There is no resurrection ( ). Accusative and infinitive with negative in indirect assertion. The Sadducees rally after the complete discomfiture of the Pharisees and Herodians. They had a stock conundrum with which they had often gotten a laugh on the Pharisees. So they volunteer to try it on Jesus. For discussion of details here see on Matt 22:23-33; Mark 12:18-27. Only a few striking items remain for Luke.

Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament

Asked. See on Mr 12:18.

Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament

JESUS ANSWERS SADDUCEES ABOUT THE RESURRECTION

V. 27-38

1) “Then came to him certain of the Sadducees,” (proselthontes de tines ton Saddoukalon) “Then some of the Sadducees came to him,” Mat 16:6; Mat 16:12; Act 4:1-2; Act 4:5; Act 4:17. The wealthier aristocratic, and liberal religious order of the Jews, who composed the higher order of the priests, leading enemies of Jesus Christ, Mat 22:23; Mar 12:18.

2) “Which deny that there is any resurrection;” (hoi antilegontes anastasin me linai) “The ones who openly contended that there was no resurrection,” Mat 3:7; Mat 22:23; Mar 12:18. They also denied the existence of angels and spirits, Act 23:6; Act 23:8.

3) “And they asked him,” (eperotesan auton) “They questioned him,” with skepticism, Mat 22:23; Mar 12:18.

Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary

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 Jeromes, 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 Christs 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 worldif, 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 comeswho 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 Gods 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 allnot 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 Lords 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. Gods 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 Christs teaching?

1. As regards the body. In heavens 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.

Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell

Butlers Comments

SECTION 4

Resurrection and the Grave (Luk. 20:27-40)

27 There came to him some Sadducees, those who say that there is no resurrection, 28and they asked him a question, saying, Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a mans brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the wife and raise up children for his brother. 29Now there were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and died without children; 30and the second 31and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. 32Afterward the woman also died. 33In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.

34 And Jesus said to them, The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage; 35but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, 36for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. 37But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. 38Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living; for all live to him. 39And some of the scribes answered, Teacher, you have spoken well. 40For they no longer dared to ask him any question.

Luk. 20:27-33 Rationalizations of Humanism: The next group coming to try to destroy Jesus image with the people were the Sadducees. They also had a catch question which they believed would be unanswerable. They fully expected to destroy Jesus reputation as a teacher in the eyes of the people. Their question dealt with the most crucial issue of human life: Is there life after death?

The sect of the Sadducees were the humanists of the Jewish religious hierarchy. Most Sadducees were priests and their sect likely originated with Zadok, the famous priest of Davids day (cf. 2Sa. 15:24; 1Ki. 1:32; Eze. 40:46; Eze. 43:19; Eze. 44:15; Eze. 48:11). Their name probably comes from the Hebrew word tzaddikim which means literally, righteous ones. It may have been a sarcastic nickname given to them by others or a boastful one given by themselves. They believed in preserving the nation by intelligence, diplomacy and prudence. They asserted Jews need keep only the essential parts of the Mosaic Law (the so-called 613 great principles) and in everything where Moses did not speak they might act according to the requirements of the time. They were pragmatic toward the attempts of the Seleucid (Syrian) conquerors to Hellenize the Jewish culture during the Maccabean era (300100 B.C.). Sadducees were wealthy, controlled the Temple and its services, but were in direct opposition in almost every issue with the Pharisees. In Jesus day, though they secretly hated the Romans, for the good of their nation they believed it was better to make the best of their situation and go along with most anything the Romans demanded. They were the aristocratic party; they did not believe in Divine providence, miracles or angels. They did not believe in a resurrection from the dead (cf. Act. 23:7-8). They were suspicious of one another and had no group loyalty like the Pharisees had. They renounced all the traditional interpretations and practices of the Pharisees; accepted only the Pentateuch; they insisted on a rigidly literal application of Mosaic Law which led to judicial severity without mercy and made themselves unpopular with the common people.

The Sadducees came to Jesus with a hypothetical question which was probably one of the stock arguments they used against the Pharisees who undoubtedly had a great deal of difficulty providing an answer to it. They proposed the riddle of a woman married to seven husbands who all preceded her in death without ever giving the woman a child. The woman eventually died also, of course. The poser no one was able to answer was, Whose wife will she be in the resurrection, since she had seven husbands. The Sadducees started, of course, with the a priori that the doctrine of immortality was an absurdity and then made up an absurd illustration to prove it. The careful student will note the Sadducees arranged their story so all the womans husbands were brothers making it conform to the Levirate law (Deu. 25:5-6). They probably thought this would give the added impact of inferring the Law of Moses denied immortality because the Law made life after death an impossibility, If a child had been born in the illustration to one of the husbands, it might have solved the question as to whose wife she would be in heavencraftily they omit children.

Luk. 20:34-40 Revelations from Heaven: Both Matthew and Mark record Jesus first words in answer to this challenge as: You are wrong, because you know neither the scriptures nor the power of God (Mat. 22:29; Mar. 12:24). All humanists make the unforgiveable mistake of a priori rejection of the scriptural record as unworthy of consideration in the subject of life after death. The Bible claims to be an accurate documentation of historical events. It demands to be tested. If its historicity can be established by all the accepted canons of historical verification, it deserves to be studied and believed. The Sadducees were either innocently ignorant or deliberately ignorant of what the Old Testament said about life after death. They were probably like those people described by Peter who deliberately ignored the facts concerning the flood (2Pe. 3:5). The Old Testament says this about life after death:

a.

