All Live to Him
27 Some of the Sadducees came to him, those who deny that there is a resurrection. 28 They asked him, “Teacher, Moses wrote to us that if a man’s brother dies having a wife, and he is childless, his brother should take the wife and raise up children for his brother. 29 There were therefore seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died childless. 30 The second took her as wife, and he died childless. 31 The third took her, and likewise the seven all left no children, and died. 32 Afterward the woman also died. 33 Therefore in the resurrection whose wife of them will she be? For the seven had her as a wife.” 34 Jesus said to them, “The children of this age marry and are given in marriage. 35 But those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. 36 For they can’t die any more, for they are like the angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection. 37 But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when he called the Lord ‘The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ 38 Now he is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all are alive to him.” 39 Some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you speak well.” 40 They didn’t dare to ask him any more questions.
A riddle about seven husbands is answered from the burning bush — and this telling adds a line the others do not have.
Some of the Sadducees came to him, those who deny that there is a resurrection.
The second delegation holds the opposite position to the first. The Sadducees were the temple party and denied the resurrection, the angels and the spirit world, accepting the books of Moses above all — which is why the answer comes from Exodus rather than from the prophets, where the resurrection is stated plainly Daniel 12:2.
Their case is constructed for ridicule: the law's provision for a childless widow Deuteronomy 25:5–6 run through seven brothers and one woman. "Therefore in the resurrection whose wife of them will she be?" Luke 20:33. The argument is that the doctrine produces absurdities.
The exchange is treated in the earlier accounts Mark 12:1–27 Matthew 22:23–33. "The children of this age marry and are given in marriage. But those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage" Luke 20:34–35. The riddle dissolves because it assumed the age to come is this one continued.
For they can’t die any more, for they are like the angels and are children of God, being children of the resurrection.
This telling gives the reason the other two leave out. Marriage in this age carries the line forward against death; where nobody dies, the institution has finished its work. Nothing here disparages it — this is the same teacher who defended it from the creation.
Then the argument, and it turns on a tense. "I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob" Luke 20:37 Exodus 3:6, spoken at the bush centuries after all three were buried, and spoken in the present.
Now he is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all are alive to him.”
The last clause is this account's addition and it is worth reading exactly. To him — the phrase locates where the aliveness holds. What the argument proves is what it was brought to prove, which is the resurrection: the whole exchange is about it, and the patriarchs are on the dead side of the question, lying in a cave at Hebron. The claim is about the covenant. God binds himself by name to three men and does not lose them, so their case is not closed while he holds it open, and he speaks of them as living because he intends to raise them — calling the things that are not as though they were Romans 4:17.
Some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you speak well.”
Their rivals have been answered out of the one book they could not dispute, and even the opposition says so.
held with reason What this mark means