it on to still larger and happier issues? If they live, and live unto God, must they not be moving into a closer fellowship with Him, rising to a more hearty adoption of His will, a fuller participation of His righteousness and love? No one of you will question the validity of such an argument as that, I think. You will all gladly admit that, since he still lives, Abraham must by this time be a far greater and nobler man than he was when he left the earth, and must be engaged in far nobler discoveries and enterprises.

Christs answer to the Sadducees

I. WE WILL CONSIDER IT AS AN ARGUMENT AD HOMINEM, AND SHEW THE FITNESS AND FORCE OF IT TO CONVINCE THOSE WITH WHOM OUR SAVIOUR DISPUTED.

1. We will consider what our Saviour intended directly and immediately to prove by this argument. And that was this, That there is another state after this life, wherein men shall be happy or miserable according as they have lived in this world. And this doth not only suppose the immortality of the soul, but forasmuch as the body is an essential part of man, doth, by consequence, infer the resurrection of the body; because, otherwise, the man would not be happy or miserable in another world.

2. The force of this argument, against those with whom our Saviour disputed, will further appear, if we consider the great veneration which the Jews in general had for the writings of Moses above any other books of the Old Testament, which they (especially the Sadducees) looked upon only as explications and comments upon the law of Moses; but they esteemed nothing as a necessary article of faith, which had not some foundation in the writings of Moses. And this seems to me to be the true reason why our Saviour chose to confute them out of Moses, rather than any other part of the Old Testament.

3. If we consider further the peculiar notion which the Jews had concerning the use of this phrase or expression, of Gods being any ones God. And that was this that God is nowhere in Scripture said to be any ones God while he was alive. And, therefore, they tell us, that while Isaac lived, God is not called the God of Isaac, but the fear of Isaac. I will not warrant this observation to be good, because I certainly know it is not true. For God doth expressly call Himself the God of Isaac, while Isaac was yet Gen_28:10): I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac. It is sufficient to my purpose that this was a notion anciently current among the Jews. And therefore our Saviours argument from this expression must be so much the stronger against them: for if the souls of men be extinguished by death (as the Sadducees believed) what did it signify to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to have God called their God, after they were dead?

4. The great respect which the Jews had for these three fathers of their nation, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. They, who had so superstitious a veneration for them, would easily believe anything of privilege to belong to them: so that our Saviour doth with great advantage instance in them, in favour of whom they would be inclined to extend the meaning of any promise to the utmost, and allow it to signify as much as the words could possibly bear. So that it is no wonder that the text tells us, that this argument put the Sadducees to silence. They durst not attempt a thing so odious, as to go about to take away anything of privilege from Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

II. ENQUIRE WHETHER IT BE MORE THAN AN ARGUMENT AD HOMINEM. The following considerations would appear to indicate that our Lord really meant the matter to be regarded as settled fact.

1. If we consider that for God to be any ones God doth signify some very extraordinary blessing and happiness to those persons of whom this is said. It is a big word for God to declare Himself to be any ones God; and the least we can imagine to be meant by it, is that God will, in an extraordinary manner, employ His power and wisdom to do him good: that He will concern Himself more for the happiness of those whose God He declares Himself to be, than for others.

2. If we consider the eminent faith and obedience of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Abraham left his country in obedience to God, not knowing whither he was to go. And, which is one of the most unparalleled and strange instances of faith and obedience that can be almost imagined, he was willing to have sacrificed his only son at the command of God. Isaac and Jacob were also very good men, and devout worshippers of the true God, when almost the whole world was sunk into idolatry and all manner of impiety. Now what can we imagine, but that the good God did design some extraordinary reward to such faithful servants of His? especially if we consider, that He intended this gracious declaration of His concerning them, for a standing encouragement to all those who, in after ages, should follow the faith, and tread in the steps of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.

3. If we consider the condition of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in this world. The Scripture tells us, that they were pilgrims and strangers upon the earth, had no fixed and settled habitation, but were forced to wander from one kingdom and country to another; that they were exposed to many hazards and difficulties, to great troubles and afflictions in this world; so that there was no such peculiar happiness befel them, in this life, above the common rate of men, as may seem to fill up the big words of this promise, that God would be their God.

4. Then, we will consider the general importance of this promise, abstracting from the particular persons specified and named in it, viz., Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and that is, that God will make a wide and plain difference between good and bad men; He will be so the God of good men as He is not of the wicked: and some time or other put every good man into a better and happier condition than any wicked man: so that the general importance of this promise is finally resolved into the equity and justice of the Divine Providence.

And now having, I hope, sufficiently cleared this matter, I shall make some improvement of this doctrine of a future state, and that to these three purposes.

1. To raise our minds above this world, and the enjoyments of this present life.

2. The consideration of another life should quicken our preparation for that blessed state which remains for us in the other world.

3. Let the consideration of that unspeakable reward which God hath promised to good men at the resurrection, encourage us to obedience and a holy life. We serve a great Prince who is able to promote us to honour; a most gracious Master who will not let the least service we do for Him pass unrewarded. This is the inference which the apostle makes from his large discourse of the doctrine of the resurrection (1Co_15:58). Nothing will make death more welcome to us, than a constant course of service and obedience to God. Sleep (saith Solomon) is sweet to the labouring man: so after a great diligence and industry in working out our own salvation, and (as it is said of David) serving our generation according to the will of God, how pleasant will it be to fall asleep! And, as an useful and well-spent life will make our death to be sweet, so our resurrection to be glorious. (Archbishop Tillotson.)

Resurrection: an Easter-day Sermon

In the words of the text, the ground on which our Blessed Lord declares the resurrection of men to rest, is well worthy of our deepest attention. He does not say that because He Himself was ere long to be crucified and to rise again, therefore mankind should also rise. He goes down even deeper than this, to the very root of all hope and life for man; to that on which His own incarnation and death and resurrection rest; to the very foundation of being--even the nature of God Himself. Because God is God; the living and unchangeable God; because He has called us into existence, and made us what we are; because He has revealed Himself as our God; and taken us into covenant with Himself, therefore, man shall not--man cannot,-perish. But there is another most blessed and comforting truth taught us in the text; without which resurrection would cease to be a blessing, would lose all power to console and strengthen, would become a dark and dismal phantom. God is the God,--not of solitary and separate souls,--but the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob; the God of father and son and grandson; the God who has appointed and preserves the order of human society, upholds its relationships, and will not disappoint the pure and sweet affections which have been nurtured in them. Would Abraham be the same Abraham if there were no Isaac; Isaac, the same Isaac, if there were no Abraham and Jacob? Nay, if the dishonour of forgetfulness were, in the life beyond the grave, thrown on the human loves and affections which have been born on earth, would God be the same God? (J. N.Bennie, LL. B.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Luk 20:27-40. Then came to him certain of the Sadducees — These verses are explained at large, on Mat 22:23-33, and Mar 12:18-26. The children of this world — The inhabitants of earth; marry and are given in marriage — As being all subject to the law of mortality, so that the species is in need of being continually repaired. But they which obtain that world — The world which holy souls enter into at death; namely, paradise; and the resurrection from the dead — It must be observed, our Lord, agreeably to the Jewish style of that period, calls that only the resurrection which is a resurrection to glory. They are the children of God — In a more eminent sense when they rise again, having then received that public manifestation of their adoption, mentioned Rom 8:23; the redemption of their body. Now that the dead are raised, even Moses — As well as the other prophets; showed, when he calleth, &c. — That is, when he recites the words which God spoke of himself, I am the God of Abraham, &c. — It cannot properly be said, that God is the God of any who are totally perished. He is not a God of the dead, &c. — Or, as the clause may be properly rendered, There is not a God of the dead, but of the living — That is, the term God implies such a relation as cannot possibly subsist between him and the dead; who, in the Sadducees’ sense, are extinguished spirits, who could neither worship him nor receive good from him. For all live unto him — All who have him for their God, live to, and enjoy him. This sentence is not an argument for what went before; but the very proposition which was to be proved. And the consequence is apparently just. For, as all the faithful are the children of Abraham, and the divine promise, of being a God to him and his seed, is entailed upon them, it implies their continued existence and happiness in a future state, as much as Abraham’s. And as the body is an essential part of man, it implies both his resurrection and theirs; and so overthrows the entire scheme of the Sadducean doctrine. They durst not ask him any question — The Sadducees durst not. One of the scribes did presently after.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CRITICAL NOTES

Luk_20:27. Sadducees.—Members of the aristocratic and wealthy class, which included the higher ranks of the priesthood. It is a popular error, based on a statement of Jerome’s, that they rejected all the Jewish Scriptures but the Pentateuch. They accepted the later Scriptures but rejected the Oral Law and traditions. Like all Jews, no doubt, they attributed a higher degree of inspiration to the Pentateuch than to any other part of the Old Testament. Deny the resurrection.—I.e., of the body, and apparently even the immortality of the soul. The Pharisees, on the contrary, believed in the resurrection of the body and a future life, much in a Christian sense, though they had somewhat carnal ideas of the nature of the future state.

Luk_20:28. Moses wrote.—Deu_25:5.

Luk_20:29. Seven brethren.—Probably a fictitious case. The difficulty however, would have been the same if there had been only two brethren.

Luk_20:33. For seven.—Rather, “for the seven” (R.V.). It is difficult to see what triumph the Sadducees would have won if Jesus had agreed with some of the rabbis who had discussed this question, and decided the matter in favour of the first husband.

Luk_20:34. The children of this world.—The R.V. absurdly changes this to “the sons of this world.” The phrase “marry” is appropriate to “sons,” but “are given in marriage” applies only to women. Though “sons” is a literal translation, a general word like “children” is evidently called for.

Luk_20:35. To obtain that world.—Or, “to attain to that world” (R.V.).

Luk_20:36. Neither can.—Rather, “for neither can” (R.V.). The reason why there is no marriage in that state is that there is no death: so that it is not necessary to raise up a new generation to take the place of the old. Equal unto the angels.—I.e., in being immortal. Christ distinctly asserts the existence of these beings, which the Sadducees denied. Children of God.—I.e., not because of their ethical character, but because they become “partakers of the Divine nature,” receiving life by the direct action of God in raising them from the dead.

Luk_20:37. Even Moses showed.—Moses, whose supposed silence on this point the Sadducees laid such stress upon. At the bush.—Rather, “in the place concerning the bush” (R.V.); i.e., in the section of the book of Exodus known by that name (chap. 3).