There are actual, documented cases of resurrection from death in the Old Testament (cf. 1Ki. 17:22; 2Ki. 4:35; 2Ki. 13:21).

b.

There are documented cases of translation from this life to the next life without the experience called death (one in the Pentateuch) (cf. Gen. 5:22-24; 2Ki. 2:11).

c.

There is one case, well documented by eyewitnesses, of the reappearance of a man (Samuel) after he had died (1Sa. 28:12-19).

d.

There are many declarations in the Old Testament of immortality and eternity: (cf. 2Sa. 12:15-23; Psa. 16:8; Psa. 23:4-6; Isa. 53:10-12; Ecc. 3:11; Ecc. 12:5-14; Job. 19:25-26; Exo. 3:6).

e.

The statements in Genesis concerning the patriarchs who died and were buried, and were gathered to their people (cf. Gen. 25:8; Gen. 35:29) infer immortality. This term is constantly distinguished from death and burial and denotes the reunion in Sheol (place of departed spirits) with family and friends who have gone there before.

Jesus also told the Sadducees they were ignorant of the power of God. This becomes a problem at times even for those who have accepted the historicity and integrity of the Biblical record. The Christians in Corinth to whom Paul wrote two letters had this problem. They said, Since we have no earthly experience by which to determine what kind of body we will have in the resurrection we have doubts that there will be a resurrection. Paul told them, essentially, just what Jesus said here; God has the power to do in the next life what He has never done in the earthly life. The fundamental ignorance of man is his presumption that the life after death, if there is one, would have to be like this life. That is because man wants to reject anything outside his own experience lest he find out he is not his own sovereign. Man does not want to admit there is another Sovereign beyond himself able to do things he himself is not able to do. An all-powerful, all-wise, supernatural God has power to transcend and overcome all the inadequacies and incongruities of this existence by creating another existence, different and everlasting, yet incorporating the best of this one. This was what Jesus tried to convey in His answer to the Sadducees.

Jesus said there would be no marriage or sexual intercourse in heaven. Procreation will not be necessary to the survival of the human race there because those worthy to attain to the resurrection from the dead will be immortal, never dying, like the angels. If we may trust what God has revealed (however little and dim it may be) concerning the next life, we know life and personal intercourse in heaven will be much more thrilling and sensational than any fleshly sexual intercourse could ever be in this life. The apostle Paul was convinced that the next life would be very far better than any experience in this life (cf. Php. 1:21-23). C. S. Lewis wrote some of his opinions about life after death. Here are some excerpts from The Joyful Christian, by C. S. Lewiswe think they are appropriate to this text:

Resurrection of the body: What the soul cries out for is the resurrection of the senses. Even in this life matter would be nothing to us if it were not the source of sensations. . . . Memory as we know it is a dim foretaste . . . of a power which the soul . . . will exercise hereafter. At the present we tend to think of the soul as somehow inside the body. But the glorified body of the resurrection as I conceive itthe sensuous life raised from its deathwill be inside the soul. As God is not in space but space is in God. . . .

Intercourse in the Afterlife: Our present outlook of the absence of physical, sexual intercourse in heaven is like that of a small boy who, on being told that the sexual act was the highest bodily pleasure, should immediately ask whether you ate chocolates at the same time. On receiving the answer, No, he might regard the absence of chocolates as the chief characteristic of sexuality. In vain would you tell him that the reason why lovers in their sexual raptures do not bother about chocolates is that they have something better to think of. The boy knows chocolate. He does not know the better thing that excludes it.

We know the sexual life; we do not know, except in glimpses, the better thing, which in heaven, leaves no room for the lesser sensation.
In denying that sexual life, as we now understand it, it is not necessary to suppose that the distinction of sexes or personalities will disappear. . . . What is no longer needed (sexual distinction) for biological purposes may be expected to survive for splendor.

Heaven: Dance and game are frivolous, unimportant down here; for down here is not their natural place. Here, they are a moments rest from the life we are placed here to live. But in this world everything is upside down. That which, if it could be prolonged here, would be a truancy, is likest that which in a better country is the End of Ends. Joy is the serious business of Heaven. . . . At the resurrection of the body . . . once again the birds will sing and the waters flow, and lights and shadows move across the hills, and the faces of our friends laugh upon us with amazed recognition.

For these reasons, and many more sublime than even C. S. Lewis might imagine, Jesus rebuked the Sadducees for not believing in the power of God to make the next life far beyond the limitations of this one. It is significant that in answering the Sadducees Jesus did not refer to Pharisaic traditions, Greek philosophy, nor even to His own authority (as He did in the Sermon on the Mount), but to the Scriptures! He, of course, was God in the flesh and author of the Scriptures. His deity was, at that point, an excusable stumbling to the Jews. He had every right to insist they believe in life after death merely on His say-so, but giving them the benefit of the doubt about His identity, He appealed to the divine record. They could have no excuse for rejecting the Old Testamentits divine origin was the accepted basis for their existence as a nation and all their hopes for a future messianic relationship to God. Its historicity and integrity had been established by thousands of years of supernatural demonstration to their ancestors. So Jesus cited the Pentateuch itself as the authority for believing in life after death. At the burning bush Moses quoted God as saying that He is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Exo. 3:6). All of these patriarchs had been dead for centuries before Moses, yet God said they were living presently with Him. God is not the God of the annihilated or deadbut of the living.

