Luke 20:27-40

Last evening we looked at Jesus’ fourth of five ‘controversies’ with Israel’s leadership after entering Jerusalem. The first controversy was over the authority of Jesus (vv. 1-8). The second was over Jesus’ prophetic parable concerning the upcoming change in leadership (vv. 9-19). The third was over paying taxes (vv. 20-26). The fifth controversy is the interpretation over Psalm 110 (vv. 41-44), and this, the fourth, is over the resurrection (vv. 27-40).

Who were the Sadducees?

Essentially they were aristocrats; they were wealthy land owners whose influence was mostly seen within and around Jerusalem.  Their date of origin is usually set between 160-134 B.C.  Ever since their beginnings they have had an ongoing power struggle with the Pharisees.  They regained considerable power when Judea became a Roman province in A.D. 6.  After that date they dominated the Sanhedrin (though some Pharisees were present too), the Scribal circles (though some Pharisees were scribes as well), and the chief & high priestly ranks (Acts 5:17 - though some Pharisees reached those levels too); in other words, they dominated the temple life within Israel.  Their domination stemmed from wealth, and were considered “rigidly conservative” (ISBE, p.279) at least in two respects.  First, they did not like change.  Coupled with money and positions of power they much preferred ‘the status quo’; it benefited them immensely.  Second, they held to a restricted source of authority, tenaciously clinging to the Torah – the first five books of Moses.  They rejected as binding authority, the oral law tradition, which the Pharisees readily embraced (the Pharisees claimed oral tradition went back to Moses), and some of the early church Fathers (Hippolytus, Origen, and Jerome) said the Sadducees did not recognize the prophetic books within their canon.  But this claim is questionable at best, as between the testaments there was wide-spread consensus that the writings of the prophets were indeed Scripture.  Furthermore, the sources which give us the history of the Sadducees (Jerome and Talmudic) were written from the Pharisaic perspective, and the latter written after the demise of the Sadducees.  So conclusions must be held with caution.  Conservative though they were, they were not well liked by the people.  They were seen as aloof and detached, and viewed as reaping the benefits of the status quo.  For all of the reasons above, they were favored by Rome, who cherished social stability.  Theologically, they rejected the resurrection of the body (Lu 20:27-40; Acts 4:12; 23:80); indeed, Josephus said they didn’t believe in existence after death (Ant. XVIII.l.4[16]), and they denied the existence of angels and spirits (Acts 23:8).

The Sadducees attempt to show why a resurrection is absurd

            Here they seek to show the utter absurdity of a resurrection.  A woman through Levirate marriage (Deut 25:5-10) had seven husbands (all from the brothers of her first husband), and each husband died without impregnating her, thus leaving her childless.  Finally, the woman dies.  Sarcastically they ask Jesus (Luke 20: 33), “Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”

Jesus refutes the Sadducees by contrasting the ‘two ages’

            Jesus refutes their position – not by denying the absurdity (to the contrary, Jesus affirms it!), but by denying the premise, i.e., all things remain the same. 

Jesus says, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage (v. 34).” The phrase ‘this age’ can refer to an over-all value judgment of God against the world as evil (Gal 1:4), or it can refer to every source of knowledge outside the message of the cross (1 Cor 3:18ff), and even still, it can refer simply to the age which believers partake of along with unbelievers (Luke 18:29-30).  It is the latter meaning, I believe, that is present in this text.  Marriage is a common arrangement for both believer and unbeliever alike.

Jesus juxtaposes those of ‘this’ age with those of that age …[who] "will neither marry nor be given in marriage" (v. 35).  While Scripture says we don’t know what our resurrected bodies will be like (1Cor 15:35ff); here, it says we will be “equal” to the angels.  Such equality, however, is delimited by the phrase “for they cannot die.”  We mustn’t see support here for androgynous existence.  The connective ‘for’ explains equality in terms of ‘not dying’.  Angels do not procreate because they do not die; likewise, when we no longer are subjected to death, then there will be no need to procreate.[1]  Marriage, then, will cease to exist, and that makes the Sadducee’s point moot.  In the resurrection ‘the natural earthy body’ of this age gives way to a ‘spiritual heavenly body’ of the age to come.  The two ages operate on two very different levels of being.  What does that mean?  I don’t know and neither did Paul.  He was simply left with contrasts, e.g., natural, earthly, perishable, and mortal vs. spiritual, heavenly, imperishable and immortal!  Beyond this we dare not go. 

Jesus refutes the Sadducees by deducing resurrection from God’s exchange with Moses.

Next, Jesus turns to the Sadducee’s recognized authority, the Torah.  He cites God’s exchange with Moses (Ex 3:6) wherein God says, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob,” and concludes by saying, “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him” (v. 38). Luke’s added phrase (neither Matt nor Mark have it) “for all live to him,” would seem to point toward God as a being who promotes a culture of life rather than death, e.g., Acts 3:15; 17:28; Col. 1:16; 3:3-4; 11:36.

Furthermore, the phrase “God of” means that God is the savior, protector, and deliverer of those whom he declares to be in covenant with, e.g., Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, et al.  And while if one lived a good long life, and was blessed with many offspring, no one in the Jewish culture would have deemed God as having failed as savior, protector, and deliverer, e.g., the Sadducees, but as God’s revelation progressed in history, faith reached for higher provisions of these promises, and so death itself was looked upon as an enemy that needed to be defeated (Dreyfus as delineated by Nolland).  But I think there’s even more.  I don’t think we need ‘increased expectation’ to explain the belief of a resurrection; to the contrary, Abraham himself was given ‘promises’, and Abraham must ‘see them’ realized (Heb. 11:13-16); otherwise, the promises would lack extensive realization, and as great as God is, such a lack would be incompatible with God as savior, protector, and deliverer.  It delights him to no-end for Abraham and all his children to see the promises realized, and therefore, there is a resurrection!  So don't be a Saduccee, for the are (sad-you-see) because they deny the resurrection!  

In our blessed hope,

Nate

---

[1] Any sex in heaven?  Probably not.  This has troubled many modern commentators, for it seems to suggest sex was for but one solitary purpose: procreation (even Roman Catholicism advocates a dual purpose within sexual intimacy – both a creative and a unitive aspect.  The unitive is distinguishable yet not separable from openness to the creative).  One may wonder why the ‘unitive’ aspect of sexual intimacy could not continue; or for that matter, one may wonder why ‘no more people’ follows from 'no more death'?  Such does not logically follow by any necessity that I can detect.  Some have said that what disappears in heaven, though proper and needed in this life, is the 'exclusivity' of the marriage relationship (Wiles (Theol 60 [1957] 500-502) in Nolland).  At the risk of being accused of being neo-platonic, my best take would be to say that sexual intimacy in this life points to a grandeur intimacy, and so love-making as we now know it (earthy and of this age), yields to its corresponding and consummate reality (heavenly and of the age to come) of which sexual intimacy pointed to all along (Eph 5:25ff).