Luk_20:38. Not a God of the dead.—But for Christ’s interpretation, the profound meaning of the name by which God then called Himself could scarcely have been discovered with any measure of certainty. “Our Lord here testifies of the conscious intent of God in speaking the words. God uttered them, He tells us, to Moses, in the consciousness of the still enduring existence of His peculiar relation to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob” (Meyer). “The groundwork of His argument seems to me,” says Alford, “to be this: the words ‘I am thy God’ imply a covenant. There is another side to them: “Thou art mine” follows upon “I am thine.” When God, therefore, declares that He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, He declares their continuance, as the other parties in this covenant. It is an assertion which could not be made of an annihilated being of the past.”

Luk_20:38. All live unto Him.—I.e., none are annihilated; those who have passed away from earth and are counted by us as dead, are living in the sight of God. See this same thought expounded in Rom_14:8 and Act_17:28.

Luk_20:39. Thou hast well said.—The Pharisees as a class would be glad to see their opponents, the Sadducees, refuted, and some of them were evidently generous enough to express their feelings of admiration at the wisdom displayed by Jesus on this occasion.

Luk_20:40. Durst not ask.—I.e., did not presume to frame any more captious questions, or to endeavour to entrap Jesus in His teaching.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Luk_20:27-40

The Question Concerning the Resurrection.—There does not seem to have been any sinister intention on the part of the Sadducees who now approached Christ, saying that there is no resurrection, and stating a case which seemed, in their opinion, to cast ridicule upon the doctrine. They came to him with a stale piece of casuistry, conceived in a spirit of self-complacent ignorance, but still sufficiently puzzling to furnish them with an argument for their disbelief, and with a difficulty to throw in the way of their opponents. It was drawn from what is called the levirate law of marriage, appointed by Moses to limit and curtail certain evils in the rude state of society then existing. A certain woman was married successively to seven brethren. Whose wife shall she be in the resurrection? What a confused state of society there must be in the future world—if, indeed, there is a world beyond the grave! Christ might have dismissed the stupid and frivolous question with contempt. If He had replied that the woman would be the wife of the first or of the last of the brethren, the Sadducees could scarcely have invalidated the reasonableness of the statement. But He was pleased to do more than rebuke the presumptuous ignorance of the questioners; He draws aside the veil that hides the future world, and gives us a glimpse of new conditions of life there, and also bestows upon mankind definite assurance of the immortality of the soul.

I. He refutes the erroneous opinions of the Sadducees (Luk_20:34-36).—He shows that their question went on the false theory that the forms and relations of the present, sensible life would be transferred to the future, spiritual life. In the resurrection-state there will not be a repetition, pure and simple, of our present conditions. It will not be a state of probation, but of perfect and unending blessedness. The children of the resurrection will be children of God, partakers of His nature, and subject no longer to the law of change and death which prevails here. Here it is but the species, the race, that has perpetuity; there the individual life is assured of immortality. No provision will, therefore, be necessary for the succession and renewal of the race. The Sadducees had virtually denied the power of God by asserting that life in another world must be a mere reflex and repetition of the life of the children of this world. With the shallowness and dogmatism that so often distinguish men of the rationalistic school to which they belonged, they took for granted that that which was incomprehensible to them must be set aside as untenable. And therefore Christ reminds them (Mat_22:29) of the infinite power of God from whom all life comes—who created the present order of things, and who is able to re-form or transform our beings, and to fit us for life in a new and higher sphere of existence.

II. He points out that the doctrine of immortality is implied in the Divine revelation to man (Luk_20:37-38).—The words of Christ plainly indicate that belief in the immortality of the soul is bound up with the very idea of religion. It is as though He had said, “You believe that God has spoken to men, summoned them to faith in Him, and to a life of obedience to His will, and that He has formed a covenant with them. How could God place Himself in so near a relation to individual men, and ascribe to them so high a dignity, if they were mere perishable existences?—if they had not a being akin to His own, and destined to immortality?” We may note the fact that the promise of blessings made when this special relationship was established between God and Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, was not fulfilled in this life. There was nothing in their earthly lot which distinguished them from others of their time, to whom no such promise was given. They had hardships and trials like other men, and confessed that that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. In obedience to the call of God they gave up the ties of country and kindred; “wherefore God gave them a better country, that is an heavenly.” The promise was not that God would reward their obedience by blessing them with wealth, length of years, tranquillity, or other earthly benefits, but that He would be their God. It was not limited by the condition that He would be their God so long as their earthly life would continue. And, centuries after the mortal bodies of these patriarchs had mouldered into dust, God spoke to Moses of His covenant with them (which was also their covenant with Him), as still existing, and of them, therefore, as in possession of that heavenly and eternal inheritance after which they had longed. The Sadducees had probably supposed that the words simply meant, “I am the God in whom Abraham, Isaac and Jacob trusted.” Yet to what had their trust come, if there were no resurrection? To death and nothingness, and an everlasting silence, and a land of darkness, after a life so full of trials that the last of these patriarchs had described it as a pilgrimage of few and evil years. Though we may never at any time cherish doubts concerning the facts of a resurrection and of the immortality of the soul, as these Sadducees did, we may derive spiritual strength and consolation from these words of Christ, especially from the way in which He associates these doctrines with God’s mercy and condescension. He does not merely assert that, from the constitution of our nature, we are immortal, or that, from His own personal knowledge of the unseen world, He can assure us of the fact, but He points out that it is necessarily implied in the communion of the believer with His God. God has come near to us, and called us to love Him, and to be conformed to His will; if we obey Him, He takes us into His keeping, and makes us partakers of His own nature. The truth, as Christ expounds it, is not merely calculated to satisfy an intellectual curiosity which only few may feel, but to allay those doubts and fears concerning the future which, from time to time, trouble the hearts and consciences of all—not merely to assure us that there is a future world, but that it will be well there with all those who trust in God. He knows His own, each by name; His covenant is with each of them personally, it is an eternal bond between Him and them, and is a sure pledge of their highest welfare.

SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Luk_20:37-40

Luk_20:27-33. The Question of The Sadducees: designed

(1) to set forth the unreasonableness of the popular faith, and

(2) as an apology for their own unbelief. Yet propounded in a somewhat frivolous and sarcastic spirit.

Luk_20:34-36. The Reply of Christ.

I. The conditions of life in the world to come are absolutely different from those of the present world.

II. Death being abolished, marriage, which was instituted in order to preserve the race from extinction, will come to an end.

Luk_20:36. “Children of God.”—Lit., “sons of God.” On earth men are sons one of another; but there each one will receive his new body from God Himself, by an immediate Divine action, so that, as among the angels, there will be no relation of filiation; hence the latter are all called “the sons of God.”—Godet.

Luk_20:37. “Now that the dead are raised.”—Christ does not remain satisfied with having triumphed over His opponents, but, knowing they are entangled in error, adds to His reply a further word of enlightenment.

“God of Abraham,” etc.—A twofold relation:—

I. That by which God takes Abraham under His especial care.

II. That by which Abraham makes God the only object of his worship and his sole refuge.

Luk_20:38. “Live unto Him.”—I.e., in relation with Him. The ties between them and men on the earth are broken, but they live in communion with God.

The God of the Living.—Our Lord’s refutation of the Sadducees’ question lay—

I. In exposing their ignorance of the heavenly nature.—Spiritual bodies are angelic; their relationship is that of brothers and sisters in a great family.

II. God’s words through Moses imply the continued life in the unseen.—That which is dead cannot realise or do its part to God, neither can God do His part to it. The “dead” really live. And life implies union of soul and body. Death seems division, but to God it is not really so. The “dead” body is in some calculable relation to the departed spirit, and they will come together again.

III. What are the consequences of Christ’s teaching?—

1. As regards the body. In heaven’s language the body never really dies. Do not despise the body. You may long for its renewal. But meanwhile honour, reverence, use well, the body.

2. As respects the spirit. It is not dormant. It, too, “lives.” Nearer to the fountain of life, drinking in more of its living waters.

IV. Who, then, are the dead?—Those who, in life, are living separate from their own souls. Awful words! Not considering their soul, not loving their soul, soulless. And so both soul and body are separate from God. These are the truly dead.—Vaughan.

Luk_20:39-40. “Thou hast well said.”—On hearing this prompt and sublime reply, the scribes, who had sought in vain for that which Jesus had with such ease brought to light, could not refrain from expressions of joy and surprise; and as they saw that every snare laid for Him only brought His wisdom into clearer relief, they abandoned this mode of attack.—Godet.

The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.

3. Controversy with the Sadducees concerning the Resurrection (Luk_20:27-40)

(Parallels: Mat_22:23-33; Mar_12:18-27.)

27Then came to him certain of the Sadducees, which deny that there is any resurrection; 28and they asked him, Saying, Master [Teacher], Moses wrote unto us, If any man’s brother die, having a wife, and he die without children, that his brother shouldtake his wife, and raise up seed [posterity] unto his brother. 29There were thereforeseven brethren: and the first took a wife, and died without children. 30And the second13 took her to wife, and he died childless. 31And the third took her; and in like manner 32the seven [omit 3 words following] also: and they left no children, and died. Last 33[Finally] of all [om., of all] the woman died also. Therefore in the resurrection whose wife of them is she? 14for [the] seven had her to wife. 34And Jesus answering15 said unto them, The children [υἱοί] of this world [αἰῶνος] marry, and are given in marriage: 35But they which shall be [have been, καταξιωθ*εντες] accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: 36Neither [For neither] can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels [ἰσ άγγελοι]; and are the childrenυἱοί] of God, being the children [υἱοί] of the resurrection. 37Now that the dead are raised, even Moses shewed [has disclosed] at the bush (Exo_3:616), when [or, since, ὡς] he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the 38God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For [Now, δέ] he is not a God of the dead [of dead men17], but of the living [of living ones]: for all live unto him [or, for him all are39living]. Then [And] certain of the scribes answering said, Master [Teacher], thou40hast well said. And [For18] after that they durst not ask him, any question at all.

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

Luk_20:27. Then came to Him.—The attempt to entice our Saviour within the sphere of the controversy between politics and religion, had entirely miscarried; now they seek to allure Him upon another not less dangerous territory, to entangle Him in the strife between the purely sensual and the strictly religious view of the world. In none of the Synoptics do we learn that the Sadducees came forward with their well-known interrogation πειράζοντες, on which account it is perhaps not absolutely necessary to assume that they really undertook to bring the Saviour, however He might answer, into some sort of personal inconvenience. But undoubtedly they mean, in the persuasion that He agreed with the Pharisees in believing the resurrection of the dead, to expose the unreasonableness of this faith, and secondly also of His doctrine, and in case they succeeded in snatching a word from Him which contradicted this hope, they would have viewed it and used it as an advantage obtained over their Pharisaic opponents, and one not to be despised. Perhaps also the position which our Saviour had taken in respect to the Pharisees, gave them occasion to ascertain for once whether He who had expressed Himself so anti-Pharisaically, would prove of an equally anti-Sadducean temper.