There are still humanists today denying life after death. The Humanist Manifesto of 1933, updated 1973 and called Humanist Manifesto II, says, We find insufficient evidence for belief in the existence of a supernatural. . . . Humans are responsible for what we are or will become. No deity will save us; we must save ourselves. Promises of immortal salvation or fear of eternal damnation are both illusory and harmful. . . . The universe is self-existing and not created. The mind or soul does not exist apart from the body. . . . Avowed humanist, Corliss Lamont, wrote in the magazine, The Humanist, March-April 1980, Humanists live for actions, ideals on this Earth in our one and only life. Heaven must be built in this world or not at all. . . . While were here, lets live in clover, for when were dead, were dead all over.

This is still the most crucial issue in the life of finite manlife after death. Upon the answer to this issue depends true love, morality, meaning, purpose and every human relationship. The only viable answer continues to rest upon the historical integrity and credibility of the Bible for it claims to be the only and final revelation of God concerning this life and the next! One need only compare the after-life concepts of the religions of human origin with that of Christ to appreciate the Biblical revelation. The Buddhist nirvana is an alleged state of non-existence; the Hindu after-life involves an endless cycle of re-incarnations into this world of imperfection and tribulation; the Islamic paradise is a place of sexual promiscuity and fleshly indulgence. Even orthodox Jews today believe that some day a Jew will appear who will announce the end of the world as we know it and the establishment of the kingdom of God, in which finally the lion will lay down with the lamb. This Jew, and he will be a person, not an incarnation of God, as if such a thing were possible, is called Mashiach, or Messiah. When he arrives there will be a resurrection of the dead, called in Hebrew, Tchiat Ha-metim, and all the resurrected of the Jews will gather in Israel, there to live forever. Mashiach will be a descendant of the house of David and will be announced by Elijah the Prophet. . . . Nevertheless, if one were to say, While not denying what the sages have said, I have no belief concerning any aspect of the life after death or the world to come; all I believe is that my soul is in the hands of God and my faith is in Him such a Jew would not be considered a heretic, even by the most pious. Much more important than speculation about the afterlife is the acceptance of the revelation of the Torah, which is entirely concerned with life and the living. Living Jewish, by Michael Asheri, pub. Everest House, pg. 196. The gospel of Christ is as relevant for the Jews today as it was when Jesus pointed out to the Sadducees that the Torah teaches life after death as a fact and a fundamental tenet of true faith in God. For more information on Old Testament teaching on life after death see special study, The Future Life, Isaiah, Vol. II, by Paul T. Butler, College Press, pgs. 287299.

The Lords reply to the Sadducees destroyed the last stronghold of His enemies. And even the scribes, personally taking pleasure in His humiliation of the Sadducees, dared not ask Him any more questions. They were at least wise enough to see that from then on every trap laid for him would only give Him another opportunity to manifest His divine wisdom and destroy their pretensions. They give up this method of attack.

Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series

(27-39) Then came to him certain of the Sadducees.See Notes on Mat. 22:23-33; Mar. 12:18-27.

Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)

‘And there came to him certain of the Sadducees, those who say that there is no resurrection,’

The Pharisees having been defeated in their attempts to discredit Jesus, the Sadducees now approached Him in order to dispute His teaching on the resurrection of the body. Like many Greeks they did not believe in such a resurrection. They did it by an appeal to levirate marriage. The principle of that is that if a man dies having no children to inherit his property, with the result that his wife is childless and has no one to care for her, His brother who lives in the same household should marry and impregnate the widow and thus produce seed to his brother’s name (see Deu 25:5-10). The child will then grow up to look after his ageing mother, and to inherit the dead brother’s inheritance. It is questionable, although not certainly so, whether levirate marriage was actually practised in New Testament days, but whether it was or not it had certainly been practised in the past, and was even more certainly spoken of in the Law.

This is the only mention of the Sadducees in Luke’s Gospel, but see Act 4:1; Act 5:17; Act 23:6-8. They do not seem to feature in Galilee and Peraea. We can only pick up something of what their teaching was from such passages as this, and from the literature of their opponents. They appear to have founded their teaching on the first five books of the Bible (the Torah, the Books of Moses), having a secondary view of the prophets. This included the rejection of the idea of either the resurrection of the body or of the existence of angels, which they saw as the newfangled teaching of some of the Prophets (Isa 26:19; Dan 12:2) and of the Pharisees. They tended to be Hellenistic and to be politically tolerant of Rome. The leading priests were in fact Sadducees.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

The Sadducees and the Resurrection (20:27-40).

Having made two attempts the Pharisees now withdrew for the time being in order to nurse their wounds. They were deeply chagrined, but unable to do anything about it. Jesus had thwarted their every move, and shown them up in the process. Now, however, came the turn of the Sadducees who were concerned about His teaching about the resurrection. And they came to Him with what may well have been a standard conundrum levelled at all who taught and believed in the resurrection from the dead.

Analysis.

a ‘And there came to him certain of the Sadducees, those who say that there is no resurrection, and they asked him, saying’ (Luk 20:27-28 a).

b “Teacher, Moses wrote to us, that if a man’s brother die, having a wife, and he be childless, his brother should take the wife, and raise up seed to his brother. There were therefore seven brothers, and the first took a wife, and died childless; and the second, and the third took her, and likewise the seven also left no children, and died. Afterward the woman also died” (Luk 20:28 b-32).

c “In the resurrection therefore whose wife of them shall she be? for the seven had her to wife” (Luk 20:33).

d And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this world marry, and are given in marriage, but those who are accounted worthy to attain to that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage, for neither can they die any more. (Luk 20:34-35).

c “For they are equal to the angels, and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection” (Luk 20:36).

b “But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the place concerning the Bush, when he calls the Lord, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Now he is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him” (Luk 20:37-38).

a And certain of the scribes answering said, “Teacher, you have well said.” For they dared not any more ask him any question’ (Luk 20:39-40).

Note that in ‘a’ the Sadducees asked Him a question, and in the parallel the Scribes say that He has ‘well said’. In ‘b’ there is a continual emphasis on death, and in the parallel a continual emphasis on the fact that the dead are raised to new life. In ‘c’ the question is as to prospects in the future life, and in the parallel those prospects are described. And centrally in ‘d’ the condition of those who enjoy the future resurrected life is described.

Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett

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.

Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann

Luk 20:27-40 . See on Mat 22:23-33 ; Mar 12:18-27 .

] does not belong by an abnormal apposition to (thus usually, including Winer, p. 471 [E. T. 668]), but to . These , namely, so far as they were ., are more precisely characterized by . . . .: People who there concerted together (participle with article, see Khner, II. p. 131).

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

Luk 20:28 . . . .] and indeed shall have died without children . See Matthiae, p. 1040.

Luk 20:29 . ] 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 ought to precede, but the emphasis of . has occasioned the . See Khner, II. p. 629; Bornemann, Schol . p. 125.

Luk 20:34 f. ] 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 .

. . . .] 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 (comp. on Luk 20:31 ), for the resurrection discloses the participation in the ; but the context (see also . , 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 ( ., and see Luk 20:36 ), the resurrection here meant is defined as the first , the (see on Luk 14:14 ).

The genitives . . etc. and . are governed by . Comp. Aesch. Prom . 239: ; Winer, p. 566 [E. T. 761]. Moreover, comp. the Rabbinical dignus futuro saeculo , in Schoettgen and Wetstein.

Luk 20:36 . With Lachmann, following A B D L P, we must write [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; , , Theophylact.

. ] gives the reason of the ; 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 , 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 Schs. 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 , 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).

M .] i.e. even Moses , to whom ye are nevertheless appealing for a proof of the contrary, Luk 20:28 .

. . .] “narrando sc. quod Deus dixerat,” Grotius.

Luk 20:38 . ] for all (whose God He is) are living to Him . The emphasis lies on : no one is dead to Him. is the dative of reference: in respect of Him , that is, in relation to Him who is their God, they are even although dead in relation to men living . [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 (Weizscker), 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 , 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 , however, cannot without arbitrariness be taken, according to Act 17:28 , as though it were (Ewald: “all men, so far as they have a true life, have it only in God”).

Luk 20:40 . ] (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 is to be regarded as a mechanical repetition from what has gone before. Bornemann defends by the supposition that it corresponds with the following . But in that case . must be placed in a parenthesis, which, indeed, Lachmann does, although it is nowise notified, not even by the twofold , whereby the two predicates are emphatically kept apart.

[237] Who nevertheless assumes without proof (p. 102) that Adam’s 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 : , , , , , is so far parallel as in that place 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 subsists not merely in the view of God, who considers them in reference to their future resurrection as living, as J. Mller, v. d. Snde , 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 Weizscker, p. 359 f.

Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary

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 mans 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 [] of this world [] marry, and are given in marriage: 35But they which shall be [have been, *] 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 [ ]; and are the children] of God, being the children [] of the resurrection. 37Now that the dead are raised, even Moses shewed [has disclosed] at the bush (Exo 3:616), when [or, since, ] he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the 38God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For [Now, ] 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 , 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 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 , 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 .

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..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 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 , while those who at the moment of the 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, . In Matthew and Mark: . 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. .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 , which denotes the proclaiming of something hidden. . 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 Saviours 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 to the 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, , 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 Gods 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 Schttgen, Hor 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. Hvernick, Vorlesungen ber die Theologie des A. T. pp. 105111. 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 sthetical 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 , 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 , 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: !

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.Gods 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 Gods 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.Gods 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 Gods 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 Saviours Divine superiority.He that is reduced to silence, is not yet thereby by any means won for the truth.

Starke:Cramer:Gods 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 mans 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.Christs argument no empty, delusive argument , 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.: , …, The woman, therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife does she become of the seven? [Cod. Sin. has simply: . . . .C. C. S.]

[15]Luk 20:34.The of the Recepta is apparently only an interpolation from the parallel.

[16][Luk 20:37. , 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. . 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 and 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 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 , with Tischendorf, Meyer, Tregelles, Alford, on the authority of B., L., (Cod. Sin.,) 5 cursives, and the Coptic version. As Meyer remarks, 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.]

Fuente: A Commentary on the Holy Scriptures, Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical by Lange

Then came to him certain of the Sadducees, 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. There were therefore seven brethren: and the first took a wife, and died without children. And the second took her to wife, and he died childless. And the third took her; and in like manner the seven also: and they left no children, and died. Last of all the woman died also. Therefore in the resurrection whose wife of them is she? for seven had her to wife. And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection. Now that the dead are raised, even Moses shewed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him. Then certain of the scribes answering said, Master, thou hast well said. And after that they durst not ask him any question at all.