Sadducees.—In order to judge aright their conduct, as also to judge aright Jesus’ way of acting with reference to it, we must first remark that they, when they speak of the resurrection, mean thereby not merely the continuance of the soul after death, but also the bodily revivification of the dead, which the popular faith expected at the παρουία of the Messiah. They conceived the seven brothers, not as successively reanimated one after another subsequently to death, but as awakened contemporaneously with the last deceased woman ἐν ἐσχάτῃ ἡμέρᾳ, and cannot now imagine with whom she must then anew connect herself. Secondly, that they knew this doctrine only in the travestied, grossly sensuous form, in which the pride and the earthly-mindedness of their days had clothed it, and with this form reject therefore the idea that lies at its basis. The case feigned by them had been perhaps often used by themselves, or by those of their sentiments, in order vividly to set forth the unreasonableness of this popular faith. Finally, that they had hitherto appeared less publicly and less hostilely than the Pharisees against our Lord, on which account also He does not deal with them so severely as with the others. As frivolous friends of the world, they had hitherto moreover felt themselves less than the proud Pharisees offended and injured by our Lord. But before the end of His public life it was to appear, as it actually does in this interview, that unbelief and earthly-mindedness hate and assail the King of truth, not less than the hypocrisy of the Pharisees.

Luk_20:28. Moses wrote unto us.—See Deu_25:5-10. “Thus do they commence, purposing to prove irrefutably (although they, scarcely suppressing derisive laughter, only propose a question as to this), that this Moses in this, as in all his laws, cannot possibly have presupposed a resurrection.” Stier. By the representation of the palpable unreasonableness of the belief in it, they wish to furnish an indirect apology for their own unbelief. Since the whole emphasis, in the case here presupposed, must be laid upon the fact that children are not left behind, we cannot be surprised that this, Luk_20:31, is mentioned even before the ἀπέθανον.

Luk_20:34. And Jesus answering.—The very fact that our Lord accounts so unreasonable a question, and one proposed with so dubious an intent, yet worth the honor of an answer, may be regarded as a sign of His condescending grace; but in particular the contents and tone of His words are a striking revelation of His wisdom and love. He answers this time not as in the former case with a cutting stroke, but with a more extended development of thought. Matthew communicates it simply and definitely; Mark gives a livelier dramatic representation thereof (comp., e. g., Mar_12:24 with Mat_22:29); Luke goes a freer way, and has here also some singularia of the utmost importance, Luk_20:34-36. Comp. with Mat_22:30; Mar_12:25. On the other hand he passes over the beautiful commencement of the discourse of our Lord: Mat_22:29; Mar_12:24, in which Jesus discloses the twofold source of their censurable error.

The children of this world.—Not an intimation of the moral character of the men who are here described (De Wette), as in Luk_16:8, but in general all who live in the pre-Messianic period of the world.—They marry and are given in marriage.—This is not here, as in Luk_17:27, stated as a proof of carelessness and worldly-mindedness, but on the other hand as a consequence of their present condition, which however shall cease with the beginning of the new period of the world.—Καταξιωθέντες.—Those who are accounted worthy to inherit the future world (comp. 2Th_1:5) are those in whom the moral conditions for the attainment of future blessedness are found.

Luk_20:35. To obtain that world.—The Messianic αἰών is conceived as coinciding with the resurrection of the righteous, Luk_14:14, which is here exclusively spoken of. It is a privilege which is not communicated to all, but only to the ἐκλεκτοῖς, while those who at the moment of the παρουσία have not died but are found yet living, are here not farther spoken of. But of those who have become participants of the highest privilege and have been awakened to the new life, our Lord now declares that they then never marry nor are given in marriage. In other words, the whole question of the Sadducees rests upon an incorrect conception of the future life. Marriage is here represented simply by occasion of the case feigned as the summary of all merely sensual, sexual relations; essentially the same thing is taught which Paul announces, 1Co_15:50.

Luk_20:36. For neither can they die any more.—The cause, why there is then no longer any need of any marriage or any need of sexual propagation, since death has now ceased to reign, nay, has become a physical impossibility, while previously it might have been called a law of nature.—For they are equal unto the angels, ἰσἀγγελοι. In Matthew and Mark: ὡς ά̓γγελοι οἱ ἐν τοῖς οὐραν. With masterly tact our Lord here, by the way, vindicates against the Sadducees the belief in the existence of angels as personal beings, Act_23:8. At the same time it appears from this that the holy angels are raised not only above the danger, but also above the possibility, of dying. Finally: They are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection (sharers in the resurrection). This last statement brings us here to the idea of a Divine sonship, not in the ethical, as in Mat_5:9, but in the physical, sense, as in Luk_3:38. God is the ground of a new life imparted to them, and they may therefore be called His children; other children and therefore other marriages have no longer a place. By a so purely spiritual representation of the life of the resurrection, Pharisaism is at the same time opposed, which continually loved most to dream of a feast in the bosom of the patriarchs: “Jesus shows that both parties, the Pharisaical and the Sadducean, were involved in like error, and that neither had grasped the higher sense of the Scripture nor a just idea of God.” Von Ammon, Leben Jesu, iii. p. 216.

Luk_20:37. ̓Εγείρονται.—So firm stands this hope before the eye of our Lord, that He speaks not in the future but in the present, without this, however, entitling us to assume that He taught a resurrection ensuing immediately after death.

Even Moses has disclosed.—“Note the carefully chosen ἐμήνυσεν, which denotes the proclaiming of something hidden. Καὶ Μωϋσῆς. Even Moses, to whom ye appeal for the proof of the direct opposite.” Meyer. As to the question how far this appeal of our Saviour to the Pentateuch affords a proof that the Sadducees acknowledged only this part of the Old Testament canon, see Lange on Mat_22:31; and as to the force of the argument which our Lord here uses for the doctrine of personal immortality, see Stier, ad loc. If here nothing but a dialectical dexterity and Rabbinical hermeneutics had been displayed, our Saviour’s answer would then hardly have made so deep and mighty an impression. It is true, in the words: “The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,” the primary sense is: “The God who during their life was the protecting God of these men,” and it would of itself, from the fact that God had once protected them, not necessarily follow that this protection still endured centuries later. But the protecting God had been at the same time the covenant God; at the establishment of the Covenant, there had a personal communion between Creator and creature come into existence, and since He therein named Himself their God, He had therewith assured to them the full enjoyment of His favor and fellowship. And should this enjoyment restrict itself only to the limits of this life? Of a being that had lived in fellowship with God, should there soon be nothing more extant than a handful of dust and ashes? Would not God be ashamed to name Himself centuries after their decease a God of wasting corpses? Impossible! Then He would at all events have had to say: “I have been the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.” God as the Personal One contracts a covenant with men, and calls Himself after them. They must therefore be eternal, because they are the children of the Covenant of the everlasting God.

Luk_20:38. For Him all are living.—This sentence Luke adds to the declaration which he has in common with Matthew and Mark, “God is not a God of the dead, but of the living.” A sublime declaration, especially if we do not limit the πάντες to the νεκροί alone, but refer it to all creatures, which we commonly distinguish into living and dead. This distinction is in the Divine view entirely removed: for Him, αὐτψ͂, there are only living ones, whether they may have breathed out their breath or not. This is a proof, therefore, that even the death of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob could be for God no hindrance to be called enduringly their God. The visible world of men and the invisible world of spirits both stand before God’s eye as one communion of living ones. Into the question of the connection between the uninterrupted life of souls after death, and the future resurrection of the body, our Lord does not here particularly enter.

Luk_20:39. And certain of the Scribes.—Perhaps some of the Sadducees belonged to these, and therefore gave utterance to a better feeling than the wonted one, but more probably we have here to understand them as being Pharisees, who it is likely had not all left the field, and who certainly could never have been more inclined to forget their recent defeat, and frankly and openly to praise our Lord, than just now, after He had thus publicly humbled their deadly enemies. Luke expressly points us (Luk_20:40) to the fact that this extorted praise came in the place of farther questions, which no one ventured longer to address to the Saviour. In order not to be entirely superfluous, they render homage to the Victor, while they do not venture any longer to challenge the enemy again. From Mat_22:34-40 and Mar_12:28-34, it appears however that after the Sadducees, there still came forward a scribe with the question respecting the chief commandment. See Lange, ad loc.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. See on the parallels in Matthew and Mark.

2. In order to do full justice to the argument here used by our Lord for the resurrection, we must recognize that this rests not upon the abstract grammatical signification of the words in themselves, but upon the rich sense of the whole declaration, and that our Saviour does not assert that in this utterance the resurrection is taught, but only that it is thereby silently presupposed. By a just deduction, He derives the hope of eternal life from a declaration in which certainly no one without this index would have discovered it. What He finds therein is, however, primarily nothing more than the germ of a faith against which they scoffingly come forward, but a germ which, for His celestially clear view, was perfectly and necessarily contained therein. He shows therefore here in a striking manner how, even in the oldest documents, declarations appear which, if they are maturely weighed, must have necessarily led to faith in immortality, although thereby it is not meant that He could not have cited any stronger and more unequivocal declarations concerning these from the Prophets and Psalms. No wonder that even in later Rabbins, the proof here brought by Jesus is often repeated in a different way, and therefore at the same time an indirect confirmation of its usefulness has been afforded. See Schöttgen, Horœ hebr. ad h. l.

3. A very special attention is deserved by the exceedingly peculiar manner in which our Lord here establishes the doctrine of the resurrection. Far removed from the position of philosophers, who seek to deduce their ideas of immortality from the nature of the human soul, and therefore will demonstrate the doubted by the unknown, He finds on the other hand the firmest ground of eternal life in the personal fellowship of man with God. But herewith He gives us also indirectly to know that man, for the full persuasion of His own immortality, must first have become assured of personal fellowship with God, and have become conscious of it. He thereby points the Sadducees to the inmost ground of their doubts, which lies nowhere else than in the sundering of their inner life from Him, and designates at the same time the true ground of hope for the future, and the sole way to perfect certainty thereof. The religious philosophy and apologetics of earlier and later times, would certainly have lost nothing if they had followed this example more faithfully, and had not adventured the attempt to demonstrate the immortality of the soul to those who do not as yet believe in the living God, and have not even a faint conception of personal fellowship with Him. The deepest experience of our own heart teaches us that without these premises the faith in immortality is partly uncertain, partly unrefreshing, and that man, so long as he has not found God, loses also himself. This way moreover all the believers of the Old, nay, even those of the New Testament have walked; only after they knew themselves assured of God and His favor, did they gain certainty also of eternal life. See Psa_16:10-11; Psa_73:25-26; Psa_84:12; Rom_8:38-39. But this inmost ground of divine hope is absolutely impregnable, so long at least as all the nerves of the inward religious life are not destroyed.