The error of the Sadducees being founded in the first principles of doctrine, that, with the termination of the present state, man falleth into his original nothing, could not but bring after it, like so many links in the chain, error in all the after consequences. Their views being wholly carnal, they considered that CHRIST would be greatly puzzled on the supposition of a resurrection; how a woman, which in this life had been the wife of seven men, could be disposed of in another. This childish notion, however, hath not been confined to the age of the Sadducecs, for some calling themselves Rational Christians, have in their light philosophical moments ventured to call in question doctrines of an higher nature; respecting the resurrection of CHRIST from the dead, and his return to heaven the same identical body as he lived on earth. But what is there the human mind, untaught of GOD, is not capable of setting up in opposition to the revealed truths of the Gospel? But leaving men of such principles, as well as the Sadducees of old; I beg the Reader to observe with me, how sweetly the LORD JESUS took occasion from their ignorance, to raise a subject of the highest improvement to all his people. For what can be more blessed than CHRIST’s own declaration, that the children of GOD, namely, the redeemed in the covenant, are the children of the resurrection. For by virtue of their union with CHRIST, they are included in all that is communicable from CHRIST: He, the head, and they the members, of his body. Hence their resurrection is not the simple effect of sovereign and Almighty power, for thus all the dead shall arise; but the children of the resurrection being children of GOD in covenant, will arise from their oneness and union with CHRIST. To this purport speaks GOD the HOLY GHOST by the Apostle. Rom 8:11 . If the Spirit of him that raised up JESUS from the dead dwell in you, he that raised up CHRIST from the dead, shall also quicken your mortal bodies by his Spirit that dwelleth in you. CHRIST is the efficient cause. His blessed Spirit secures the resurrection of. their bodies. He saith himself by the spirit of prophecy, when the LORD is promising the Mediator this covenant blessing: Thy dead men, saith GOD, shall live together (saith He) with my dead body shall they arise. Isa 26:19 . So that it is from the union with the LORD, as the members with the head the resurrection of his people is effected. Thy dew (saith he) is as the dew of herbs, which after a winter-like death, gives a warmth like the dew of the morning, and the earth will give up CHRIST’s dead ones. And as it was the Spirit of CHRIST which first quickened the souls of his redeemed from the death of sin, so is it the same Spirit, from their union with him, which reanimates their bodies at the resurrection. Oh! the preciousness of a oneness with CHRIST! Reader what a miserable hope is the doctrine of the Sadducees, and the philosophical creed of the rational Christian, as he affects to call himself, compared to this!

Fuente: Hawker’s Poor Man’s Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

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 .

Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)

27 40. ] REPLY TO THE SADDUCEES RESPECTING THE RESURRECTION. Mat 22:23-33 ; Mar 12:18-27 , and notes.

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

27. ] refers to ., not to . The main subject of the sentence is sometimes put in the nom., even when the construction requires another case: so , , , . Hom. Il. . 395. See also . 437, and more examples in Bernhardy, Syntax, p. 68.

The use of . (or ) is frequent in Xenophon, see Wetstein: and cf. Thucyd. i. 95, , ii. 49, . See also Herod. i. 68: Soph. d. Tyr. 57.

Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament

Luk 20:27-39 . The resurrection question. Sadducees speak (Mat 22:23-33 , Mar 12:18-27 ). in strict grammar ought to refer to , 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. : 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 , though well attested, looks like a grammatical correction.

Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson

NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Luk 20:27-33

27 Now there came to Him some of the Sadducees (who say that there is no resurrection), 28and they questioned Him, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, having a wife, and he is childless, his brother should marry the wife and raise up children to his brother. 29Now there were seven brothers; and the first took a wife and died childless; 30and the second 31and the third married her; and in the same way all seven died, leaving no children. 32Finally the woman died also. 33In the resurrection therefore, which one’s wife will she be? For all seven had married her.”

Luk 20:27 “the Sadducees” These were the wealthy aristocrats who supported the status quo because of their place of power. They controlled the high priesthood, which one family purchased from the Romans. Josephus said that they rejected the Oral Tradition so popular with the Pharisees and affirmed only the writings of Moses (i.e., Genesis – Deuteronomy). They also rejected any concept of the afterlife (cf. Act 23:6-8) that was popular among the Pharisees (cf. Josephus’ Wars of the Jews 2.8.14; The Antiquities of the Jews 18.1.4, which means they did not take seriously Job 14:14; Job 19:25-27; Psa 16:9-11; Isa 25:8; Isa 26:19; or Dan 12:1-2. This is the only mention of this particular political religious group in the Gospel of Luke). See Special Topic below.

SPECIAL TOPIC: SADDUCEES

Luk 20:28 “Moses wrote for us that” This refers to Deu 25:5-10 in the Septuagint, commonly called the “Leverite marriage.” The term “Leverite” comes from the Latin word levir, which means “brother-in-law,” not “from the Tribe of Levi.” The issue at stake was inheritance (cf. Num 27:6-11; Rth 4:1-2). Josephus records that it was still practiced in Palestine in Jesus’ day (cf. Antiq. 4.8.23).

“if” This is a third class conditional sentence, which denotes potential action.

Luk 20:33 This question assumes that the afterlife will mimic earthly, physical life.

Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley

Then came, &c. Compare Mat 22:23-33. Mar 12:18-27.

Sadducees. See App-120.

deny . . . resurrection = say that there is no (App-105) resurrection (App-178.) This is the key to what follows.

Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics

27-40.] REPLY TO THE SADDUCEES RESPECTING THE RESURRECTION. Mat 22:23-33; Mar 12:18-27, and notes.

Fuente: The Greek Testament

[27. , 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.]

Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament

Luk 20:27-40

5. QUESTION AS TO THE RESURRECTION

Luk 20:27-40

27 And there came to him certain of the Sadducees,-Parallel records of this are found in Mat 22:23-33 and Mar 12:18-27. There is but little difference in the three records of this event. The Pharisees and Herodians had tried their hand to ensnare Jesus, but had been defeated and humiliated before the public. We should not lose sight of the fact that we are now in the midst of the last week of the earthly life of Jesus. The Sadducees now make an attack on him. The Sadducees were a Jewish sect, and were so called either from “righteousness,” the meaning of the name “Zadok,” or from their great zeal for righteousness. This sect originated about 260 B.C. They were opposed to the Pharisees and rejected the traditions which the Pharisees promoted; they denied the resurrection and the existence of angels or spirits. (Act 23:8.) They laid stress on the freedom of the will. As a sect they disappeared from history after the first century; they were men of rank, wealth, and education; the priestly families in the days of Jesus belonged to the Sadducees. They had one great argument with which they had frequently defeated the Pharisees; it was a stock conundrum with which they had often gotten a laugh on the Pharisees. They volunteered to try it on Jesus.

28 and they asked him, saying,-They approached Jesus with an apparent regard as a prophet or religious teacher; they also approached him with an air of great respect for the law of Moses. They presented him their problem based on Deu 25:5-10. The case that they cited required a brother to take his deceased brother’s wife and raise a son unto his brother that his brother’s name might not perish in the genealogy. The Sadducees thought to show from the law the manifest absurdity of the doctrine of the resurrection, because they presumed that the present relations of life must continue in the future state.

29-31 There were therefore seven brethren:-It is very likely that this was a fictitious case; it was a favorite argument of the Pharisees with the Sadducees, and illustrates the manner of their opposition to the resurrection. The first born of the wife of the deceased brother was to perpetuate the name, provided the first born was a son. The Sadducees present this case as an actual fact, for they said: “Now there were with us seven brethren” (Mat 22:25), which presents the case as an actual fact. The number of brethren who had the same woman as a wife presented a very complex problem so the Sadducees thought; the Pharisees were not able to meet the argument. While it may have been a fictitious case, all grant the possibility of such a thing happening, hut the improbability of it is very evident.

32, 33 Afterward the woman also died.-There was no surviving husband and the wife died. The woman had married, according to supposition, successively to seven brothers, from each of whom she was separated by death. The Sadducees thought that Jesus would either deny the belief as to the resurrection, or that he would make some statement contrary to the law of Moses. If he denied the resurrection, he would incur the enmity of the Pharisees, who believe in the resurrection; if he denied the law of Moses or contradicted it, he would he condemned for perverting the holy law. They did not care which Jesus did; they were only seeking an opportunity to condemn him. Whose wife would she be in the resurrection? The problem was squarely put to Jesus, and from their point of view, there was no escape for him. But they did not know Jesus of Nazareth.

34, 35 And Jesus said unto them,-Both Matthew and Mark preface Jesus’ reply by: “Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.” (Mat 22:29.) “The sons of this world” marry and are given in marriage; “sons of this world” simply means the present state of being as confined to mortals; the expression simply means that in this life the marriage relation obtains. In the future life, or life after death, there are no regulations of sex. Sex belongs to this fleshly state, and ceases when the fleshly state ceases. Sex belongs to this physical body and was ordained to perpetuate the physical existence. Marriage belongs to the physical existence, or to the physical body for the procreation of the animal part of man; but when the earthly existence and the fleshly body shall have ceased, marriage will have ceased as all the physical elements of marriage have ceased. In the future existence those who have attained unto the resurrection of the dead “neither marry, nor are given in marriage”-there is no such thing as marriage after death.

36 for neither can they die any more:-After the resurrection there is no death, hence no need of procreation. Here we die physically, and the human race would soon become extinct if there was no generation going on to perpetuate the race; but in the future state where there is no death there is no need of marriage to perpetuate the beings there. “They are equal unto the angels”; that is, angels do not die; they have an eternal existence; so after the resurrection we have an eternal existence, and in that sense, we are, equal to the angels. The existence, relations, and state are equal to that of the angels. In the resurrection there is not an earthly state which is sensual and mortal, but heavenly, spiritual, and immortal. They are “sons of God,” which means that they share in the resurrection of the just, and are in possession of a new life. It is evident here that Jesus is speaking only of the resurrection of the just; the resurrection of the wicked does not come into view here.

37, 38 But that the dead are raised,-Jesus gives an invincible argument for the resurrection; he holds that the words spoken to Moses concerning the burning bush (Exo 3:6) prove the fact of a resurrection. Jesus meets the error of the Sadducees fundamentally; he strikes at the very mistake on which their error is founded. These Sadducees were “materialists”; they held that man was no more than an animal; that death ended all of men. They based their argument against the resurrection on the ground that man has no spirit, and, therefore, no life after the death of his body. Matthew puts this argument in an interrogative form: “Have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob?” (Mat 22:31-32.) Jesus in commenting on this says that God is not “the God of the dead, but of the living.” This shows that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were still in existence; they were dead physically, but their personality and identity continued; hence there is a life after death, and if a life after death, there is a resurrection.

39, 40 And certain of the scribes answering said,-The scribes belonged to the Pharisees; they enjoyed seeing Jesus put the Sadducees to silence, for they had often encountered their error, and apparently had never been able to refute it so successfully. They complimented Jesus for having answered well, and thought it wise for themselves to ask him no more questions. The courage of the Pharisees, Herodians, and Sadducees now vanished; they will now have to follow some other course in order to destroy Jesus.

Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary

the God of the Living

Luk 20:27-40

Here our Lord answers the materialism of His time. He speaks with the note of absolute certainty concerning the unseen, Heb 11:27. Its inhabitants do not die or marry, nor are they subject to the conditions of our earthly life. These are the children of the resurrection. What an inspiring title! May it be applied to us as in Col 3:1-4? Too many are the sons of this age, Luk 20:34, r.v., margin! They adopt this transient earth as their foster parent! We cannot belong to both, though some, like Bunyans waterman, row in one direction, while they look in another.

How wonderful to find a proof of immortality in that passage about the bush, Exo 3:6! The fact that Jehovah said, I am the God of Abraham, proved that the patriarch was in existence somewhere at that moment. Those whom we describe as dead are living people who have died. Death is but a passage, a step. There is no break in the chain of existence. Yonder and here all live unto God, Rom 14:8.

Fuente: F.B. Meyer’s Through the Bible Commentary

Chapter 35

Children Of The Resurrection

In this portion of scripture we have the Sadducees attempt to entrap our Lord Jesus. The Sadducees were the smallest but by far the most wealthy and influential of the Jewish sects. They were the aristocrats of Judaism, and for the most part controlled the priesthood and the temple. Though that was the case, the Sadducees were not commonly respected by the people. They, supposing themselves to be smarter than God, denied the resurrection. They were the most liberal sect of the Jews. They were religious; but their religion was the religion of infidelity.

The Sadducees religion was nothing more than a philosophical system of carnal reason with religious overtones. They did not believe in the immortality of the soul, the resurrection of the dead, or eternity. They did not believe that heaven and hell are real. The Sadducees believed that when men and women die, they die like dogs, that the death of the body is the end of a persons existence. They used the scriptures, taught the scriptures, and professed to believe the scriptures. As we see in the passage before us, they could even recite the scriptures from memory. These were smart men, well-educated, and very knowledgeable. They were sure the Lord Jesus would be completely stumped by their pretentious question. But their religion was altogether a religion of infidelity; and they were completely stumped by the Masters answer.

Our Lord Jesus Christ graciously turned the quibbles of these infidels into an opportunity to teach us that there shall be a resurrection of the dead, and that all the children of God are the children of the resurrection. In this passage of holy scripture, as we consider the ludicrous question of the Sadducees and the answer our Master gave them, four things stand out as matters of great importance.

Religious Infidelity

First, the Sadducees stand before us as glaring examples of religious infidelity. The vast majority of people in this world who profess the name of Christianity, including the most powerful and most influential religious leaders of it, are really only religious infidels. Their religion is a matter of convenience, not conviction. It is, for the most part, a religion, which holds the Word of God, the truth of God, the gospel of God, the will of God, and the glory of God in utter contempt, just like these Sadducees.

The Sadducees laughed at the doctrine of the resurrection. They were simply too smart, too educated, too enlightened, to believe such religious sentiments. The question they posed to the Lord Jesus illustrates both their hypocrisy and their arrogance. They hypocritically pretended to have reverence for the Lord Jesus Christ, calling him Master. They pretended to reverence the scriptures as the Word of God. And they pretended to have concern for heavenly, spiritual things.

These men presented their question as though it were a factual thing, as though they were really interested in knowing the answer. Any statistician will tell you that you would have a far greater chance of winning the lottery than of seven brothers marrying the same wife, after each had died, leaving the woman childless! The only thing these men were interested in was raising a question, which they were confident the Master could not answer.

We will be wise to mark the things recorded here and learn from them not to allow modern religious infidels to entrap us. When carping religious infidels want to argue with you, just ignore them. Give them plain statements of Scripture, and leave them alone. If you get into a hissing contest with a snake, you are going to lose. Such people always try to press difficult and abstruse points. They always act dishonestly. And they deserve nothing but contempt.

In Mar 12:24 we read that our Lord Jesus plainly told this same group of men that they were totally ignorant both of the scriptures and of the power of God. And Jesus answering said unto them, Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the scriptures, neither the power of God? Spiritual ignorance and doctrinal error may always be traced to these two things: (1.) ignorance of the Word of God, and (2.) ignorance of Gods power. These men did not believe in the resurrection of the dead, because they did not know the teaching of holy scripture and knew nothing of the power of God.

I do not doubt for a moment that they knew the letter of the scriptures. No doubt, they could quote huge passages from the Bible from memory. I do not doubt that they were very keenly aware of the historic events and chronological order of things recorded in the scriptures. They knew the history of Israel, and even knew what the prophecies of the Old Testament said. But they had absolutely no knowledge of the meaning and message of holy scripture. Their understanding was nothing but the understanding of carnal reason and religious tradition.

Do you understand the message of holy scripture? The Book of God is all about Christ. The message of holy scripture is the gospel of Christ (Luk 24:27; Luk 24:32; Luk 24:44-45; Joh 5:39; 1Pe 1:23-25). Spiritual knowledge is not merely doctrinal knowledge, creedal knowledge, logical knowledge, and factual knowledge. Spiritual knowledge is the revealed knowledge of a person, and that Person is the Lord Jesus Christ.