4. The question whether and how far the immortality of the soul is taught in the Old Testament is by this utterance of our Saviour sufficiently answered. Certainly, as a dogma that could be dogmatically proved by a number of loci classici, this doctrine in the Old Testament is not present in a developed form. The reference to reward and punishment in the future life, would have been in the whole Mosaic economy no profitable, but rather a heterogeneous, disturbing element. Only through the gospel, and not through the law, could life and immortality be brought to light, 2Ti_1:10. Immortality was therefore no such dogma of the Old Testament as, for instance, the unity and holiness of Jehovah. Comp. Hävernick, Vorlesungen über die Theologie des A. T. pp. 105–111. This however does not exclude the fact, that for the individual expectation of believers, there existed a firm ground and wide field. If any one was conscious that God was his God, then he knew also that He would everlastingly remain so, and that whoever had experienced His fellowship might fall asleep in the hope of hereafter beholding His face in righteousness, Psa_17:15. Taking all together, we may say that the hope of a Jacob, a David, an Asaph, and others, was quite as firm but not quite as clear as that of the sons of the New Covenant is. “Moreover we have here to consider what doctrine of immortality is understood.—The rationalistic doctrine is nothing better than the doctrine of Sheol. Everything depends upon gaining the conception of life after death, not that of bare existence. The latter has no religious interest whatever.”

5. The conception of God, from which our Saviour here proceeds: God, no dead unit but the living God, is not only that of the Old but also that of the New Covenant, and the metaphysical foundation of the Christian doctrine of the Trinity. A similar relation to that between God and the creature exists also between our Lord and His people, since His life in them is the inmost ground of their immortal life, see Joh_14:19.

6. From this didactic discourse of our Lord, it results that the Christian conception of angels has not only an æsthetical and ontological, but also a very decided practical significance. As the angels stand in personal relation to man (see Luk_2:14; Luk_15:10), so are we also called hereafter to take part in their joy; and whoever now affirms that there are no angels whatever, converts thereby the prospect opened to us by our Lord, of becoming hereafter ἰσάγγελοι, into a vain illusion.

7. The declaration that those who have risen again do not marry, but are like the angels, has often been used as an indirect argument against the angelic hypothesis of Kurtz a. o. on Gen_6:2. On the other hand, we must not fail to note that our Saviour speaks undoubtedly of that Which the angels do not do, but not of that which they never could do, and that the present purely spiritual life of the angels may very well have been preceded by a previous catastrophe or fall of some of them.

8. With utter injustice some have seen in that which our Lord says about marrying and giving in marriage, an indirect disparagement of marriage. The history of celibacy proves, in opposition to these, what consequences the anticipation of the angelic state here portrayed has for public and private morality. “Grace and the Holy Ghost do not remove the propensities of nature, nor destroy them, as the monks dreamed, but where nature is distorted the Holy Ghost heals it and puts it exultingly on its feet, brings it again to its true condition.” Luther. It even appears indirectly from the Levirate law, that a second marriage cannot possibly have in itself anything immoral. But this doctrine does indeed imply an earnest warning against such matrimonial connections as establish no higher than a merely sensual fellowship. Not as man and wife, but ἰσάγελοι, shall the redeemed see one another again, and only that in married love is eternal which in its ground is spiritual. From this position we learn to understand the counsel of the Apostle, 1Co_7:29-31.

9. In the example of our Lord an important intimation is given to Apologists, how they also may best vindicate against the Sadducees of our day the revealed truth; in such wise, that is, that they place themselves on the impregnable ground of the Scriptures; that they show how the imperfect form in which the truth is represented, does not of itself entitle us to reject its substance also as unreasonable; that they lay bare the innermost grounds of the ignorance which conceals itself behind the escutcheon of all so-called, highly vaunted science. In this way even the simplest Christian gains the right of exclaiming to the apostles of unbelief: πολὺπλανᾶσθε !

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

The leaven of the Sadducees not less destructive than the leaven of the Pharisees, Mat_16:6.—The difference and agreement between the Jewish Sadducees and the heathen Epicureans.—The denial of the resurrection in its different forms: 1. Thorough materialism, 1Co_15:32; 1 Corinthians 2. one-sided spiritualism, 2Ti_2:18.—The authority of the law even for those who occupy an unbelieving position.—The eternal substance in the temporal form of the Levirate law.—Childless marriage.—The long and repeated condition of widowhood.—The dangerousness of an excessively sensuous conception of the future life.—The future life: 1. A continuance of the present, but also; 2. an antithesis to the same.—Marriage should be counted honorable in all, Heb_13:4.—The supreme inheritance: 1. Wherein it consists; 2. who becomes worthy of it.—In heaven there is no other marriage than the marriage of the Lamb, Rev_19:7.—Propagation and mortality in their inseparable connection.—In what respect the blessedness of the redeemed may even exceed that of the angels.—The angels: 1. Purely spiritual; 2. perfectly pure; 3. eternally immortal; 4. supremely blessed beings.—God’s Son became a little less than the angels, that He might make His redeemed equal to the angels.—The children of the resurrection the brothers of the inhabitants of heaven.—The resurrection of the dead a mystery, beginning to be unfolded even by Moses.—The burning bush itself a proof that by God’s omnipotence that may be preserved and renewed which by nature is destroyed.—The blessedness of a soul to which the Lord has said: I God am thy God.—God’s covenant faithfulness the highest pledge for the everlasting life of His people.—God the God of the living: 1. The majesty which He as such reveals; 2. the blessedness which He as such bestows; 3. the glory which He as such should receive.—The absolute opposition of life and death, the natural fruit of our limited view of the world.—In God’s eyes, death has no reality.—The great chasm between the position of the Sadducees and that of our Lord;—they see nothing but death; He sees nothing but life.—The involuntary homage which even hostility offered to the Saviour’s Divine superiority.—He that is reduced to silence, is not yet thereby by any means won for the truth.

Starke:—Cramer:—God’s word becomes to many the savor of death unto death, 2Co_2:16.—Brentius:—The posterity of the Pharisees and Sadducees have ever wrought great harm to Christendom, and there is in the last days even something worse to be feared, 2Ti_3:1.—The devil is a singular enemy of marriage.—Bibl. Wirt:—Human reason searches out in matters of religion unreasonable, things wherewith to subvert the truth of the Divine word.—Let men content themselves with what Christ has revealed to us of the future world.—Quesnel:—The remembrance and recompense of the righteous cannot be lost.—When a man’s ways please the Lord, He maketh even his enemies to be at peace with him.—The silence of enemies not always a sign of conversion.

Heubner:—Insipid as this objection of the Sadducees is, quite as insipid are all others against the facts in the life of Christ.—The darkening or suppression of the Scriptures has either despotism in the faith, or anarchy in the faith, as its result.—Belief in the angels pervades the most intimate and highest relations of man.—It is very comprehensible why the Scripture even here reveals to us many things concerning the angels.—Christ’s argument no empty, delusive argument κατ̓ ά̓νθρωπον, as the heroes of accommodation say.—Arndt:—The repulse of the Sadducees: 1. The assault; 2. the defence; 3. the consequences resulting therefrom.—W. Hofacker:—Christ over against the Sadducees of His and our day. We direct our eyes: 1. To the Sadducees; and 2. to the position which Christ has taken in reference to them.—C. Palmer:—God, a God not of the dead but of the living.—On this rests a. the hope of eternal life to those whose God He is, b. but whoever will have such hope must become spiritually living.—Tholuck:—On the feast of the dead: Before God the dead live (Pred. ii. p. 264 seq.).—Another in the six sermons upon Religious Questions of the Time, 1845, 1846, p. 60 seq., and at the feast of the dead: Whereby may a man become firm in his faith in an eternal life?—Dr. B. ter Haar, Theological Professor in Utrecht:—For Him all are living: 1. They live; 2. they live to God; 3. they all live to Him. Therefore an imperishable, a holy, a blessed, a social life.—Van Oosterzee:—They are equal to the angels of God in heaven: 1. What there will fall away? What is incompatible with angelic perfection. Our Lord says the angels marry not, sin not, die not; we shall therefore cease to be a. sensuous, b. sinful, c. mortal, beings; 2. What will there remain? what is kindred to angelic perfection: a. the angelic purity that was here striven after, b. the angelic love that was here cherished, c. the angelic joy that was here tasted; 3. What will there begin? what arises from angelic perfection: a. higher development, b. more perfect communion, c. more unlimited complacency of God, than the soul here upon earth enjoys.—In conclusion, the momentousness of this teaching of our Saviour: 1. For the frivolous Sadducees; 2. the high-minded Pharisees; 3. the sincere but weak disciples even of the present day.

Footnotes:

[13]Luk_20:30.—[Omit all after the figure,] according to the reading of B., [Cod. Sin.,] L., 157. The greater fulness of the Recepta appears to have arisen from old glosses and from a certain impulse of completion. See details in Tischendorf.

[14]Luk_20:33.—The most exact arrangement of words appears to be that of B., L.: ἡ γυνὴ οῦ̓ν ἐν τῇ ἀναστάσει, κ.τ.λ., “The woman, therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife does she become of the seven?” [Cod. Sin. has simply: ε. τ. α. τινος εσται γυνη.—C. C. S.]

[15]Luk_20:34.—The ἀποκριθείς of the Recepta is apparently only an interpolation from the parallel.

[16][Luk_20:37.—Ἐπὶ τῆς βάτου, i. e., in the division of Exodus which takes its name from the account of the burning bush. As is known, the division of verses not being used anciently, the only way of referring to a particular passage was to designate it by the name of some remarkable person, or object, or circumstance mentioned in it. Comp. Rom_11:2.—C. C. S.]

[17][Luk_20:38.—Θεὸς δὲ οὐκ ἔστιν νεκρῶν ἀλλὰ ζώντων. It is hard to translate this so as to make it both perspicuous and concise. “A God of the dead … of the living,” implies that the dead and the living are regarded as two actually existing classes, in which sense it would be, of course, impious to affirm that God was not the God of both. The absence of the article before νεκρῶν and ζώντων of course indicates that they are conceived indefinitely, as two possible classes, of which it is denied that the former can have any covenant relations with God. As God affirms, nevertheless, that the departed patriarchs still stand in covenant relation to Him, the inference is necessary, that they cannot be νεκροί in any true sense. They (and all their spiritual posterity) are destined to immortal life.—C. C. S.]

[18][Luk_20:40.—Van Oosterzee rightly reads γάρ, with Tischendorf, Meyer, Tregelles, Alford, on the authority of B., L., (Cod. Sin.,) 5 cursives, and the Coptic version. As Meyer remarks, γάρ was not understood. It was not perceived that the subsequent silence of the scribes was foretokened in the unwonted modesty into which they had been awed, and which appears in their concluding remark.—C. C. S.]

Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

THE RESURRECTION

Mat 22:23-33; Mar 12:18-27; Luk 20:27-40. “And certain ones of the Sadducees coming to Him, who deny that there is a resurrection, interrogated Him, saying, Teacher, Moses wrote to us [Deu 25:5], If the brother of any one may die, having a wife, and he may die childless, that his brother must take his wife, and raise up seed to his brother. Then there were seven brothers; the first taking a wife, died childless. And the second. took the wife, and he died childless. And the third received her; and likewise also the seven; and they left no children, and died. And last of all the woman also died. Therefore in the resurrection whose wife is she? for the seven had her a wife. And Jesus, responding, said to them, The children of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those considered worthy to reach that age, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are they given in marriage; for they are not able to die any more: for they are equal to the angels, and they are the sons of God, being the sons of the resurrection. And that the dead rise, Moses mentioned at the bush, as he says the Lord is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He is not the God of the dead, but of the living; for all live unto Him. And certain ones of the scribes, responding, said, Teacher, you spoke well. And no one any more dared to ask Him anything.” While the Sadducees were the richest denomination of the Jewish Church, they leaned much to materialism, being heterodoxal on the resurrection, as well as the great spiritual truths of the Bible generally. The Pharisees, boasting of their orthodoxy, were rivals and antagonists of the Sadducees, as well as the Herodians. While these three parties were all antagonistical, either to other, it is remarkable how they united and cooperated in their constant and uncompromising opposition to Jesus. They felt that in the case of the woman surviving the seventh husband, they certainly. would get Him into a puzzle. But while in this they were signally mistaken, the multitude are astounded over the deep truths brought out in His answers to their questions.

a. He here corroborates the Scripture with reference to another age following this, as He says, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; but those being found worthy to attain unto that age, indeed the resurrection which is from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage;” showing up the/act that the present probation and the resurrection state constitute two distinct ages, yet contrastive either with other, the resurrection age beginning at the second coming of Christ, when He will raise the saints, who shall reign with Him during the millennium. (Revelation 21.)

b. We see from these utterances of our Lord that matrimony is peculiar only to these material bodies in this probationary age, there being no such thing as sexual distinction in the kingdom of grace and glory. In Him there is neither male nor female. (Gal 3:26.) Consequently the matrimonial state does not survive the present probationary, age.

c. Our Lord also says that in the resurrection state, we are isaggeloi, from isos, “equal,” and aggelos, “an angel.” Therefore you see that the glorious resurrection confers on us angelic perfection. Angels have often been seen upon the earth. Hence they must have some kind of a body or form. While in the resurrection we will receive these identical bodies in which we now live, yet they will be perfectly free from matter or anything like physical organism. They will be pure spiritual entities, yet identical with themselves in the present life, but having all ponderable matter eliminated away. Hence you see that in the resurrection age we will be like the angels, and immortal forever.

d. How beautiful, and yet how conclusive, His argument deduced from the burning bush, proving the resurrection in a way never thought of by mortal man, “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob!” Now, as He says, He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. God does not do a fragmentary work, but solid and complete. Hence these patriarchs, as well as all the rest of us, must have bodies in order to completion in the highest sense. In the Divine estimation, the future is all present and under His eye. Hence He looks upon Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the resurrection state. It is equally true that He thus contemplates all. Here, again, we see His critics so dumfounded that they interrogate Him no more.

William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

20:27 Sadducees . . . who say there is no resurrection from the dead: See “The Sadducees” Profile.

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Luk_20:27-40. See on Mat_22:23-33; Mar_12:18-27.

οἱ ἁντιλέγοντες] does not belong by an abnormal apposition to τῶν Σαδδουκαιῶν (thus usually, including Winer, p. 471 [E. T. 668]), but to τινές. These τινές, namely, so far as they were τινὲς τῶν Σαδδουκ., are more precisely characterized by οἱ ἀντιλέγ. κ.τ.λ.: People who there concerted together (participle with article, see Kühner, II. p. 131).

ἀνάστ. μὴ εἶναι] On μή and infinitive after ἀντιλέγ., comp. Xen. Anab. ii. 5. 29, and see in general Bernhardy, p. 364; Hartung, Partikell. II. p. 168.

Luk_20:28. καὶ οὗτος κ.τ.λ.] and indeed shall have died without children. See Matthiae, p. 1040.

Luk_20:29. οὖν] for the subsequent procedure took place in consequence of that law.

Luk_20:30 f. According to the rectified text (see the critical remarks): And the second and the third took her; in like manner, moreover, also (as those three who had taken her and died childless) the seven (collectively, comp. Luk_17:17) left behind no children, and died. Logically ἀπέθανον ought to precede, but the emphasis of οὐ κατέλ. τέκνα has occasioned the ὕστερον πρότερον. See Kühner, II. p. 629; Bornemann, Schol. p. 125.

Luk_20:34 f. οἱ υἱοὶ τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου] Comp. on Luk_16:8. Yet here what is meant is not according to the ethical, but the physical idea: the men of the pre-Messianic periods of the world.

οἱ δὲ καταξιωθ. κ.τ.λ.] but they who (at the Parousia) shall he counted worthy (comp. 2Th_1:5) to become partakers of the future age (the Messianic period), and of the resurrection from the dead. Herein is to be observed(1) that here is likewise a πρότερον ὕστερον (comp. on Luk_20:31), for the resurrection discloses the participation in the αἰὼν ἐκεῖνος; but the context (see also τῆς ἀναστάσ. υἱοὶ ὄντες, Luk_20:36) shows that Jesus has in view only those who are to be raised, apart from those who are still living here at the Parousia, comp. Rom_8:11; (2) according to the connection (καταξιωθ., and see Luk_20:36), the resurrection here meant is defined as the first, the ἀνάστασις τῶν δικαίων (see on Luk_14:14).

The genitives τοῦ αἰῶν. ἐκ. etc. and τῆς ἀναστ. are governed by τυχεῖν. Comp. Aesch. Prom. 239: τοιούτου τυχεῖν οὑκ ἡζιώθην; Winer, p. 566 [E. T. 761]. Moreover, comp. the Rabbinical dignus futuro saeculo זוכה עולם הבא, in Schoettgen and Wetstein.

Luk_20:36. With Lachmann, following A B D L P, we must write οὐδέ[236] (Winer, p. 434 f. [E. T. 614]; Buttmann, p. 315 [E. T. 368]): for neither can they die any more. The immortality of those who have risen again, even if it does not exclude the difference of sex absolutely (comp. Delitzsch, Bibl. Psych, p. 459[237]), still excludes marriage among them, since propagation presupposes a mortal race; ἐνταῦθα μὲν γὰρ ἐπεὶ θάνατος, διὰ τοῦτο γάμος, Theophylact.

ἰσάγγ.… ὄντες] gives the reason of the οὐδὲ ἀποθανεῖν ἔτι δύνανται; their immortality depends upon their changed nature, which will be(1) equality with the angels; and (2) sonship of God. The former in respect of their higher and no longer fleshly corporeality (in opposition to Hofmann, Schriftbew. I. p. 316 f.; Delitzsch, and others; comp. on Mat_22:30); the latter plainly not in the moral, but in the metaphysical sense; they, as risen again, have entered into the participation of divine life and divine glory (comp. on Mat_5:9; Mat_5:45), in respect of which the freedom from death is essential. See on υἱοὶ Θεοῦ, so far as it is used in Matthew and Luke (in Mark this designation does not occur) of the faithful only in respect of their condition after the Parousia, the apt remarks of Kaeuffer in the Sächs. Stud. 1843, p. 202 ff. But the expression cannot be borrowed from the Old Testament designation of the angels as sons of God (so Wittichen, Ideen Gottes als d. Vaters, p. 43), since the risen ones shall only be angel-like, not angels.

Luk_20:37. Observe the special selected word ἐμήνυσεν, which denotes the announcement of something concealed (Joh_11:57; Act_23:30; 1Co_10:28; Thuc. iv. 89; Herod. i. 23; Soph. O. R. 102; Plut. Tim. p. 27 B).

καὶ M.] i.e. even Moses, to whom ye are nevertheless appealing for a proof of the contrary, Luk_20:28.

ὡς λέγει κύριον κ.τ.λ.] narrando sc. quod Deus dixerat, Grotius.

Luk_20:38. πάντες γὰρ αὐτῷ ζῶσιν] for all (whose God He is) are living to Him. The emphasis lies on πάντες: no one is dead to Him. αὐτῷ is the dative of reference: in respect of Him, that is, in relation to Him who is their God, they areeven although dead in relation to menliving.[238] This state of living actually has place in the intermediate state of Paradise,[239] where they, although dead in reference to living men, continue to live to God, and therewith is established the future resurrection as the necessary completion of this state of living. The argumentation in Luke is accordingly, by the addition of Luk_20:38, not different from that in Matthew and Mark, and it takes no inappropriate turn (de Wette), whereby the thought must have suffered (Weizsäcker), but is the same grand application of the divine utterance as in Matthew and Mark (see on Matthew), only enriched by that short explanatory clause ἀλλὰ ζώντων, which was introduced into the tradition,[240] certainly at a later date, but without affecting the substance, except in the way of indicating the point of the argument. The ΑὐΤῷ, however, cannot without arbitrariness be taken, according to Act_17:28, as though it were ἘΝ ΑὐΤῷ (Ewald: all men, so far as they have a true life, have it only in God).

Luk_20:40. ΓΆΡ] (see the critical remarks) gives an explanation as to Luk_20:39. The tables had been turned; a few praised Him, for any further hostile putting of questions, such as might be expected instead of praise, was no more to be thought of. So completely He stood as victor there again (comp. on Luk_20:26). With the narrative of the greatest commandment, Mar_12:28-34, of which Luke is said to have retained only the beginning and the end (Luk_20:39-40), the evangelist has here nothing at all to do (in opposition to Holtzmann). There is nothing of a reminiscence of Mar_12:28 (Weiss) in Luk_20:39; there appears no sort of reason to attribute such poverty to Luke.

[236] Comp. the critical remarks on Luk_12:26. The Recepta οὔτε is to be regarded as a mechanical repetition from what has gone before. Bornemann defends οὔτε by the supposition that it corresponds with the following καί. But in that case ἰσάγγ. γάρ εἰσι must be placed in a parenthesis, which, indeed, Lachmann does, although it is nowise notified, not even by the twofold εἰσί, whereby the two predicates are emphatically kept apart.

[237] Who nevertheless assumes without proof (p. 102) that Adams body, before the creation of the woman, was externally without sex, and that this also is the case with the bodies of the risen.

[238] 4Ma_16:25 : αἱ διὰ τὸν Θεὸν ἀποθνήσκοντες ζῶσι τῷ Θεῷ, ὥσπερ Ἀβραὰμ, Ἰσαὰκ, καὶ Ἰακὼβ, καὶ πάντες οἱ πατριάρχαι, is so far parallel as in that place ζῶσι τῷ Θεῷ is likewise said of the state of existence in relation to God in Paradise. Moreover, 4Ma_7:19 belongs to this subject, as being a passage in harmony with the text before us. Comp. Grimm thereupon, p. 332.

[239] The ζῶσιν subsists not merely in the view of God, who considers them in reference to their future resurrection as living, as J. Müller, v. d. Sünde, II. p. 397, makes out.

[240] The syllogism of the passage is correctly and clearly expressed in substance by Beza: Quorum Deus est Deus, illi vivunt, ver. 38; Abrahami, Isaaci et Jacobi Deus est Deus, ver. 37; ergo illi vivunt, et quum nondum revixerint corpore, necesse est, ut suo tempore sint corporibus excitatis revicturi. On the penetrating and fruitful exegesis of Jesus which leaves untouched the historical meaning, but is able to develope its ideal contents (comp. Mat_5:17), see the apt remarks in Weizsäcker, p. 359 f.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Luk 20:27-39 . The resurrection question. Sadducees speak (Mat 22:23-33 , Mar 12:18-27 ). οἱ ἀντιλέγοντες in strict grammar ought to refer to τινες , but doubtless it is meant to refer to the whole party. It is a case of a nominative in loose apposition with a genitive “outside the construction of the sentence interposed as a pendent word, so to speak,” Winer, G. N. T., p. 668. μὴ εἶναι : literally denying that there is not a resurrection, the meaning being really the reverse. After verbs of denying the Greeks repeat the negation. The reading λέγοντες , though well attested, looks like a grammatical correction.

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The resurrection of the flesh is avouched against the Sadducees.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

This discourse with the Sadducees we had before, just as it is here, only that the description Christ gives of the future state is somewhat more full and large here. Observe here,

I. In every age there have been men of corrupt minds, that have endeavoured to subvert the fundamental principles of revealed religion. As there are deists now, who call themselves free-thinkers, but are really false-thinkers; so there were Sadducees in our Saviour's time, who bantered the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come, though they were plainly revealed in the Old Testament, and were articles of the Jewish faith. The Sadducees deny that there is any resurrection, any future state, so anastasis may signify; not only no return of the body to life, but no continuance of the soul in life, no world of spirits, no state of recompence and retribution for what was done in the body. Take away this, and all religion falls to the ground.

II. It is common for those that design to undermine any truth of God to perplex it, and load it with difficulties. So these Sadducees did; when they would weaken people's faith in the doctrine of the resurrection, they put a question upon the supposition of it, which they thought could not be answered either way to satisfaction. The case perhaps was matter of fact, at least it might be so, of a woman that had seven husbands. Now in the resurrection whose wife shall she be? whereas it was not at all material whose she was, for when death puts an end to that relation it is not to be resumed.

III. There is a great deal of difference between the state of the children of men on earth and that of the children of God in heaven, a vast unlikeness between this world and that world; and we wrong ourselves, and wrong the truth of Christ, when we form our notions of that world of spirits by our present enjoyments in this world of sense.

1. The children of men in this world marry, and are given in marriage, huioi tou aiōnos toutou - the children of this age, this generation, both good and bad, marry themselves and give their children in marriage. Much of our business in this world is to raise and build up families, and to provide for them. Much of our pleasure in this world is in our relations, our wives and children; nature inclines to it. Marriage is instituted for the comfort of human life, here in this state where we carry bodies about with us. It is likewise a remedy against fornication, that natural desires might not become brutal, but be under direction and control. The children of this world are dying and going off the stage, and therefore they marry and give their children in marriage, that they may furnish the world of mankind with needful recruits, that as one generation passeth away another may come, and that they may have some of their own offspring to leave the fruit of their labours to, especially that the chosen of God in future ages may be introduced, for it is a godly seed that is sought by marriage (Mal 2:15), a seed to serve the Lord, that shall be a generation to him.

2. The world to come is quite another thing; it is called that world, by way of emphasis and eminency. Note, There are more worlds than one; a present visible world, and a future invisible world; and it is the concern of every one of us to compare worlds, this world and that world, and give the preference in our thoughts and cares to that which deserves them. Now observe,

(1.) Who shall be the inhabitants of that world: They that shall be accounted worthy to obtain it, that is, that are interested in Christ's merit, who purchased it for us, and have a holy meetness for it wrought in them by the Spirit, whose business it is to prepare us for it. They have not a legal worthiness, upon account of any thing in them or done by them, but an evangelical worthiness, upon account of the inestimable price which Christ paid for the redemption of the purchased possession. It is a worthiness imputed by which we are glorified, as well as righteousness imputed by which we are justified; kataxiōthentes, they are made agreeable to that world. The disagreeableness that there is in the corrupt nature is taken away, and the dispositions of the soul are by the grace of God conformed to that state. They are by grace made and counted worthy to obtain that world; it intimates some difficulty in reaching after it, and danger of coming short. We must so run as that we may obtain. They shall obtain the resurrection from the dead, that is, the blessed resurrection; for that of condemnation (as Christ calls it, Joh 5:29), is rather a resurrection to death, a second death, an eternal death, than from death.

(2.) What shall be the happy state of the inhabitants of that world we cannot express or conceive, Co1 2:9. See what Christ here says of it. [1.] They neither marry nor are given in marriage. Those that have entered into the joy of their Lord are entirely taken up with that, and need not the joy of the bridegroom in his bride. The love in that world of love is all seraphic, and such as eclipses and loses the purest and most pleasing loves we entertain ourselves with in this world of sense. Where the body itself shall be a spiritual body, the delights of sense will all be banished; and where there is a perfection of holiness there is no occasion for marriage as a preservative from sin. Into the new Jerusalem there enters nothing that defiles. [2.] They cannot die any more; and this comes in as a reason why they do not marry. In this dying world there must be marriage, in order to the filling up of the vacancies made by death; but, where there are no burials, there is no need of weddings. This crowns the comfort of that world that there is no more death there, which sullies all the beauty, and damps all the comforts, of this world. Here death reigns, but thence it is for ever excluded. [3.] They are equal unto the angels. In the other evangelists it was said, They are as the angels - ōs angeloi, but here they are said to be equal to the angels, isangeloi - angels' peers; they have a glory and bliss no way inferior to that of the holy angels. They shall see the same sight, be employed in the same work, and share in the same joys, with the holy angels. Saints, when they come to heaven, shall be naturalized, and, though by nature strangers, yet, having obtained this freedom with a great sum, which Christ paid for them, they have in all respects equal privileges with them that were free-born, the angels that are the natives and aborigines of that country. They shall be companions with the angels, and converse with those blessed spirits that love them dearly, and with an innumerable company, to whom they are now come in faith, hope, and love. [4.] They are the children of God, and so they are as the angels, who are called the sons of God. In the inheritance of sons, the adoption of sons will be completed. Hence believers are said to wait for the adoption, even the redemption of the body, Rom 8:23. For till the body is redeemed from the grave the adoption is not completed. Now are we the sons of God, Jo1 3:2. We have the nature and disposition of sons, but that will not be perfected till we come to heaven. [5.] They are the children of the resurrection, that is, they are made capable of the employments and enjoyments of the future state; they are born to that world, belong to that family, had their education for it here, and shall there have their inheritance in it. They are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection. Note, God owns those only for his children that are the children of the resurrection, that are born from above, are allied to the world of spirits, and prepared for that world, the children of that family.

IV. It is an undoubted truth that there is another life after this, and there were eminent discoveries made of this truth in the early ages of the church (Luk 20:37, Luk 20:38): Moses showed this, as it was shown to Moses at the bush, and he hath shown it to us, when he calleth the Lord, as the Lord calleth himself, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were then dead as to our world; they had departed out of it many years before, and their bodies were turned into dust in the cave of Machpelah; how then could God say, not I was, but I am the God or Abraham? It is absurd that the living God and Fountain of life should continue related to them as their God, if there were no more of them in being than what lay in that cave, undistinguished from common dust. We must therefore conclude that they were then in being in another world; for God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Luke here adds, For all live unto him, that is, all who, like them, are true believers; though they are dead, yet they do live; their souls, which return to God who gave them (Ecc 12:7), live to him as the Father of spirits: and their bodies shall live again at the end of time by the power of God; for he calleth things that are not as though they were, because he is the God that quickens the dead, Rom 4:17. But there is more in it yet; when God called himself the God of these patriarchs, he meant that he was their felicity and portion, a God all-sufficient to them (Gen 17:1), their exceeding great reward, Gen 15:1. Now it is plain by their history that he never did that for them in this world which would answer the true intent and full extent of that great undertaking, and therefore there must be another life after this, in which he will do that for them that will amount to a discharge in full of that promise - that he would be to them a God, which he is able to do, for all live to him, and he has wherewithal to make every soul happy that lives to him; enough for all, enough for each.

Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

no resurrection--"nor angel nor spirit" (Act 23:8); the materialists of the day.

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

(27-39) Then came to him certain of the Sadducees.—See Notes on Mat_22:23-33; Mar_12:18-27.

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

27-40. Discomfiture of the Sadducees.

27. certain of the Sadducees] Mat_3:7. On the Sadducees see the Excursus on Jewish Sects. They were undeterred by the discomfiture of the Pharisees and Herodians, and perhaps their plot had been so arranged as coincidently to humiliate our Lord, if they could, by a difficult question, and so to shake His credit with the people. Some have supposed that the memorable incident of the Woman taken in Adultery (Joh_8:1-11) also took place on this day; in which case there would have been three temptations of Christ, one political, one doctrinal, and one speculative. But that incident rose spontaneously, whereas these had been pre-arranged.

which deny that there is any resurrection] Jos. Antt. xviii. 1, § 4; B. J. ii. 8, § 14. They refused to see any proof of it in the Books of Moses; and to the Prophets and the other books (the Ketubhim or Hagiographa) they only attached a subordinate importance. Their question was inspired less by deadly hatred than by supercilious scorn. Wealthy and powerful, they only professed to despise Jesus, up to this time, as a ‘Prophet of Nazareth,’ though now they became His main murderers. They are not so much as mentioned by St John, and very slightly by St Mark and St Luke, nor did Christ utter against them the same denunciations as against the Pharisees, who were His daily opponents. All the leading families of high priests at this period were Sadducees, and—except where it comes into direct collision with religion—Epicurean worldliness is more tolerant than interested fanaticism.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

And the second took her to wife,.... As he was obliged by the above law, or pluck off the shoe:

and he died childless: as his eldest brother before him.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

22 Is it lawful for us to give tribute unto Caesar, or no?

23 But he perceived their craftiness, and said unto them, Why tempt ye me?

24 Shew me a penny. Whose image and superscription hath it? They answered and said, Caesar’s.

25 And he said unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which be Caesar’s, and unto God the things which be God’s.

26 And they could not take hold of his words before the people: and they marvelled at his answer, and held their peace.

27 Then came to him certain of the Sadducees, which deny that there is any resurrection; and they asked him,

Ver. 27. See Mat 22:23, &c.; Mar 12:18.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

See Poole on "Mat 22:23", and following verses to Mat 22:32, See Poole on "Mar 12:18", and following verses to Mar 12:27, where all the passages in this piece of history are fully opened. By

equal unto the angels, in Luk 20:36, we must not understand in all things, but in the thing mentioned:

1. The number of the elect shall be perfect, so there shall be no need of marrying, or giving in marriage, to multiply the number of men.

2. There shall be no more marriages amongst men than amongst angels; all live unto God, Luk 20:38. Though Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were dead at the speaking of those words, yet they were not so in God’s eye, who was determined to raise them up in the last day, and who with the same eye beholds things past, present, and to come. But see more in the notes before mentioned.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Vers. 27-40. The scornful question of the Sadducees bearing on the doctrine of the resurrection, and the Lords reply.

Vers. 27, 28. Then came to him certain of the Saddducees, which deny that there is any resurrection; and they asked him, saying, Master, Moses wrote unto us, If any man"s brother die, having a wife, and he die without children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. This is the only occasion related in the Gospels where our Lord comes in direct conflict with the Sadducees. They were a small but very wealthy and powerful sect. The high priests at this period and their families seem to have belonged generally to this party. They acknowledged as Divine the books of Moses, but refused to see in them any proof of the resurrection, or indeed of life after death. To the prophets and the other books they only attached subordinate importance. Supercilious worldliness, and a quiet indifference to all spiritual things, characterized them at this period. They come, comparatively speaking, little in contact with Jesus during his earthly ministry. While the Pharisee hated the Galilaean Master, the Sadducee professed to look on him rather with contempt. The question here seems to have been put with supercilious scorn. SS. Matthew and Mark preface the Lord"s answer with a few words of grave rebuke, exposing the questioners" utter ignorance of the deep things involved in their query.

Vers. 27-38. Foundations of Christian hope.

On what foundation do we build our hope for the future? Not now on any philosophical deductions; these, may have a certain measure of strength to some minds, but they are not firm enough to carry such a weight as the hope of immortality. We build on the Word that cannot be broken on the promise of Jesus Christ. Our future depends upon the will of our Divine Creator, on the purpose of our God, and only he who came from God can tell us what that purpose is. Here, as elsewhere, we have

I THE FIRM GROUND OF CHRISTIAN PROMISE. Our Lord tells us, from his own knowledge, that there is a future for the sons of men. And he indicates some features of this future.

1. Our life will be one of perfect purity. There is to be nothing of the grosser element that enters into our social relations here (ver. 35). Great founders of great faiths have promised to their disciples a paradise of enjoyment of a lower kind. Christ leads us to hope for a life from which everything that is sensual will be removed. Love will remain, but it will be spiritual, angelic, absolutely pure.

2. It will be a life without end, and therefore without decay. "Neither can they die any more" (ver. 36). How blessed the life that knows no fear of interruption, of dissolution, of sudden cessation, and, more particularly, that is free from the haunting consciousness of passing on to a time when faculty must fade, or the sadder sense of decline already commenced or even hastening to its end! What will it be to live a life that becomes ever brighter and fuller as the periods of celestial service pass away!

3. It will be a life of highest honor and elevation. "They are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection" (ver. 36). "Now are we the sons of God," and when the future life is disclosed our sonship will mean yet more to us it will be life on a loftier plane, in a deeper and fuller sense; we shall be nearer to God, and more like him in our faculty and in our spirit and our character.

II THE ADDITIONAL SUPPORT OF CHRIST"S INFERENCE. To be "the God of Abraham," he argued, meant to be the God of a living soul; he whose God was the living God was a living man in the fullest sense. For God to be our God includes everything we need. The living God is the God of living men; the loving God of loving men; the blessed God of happy men; the holy God of holy men. All the highest good for which we long in our noblest hours is guaranteed to us in that "the everlasting God, the righteous and the faithful and the loving, One, is our God.

1. The heritage of the future is not promised unconditionally; there are "those accounted worthy to obtain" it; therefore there are those who are not worthy, and who will miss it.

2. The condition that is implied is that of a living personal connection with God himself. Those who can truly claim him as "their God" may confidently look forward to an eternal home in his presence and in his service. To us, to whom he has revealed himself in his Son, this means a living union with Jesus Christ our Savior. To know him, to live unto him, to abide in him, this is life eternal. C.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Matt. xxii, 23; Mark xii, 18.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

The question of the Sadducees:

v. 27. Then came to Him certain of the Sadducees, which deny that there is any resurrection; and they asked Him,

v. 28. saying, Master, Moses wrote unto us, If any man’s brother die, having a wife, and he die without children, that his brother should take his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother.

v. 29. There were therefore seven brethren; and the first took a wife, and died without children.

v. 30. And the second took her to wife, and he died childless.

v. 31. And the third took her; and in like manner the seven also; and they left no children, and died.

v. 32. Last of all the woman died also.

v. 33. Therefore in the resurrection, whose wife of them is she? For seven had her to wife.

See Mat 22:23-33; Mar 12:18-27. The chief priests and scribes having ignominiously failed in their attack, the Sadducees hoped to have better luck with a catch question which they had devised upon the basis of a story, real or invented for the occasion. The chief characteristic of the Sadducees is given by the evangelist, namely, that they denied the resurrection. They also denied the existence of angels and refused to accept any books of the Old Testament as having full authority but the five books of Moses. Their question, while striking at the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead which Jesus preached, had its direct concern with the institution of the so-called levirate marriage, Deu 25:5-10. The rule made by Moses required that a man marry the widow of his brother in case there was no male issue and the brothers had been residing on the same family estate. Now the case which the Sadducees presented concerned seven brothers who, in accordance with this rule, had married the same woman in succession, all of them dying without issue. And last of all the woman died also. The question of the Sadducees, which they thought very clever, was regarding the husband’s rights in this case, after the resurrection had taken place. The successive marriages had purposely been so graphically described, in order that the great difficulty of the situation and its ridiculousness might appear at once. Now if there be such a thing as a resurrection, which, they sneeringly implied, could not be, how will this difficulty be solved? Is it not flatly insurmountable? With similar arguments, that lack, however, the cleverness of this story, the opponents of the Scriptural resurrection try to ridicule the hope of the Christians, and there is an interesting lesson in the manner in which Christ. handles the situation.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Our blessed Saviour having put the Pharisees and Herodians to silence in the foregoing verses, here the Sadducees encounter him. This sect denied the immortality of the soul, and the resurrection of the body, and as an objection against both, they propound a case to our Saviour, of a woman that had seven husbands; they demanded whose wife of the seven this woman should be at the resurrection? As if they had said, "If there be a resurrection of bodies at the great day, surely there will be a resurrection of relations too, and the other world will be like this, in which men will marry as they do here; and if so, whose wife of the the seven shall this woman be? They all having an equal claim to her."

Now our Saviour, for resolving of this question, first shows the different state of men in this and in the other world: The children of this world, says Christ, marry and are given in marriage; but in the resurrection they do neither. As if our Lord had said, "After men have lived a while in this world, they die, and therefore marriage is necessary to maintain a succession of mankind; but in the other world, men shall become immortal, and live forever; and then the reason of marriage will wholly cease; for when men can die no more, there will be no need of any new supplies of mankind."

Secondly, our Saviour having got clear of the Sadducees’ objection, by taking away the ground and foundation of it, he produces an argument for the proof of the soul’s immortality, and the body’s resurrection, thus: those to whom Almighty God pronounces himself a God, are alive; but God pronounces himself, a God to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, many hundred years after their bodies were dead; therefore their souls are yet alive, otherwise God could not be their God." For he is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

From the whole note, 1. That there is no opinion so absurd, no error so monstrous, that having had a mother will die for lack of a nurse: the beastly opinion of the mortality of the soul, and of the annihilation of the body, finds Sadducees to profess and propagate it.

Learn, 2. The certainty of another life after this, in which men shall be eternally happy, or intolerably miserable, according as they behave themselves here: though some men live like beasts, they shall not die like them, neither shall their last end be like theirs.

Note, 3. The glorified saints, in the morning of the resurrection, shall be like unto the gloruous angels; not like them in essence and nature, but like them in their properties and qualities, namely, in holiness and purity, in immortality and incorruptibility; and also like them in their way and manner of living. They shall no more stand in need of meat or drink than the angels do; but shall live the same heavenly and immortal lives that the angels live.

Note, 4. That all those that are in covenant with God, whose God the Lord is, their souls do immediately pass into glory, and their bodies at the resurrection shall be sharers in the same happiness with their souls. If God be just, the soul must live, and the body must rise; for good men must be rewarded, and wicked men punished. God will most certainly, one time or other, plentifully reward the righteous, and punish the evil doers; but this being not always done in this life, the justice of God requires it to be done in the next.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

J. W. McGarvey's The Fourfold Gospel [CIX. B. Concerning the Resurrection].

CIX. JEWISH RULERS SEEK TO ENSNARE JESUS. (Court of the Temple. Tuesday, April 4, A. D. 30.) Subdivision B. SADDUCEES ASK ABOUT THE RESURRECTION. aMATT. XXII. 23-33; bMARK XII. 18-27; cLUKE XX. 27-39.

a23 On that day there came bcome unto him ccertain of the the Sadducees, they that bwho say there is no resurrection [As to the Sadducees, see Deu_25:5, Deu_25:6. The object of this law was to preserve families. But the custom was older than the law-- Gen_38:6-11], cthat bIf a man's brother die, chaving a wife, and he be childless, band leave a wife behind him, and leave no child, that his brother should take his cthe wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. aMoses said, If a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed unto his brother. 25 Now there were ctherefore awith us seven brethren: and the first ctook a wife, amarried and deceased, band dying left no seed; cand died childless; aand, having no seed left his wife unto his brother: b21 And a26 In like manner the second also, btook her, and died, leaving no seed behind him; and the third likewise: ctook her; aunto the seventh. cand likewise the seven also left no children, bleft no seed. cand died. 32 Afterward [600] bLast of all a27 And after them all, bthe woman also died. a28 In the resurrection therefore whose wife shall she be of the seven? bof them? for the seven aall had her. bto wife. [This was evidently a favorite Sadducean argument against the resurrection. On the assumption that the marital state is continued after the resurrection, it makes the doctrine of a resurrection appear ridiculous, because, seemingly, it involves difficulties which even brothers could hardly settle amicably, and which even God would have in a sense to settle arbitrarily.] c34 And a29 But Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do not err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. bIs it not for this cause that ye err, that ye know not the scriptures, nor the power of God? [The relevancy of these statements will be discussed in the treatment of Act_23:8), but the basal principle of their infidelity was the denial of spirits. It was, as it were, the tree trunk from which their other errors sprang as branches. If there were such things as spirits, it was not worth while to deny that there was an order of them known as angels. If man had a spirit which could survive his body, it was reasonable to believe that God, having so fashioned him that a body is essential to his activity and happiness, would in some manner restore a body to him. Jesus therefore does not pursue the argument until he has proved a resurrection; but rests when he has proved that man has a spirit. Jesus proves that man has a spirit by a reference from the Pentateuch, that part of Scripture which the Sadducees accepted as derived from God through Moses. The reference shows that God was spoken of and spoke of himself as the God of those who were, humanly speaking, long since dead. But the Sadducees held that a dead man had ceased to exist, that he had vanished to nothingness. According to their view, therefore, God had styled himself the God of nothing, which is absurd. The Sadducees could not thus have erred had they known or understood the significance of this Scripture, and they could not have doubted the resurrection had they known the absolute power with which God deals with material such as that of which the body is formed. See verses 24 and 39 supra.] a33 And when the multitude heard it, they were astonished at his teaching. c39 And certain of the scribes answering said, Teacher, thou hast well said. [Some of the scribes of less bitter spirit could not refrain from expressing their admiration at the ease with which Jesus answered an argument which their own wisdom could not refute.] [602]

[FFG 600-602]

J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

27–40. There came to him certain of the Sadducees. For notes on the Sadducees silenced, see Matt. 22:23–33. Compare Mark 12:18–27.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

General Information:

We do not know where this takes place, though it possibly took place in the temple courtyard. Jesus is talking with some Sadducees.

the ones who say that there is no resurrection

This phrase identifies the Sadducees as being the group of Jews that say that no one would rise from the dead. It does not imply that some Sadducees believed that there is a resurrection and some did not. (See: Distinguishing versus Informing or Reminding)

if a man's brother dies, having a wife, and being childless

"if a man's brother dies when he has a wife but does not have children"

the man should take the brother's wife

"the man should marry his dead brother's widow"

have a child for his brother

The Jews considered the first son born to a woman who married her dead husband's brother as if he were the son of the woman's first husband. This son inherited the property of his mother's first husband and carried on his name. (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)

translationWords

Sadducee

resurrection

teacher

Moses

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

[27. Ἀντιλέγοντες, who deny) The truth is the most ancient: error is a new and upstart contradiction raised against it; although from time to time those in error esteem their own opinion to be even the more ancient.—V. g.]

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

27–40. DISCOMFITURE OF THE SADDUCEES

27. τινες τῶν Σαδδουκαίων. Mat 3:7. On the Sadducees see the Excursus on Jewish Sects. They were undeterred by the discomfiture of the Pharisees and Herodians, and perhaps their plot had been so arranged as coincidently to humiliate our Lord, if they could, by a difficult question, and so to shake His credit with the people. Some have supposed that the memorable incident of the Woman taken in Adultery (Joh 8:1-11) also took place on this day; in which case there would have been three temptations of Christ, one political, one doctrinal, and one speculative. But that incident rose spontaneously, whereas these had been pre-arranged.

οἱ ἀντιλέγοντες ἀνάστασιν μὴ εἶναι. The more accurate construction would have been τῶν ἀντιλεγόντων, but the descriptive nominative is here detached from the construction. Winer, p. 668. For the Sadducees, see Jos. Antt. XVIII. 1, § 4; B. J. II. 8, § 14. They refused to see any proof of it in the Books of Moses; and to the Prophets and the other books (the Ketubhim or Hagiographa) they only attached a subordinate importance. Their question was inspired less by hatred than by scorn. Wealthy and powerful, they only professed to despise Jesus, up to this time, as a ‘Prophet of Nazareth,’ though now they became His main murderers. They are not so much as mentioned by St John, and very slightly by St Mark and St Luke, nor did Christ utter against them the same denunciations as against the Pharisees, who were His daily opponents. All the leading families of high priests at this period were Sadducees. Epicurean worldliness is more tolerant than interested fanaticism.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

27-40.] Reply to the Sadducees respecting the resurrection. Mat 22:23-33: Mar 12:18-27, and notes.

27.] οἱ ἀντιλέγοντες refers to τῶν Σαδ., not to τινες. The main subject of the sentence is sometimes put in the nom., even when the construction requires another case: so Ἀνδρομάχη, θυγάτηρ μεγαλήτορος Ἠετίωνος, Ἠετίων, ὃς ἔναιεν.… Hom. Il. ζ. 395. See also κ. 437, and more examples in Bernhardy, Syntax, p. 68.

The use of ἀντιλέγ. μή (or τὸ μή) is frequent in Xenophon, see Wetstein: and cf. Thucyd. i. 95, ἀπολύεται τοῦ μὴ ἀδικεῖν,—ii. 49, ἀπορίᾳ τοῦ μὴ ἡσυχάζειν. See also Herod. i. 68: Soph. Œd. Tyr. 57.

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

27-38. The Question of the Sadducees respecting a Woman with Seven Husbands. Mat 22:23-33; Mar 12:18-27. Mt. tells us expressly that this took place ἐν ἐκείνῃ τῇ ἡμέρᾳ. Lk. mentions the Sadducees several times in the Acts (4:1, 5:17, 23:6-8) but here only in his Gospel. Mk. also here only. This question was less dangerous than the previous one. It concerned a matter of exegesis and speculation, not of politics, and was doctrinal rather than practical. Like the first two questions, it aimed at destroying Christ’s influence with the multitude. While the first aimed at inspiring them with distrust, and the second at rousing their indignation against Him, this one is calculated to excite their ridicule. If Jesus failed to answer it, He and His supporters would be placed in a grotesque position. The Sadducees were not popular, for the doctrine of the resurrection is precious to the majority of mankind, and they would be glad of this opportunity of publicly exhibiting the popular doctrine as productive of ludicrous results. Josephus says that when Sadducees became magistrates, they conformed to the views of the Pharisees, for otherwise the people would not tolerate them (Ant. xviii:1, 4). D.C.G. art. “Sadducees.”

But the doctrine of the resurrection and of invisible powers (Act 23:8, Jos. B. J. ii:8 14) was not the main point in dispute between Sadducees and Pharisees, but a deduction from the main point. The crucial question was whether the oral tradition was binding (Ant. xii:10, 6). The Pharisees contended that it was equal in authority to the written law, while the Sadducees maintained that everything not written was an open question and might be rejected. Apparently the Pharisees were willing to concede that the doctrine of the resurrection is not to be found in the written Law; and indeed outside the Book of Daniel it is not clearly taught in O.T. What is said in favour of it (Job 19:26; Psa 16:9, Psa 16:11; Isa 26:19) seems to be balanced by statements equally strong on the other side (Psa 6:5, 88:10, 11, 115:17; Ecc 9:4-10; Isa 38:18, Isa 38:19). Hence it followed, on Sadducean principles, that the doctrine was without authority, and was simply a pious opinion. That the Sadducees rejected the O.T., with the exception of the Pentateuch, is a mistake of Tertullian, Origen, Hippolytus, Jerome, and others; and perhaps arises from confusion with the Samaritans. But no Jew regarded the other books as equal in authority to the Books of Moses; and hence Jesus, in answering the Sadducees, takes His argument from Exodus (Bleak, Int. to O. T. § 305, Eng. tr. 2. p. 310). The name Σαδδουκαῖος probably comes from Zadok, the best attested form of which in many passages of LXX is Σαδδούκ (2Sa 8:17; Neh 3:29, Neh 3:10:21, Neh 3:11:11, Neh 3:13:13; Eze 40:46, Eze 43:19, Eze 44:15, Eze 48:11): but which Zadok gave the name to the sect, remains doubtful (Schürer, Jewish People in the T. of J. C. II, 2. pp. 29-43; Hausrath, N. T. Times, 1. pp. 136-150; Pressensé, Le Siêcle Apostolique, pp. 87, 88, ed. 1888. For minor points of difference between Sadducees and Pharisees, see Kuenen, Religion of Israel, 3. pp. 234-238; Derenbourg, pp. 132-144):

27. τινες τῶν Σαδδουκαίων οἱ λέγοντες . The οἱ λεγ. may agree with τινες, or be an irregular description of τῶν Σαδδ. In the latter case comp. Mar 12:40; but the former is better. All Sadducees held that the resurrection was not an article of faith, but some may have believed that it was true. One might render οἱ λέγοντες “who were saying” at that moment.

λέγοντες is the reading of א B C D L" 133 etc., d e Syr-Sin. Syr-Cur. Aegypt. Goth. Aeth., which is not discredited because it is also in Mt. But Tisch. follows B R Γ Δ Λ Π etc. in reading ἀντιλγοντες.

Ἐάν τινος ἀδελφός. The quotation gives the substance rather than the wording of Deu 25:5; comp. Gen 38:8. The levirate law is said still to prevail among the Kalmucks and other nations in the East. See Morison on Mar 12:19.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Asked. See on Mr 12:18.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

Vers. 27-33. The Question.

The Sadducees, starting from the Levirate law given by Moses (Deu 25:5), agreeably to a patriarchal usage (Genesis 38) which is still allowed by many Eastern peoples, seek to cover with ridicule the idea of a resurrection; ἀντιλέγοντες: who oppose (ἀντί), maintaining that (λέγοντες).

The whole statement Luk 20:29-33 has in it a touch of sarcasm.

Frédéric Louis Godet — Commentaries on Luke, John, Romans, and 1 Corinthians — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1870s–1890s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.