These silly men wanted to argue about the doctrine of the resurrection. But the resurrection is more than a doctrine. It is a person. Christ is the Resurrection (Joh 11:25). You cannot know the Person without knowing the doctrine; but you certainly can know the doctrine of Christ without knowing Christ himself. Salvation involves more than doctrinal knowledge. Salvation is knowing Christ (Joh 17:3). Christ is the Resurrection and the Life of chosen sinners: representatively in redemption (Eph 2:4-6), experimentally in regeneration (Joh 5:25; Rev 20:6; Col 3:1-3), and prospectively in the last day (Col 3:4).

The truth of God, the gospel of his grace, is much more than doctrinal, historical facts. The gospel is a Person, the crucified Christ (Joh 14:6). Without question, this Person is revealed and made known to us and in us in the context of revealed, doctrinal truth. But life and salvation comes by knowing the Triune God himself in the Person of our all glorious Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God (Joh 17:3; 2Ti 1:12). Salvation is not merely knowing about Christ. Salvation is knowing Christ as my God, my Surety, my Substitute, my King, my Priest, my Prophet, and my Saviour!

Spiritual ignorance, doctrinal error, and heresy of every kind, according to our Saviours word, must be traced to ignorance of the power of God. I take that to mean three things. These three things, you will find throughout the scriptures, are what is meant by the power of God.

Spiritual ignorance arises from and must be traced to an utter ignorance of Gods sovereignty, his absolute authority as God. Spiritual ignorance arises from and must be traced to an utter ignorance of Gods omnipotence, his almightiness as God. Spiritual ignorance arises from and must be traced to an utter ignorance of Gods gospel, which is the power of God unto salvation (Rom 1:15-16).

These Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, because they were totally ignorant of Gods sovereignty, his omnipotence, and his gospel. All heresy, all spiritual ignorance must be attributed to these things.

All false religion, all freewill, works religion denies the sovereignty of Gods will and purpose in election and predestination, the omnipotence of his power and grace in redemption, regeneration, and effectual calling, and the power of the gospels good news of redemption accomplished by the blood of his dear Son. The preaching of the gospel is the power of God unto salvation (1Co 1:17-24).

Worthiness For Heaven

In our Lords answer to these carping infidels we find sweet and precious things for our souls.

And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection (Luk 20:34-36).

The first thing he tells us is that there are some people in this world who are accounted worthy to obtain the world to come. It is written, Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God (1Co 15:50). And there shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth, neither whatsoever worketh abomination, or maketh a lie: but they which are written in the Lambs book of life (Rev 21:27). Yet, our Lord Jesus asserts here, and the Word of God elsewhere declares, that there are some people in this world who are counted worthy to obtain the world to come (Col 1:12-14; 2Th 1:3-5).

Who are these people? What makes them worthy to obtain the world to come? These four things identify them; and these four things make them worthy of heavenly glory.

The record book of heaven! Their names are written in the Lambs Book of Life, written there from eternity as worthy (Rom 8:28-30). The Redeemers precious blood! The blood of Christ has freed them from all sin. The righteousness of God! They are completely, perfectly and immutably righteous in Christ, made the very righteousness of God in him.

The regeneration of grace! Being born-again by God the Holy Spirit, they are made partakers of the divine nature. Christ is in them; and Christ in them is the hope of glory (Col 1:27).

Every year I travel to at least one foreign country preaching the gospel of Christ. I have crossed the borders of our nation north, south, east, and west. Whenever I leave this country and cross into another, three things are required: (1.) I have to have a birth certificate to prove my citizenship. (2.) I have to have a visa from the country receiving me. And (3.) I have to have a clean record, no criminal record. Soon I will leave this land of sorrow and sin. I hope to enter into the bliss and glory of heaven. I hope to stand forever accepted as a citizen of the New Jerusalem. This is the basis of my hope

1. Birth Certificate: the Lord God has given me a new nature (2Co 5:17). There is in me a new man, created of God in righteousness and true holiness.

2. Visa: I have a right to enter into heaven itself by the blood of Christ, because I am robed in his righteousness. God says, It must be perfect to be accepted, and in Christ I am perfect! He has made me perfectly righteous before God!

3. Clear Record: Jesus Christ has purged away all my sins with his own precious blood. Therefore, God will never charge me with any sin (Rom 4:8). When I stand before God and he searches the books for iniquity and sin under my name, he will find none (Jer 50:20).

Do you have what God requires? Are you worthy to obtain the world to come? Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and you shall obtain in him all that God requires to make you worthy of heavenly glory!

The Resurrection Life

Our Saviour not only assures us of the resurrection, but also gives us a slight glimpse of what life shall be like in the resurrection glory awaiting us.

And Jesus answering said unto them, The children of this world marry, and are given in marriage: But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection (Luk 20:34-36).

There will be a resurrection of the dead. When our Lord Jesus comes again, there will be a resurrection of the just and of the unjust. This fact is inscribed upon every mans heart and conscience by the finger of God in creation. Anyone who denies the resurrection is a liar. He lies against his own conscience. This doctrine of the resurrection is the doctrine of both the Old and New Testaments (Exo 3:6; Job 19:25-26; Psa 16:9-10; Psa 49:15; Psa 73:24; Hos 6:1-2; Dan 12:2; Joh 5:29; 1Co 15:35-58; 1Th 4:13-18).

In the resurrection Gods saints shall be as the angels of God. In the resurrection we shall be equal unto the angels. What does that mean? I am certain that it contains a depth of meaning far greater than I have yet fathomed. But I am equally certain that it means these things.

In the resurrection we will be completely free of all carnal distinctions, weaknesses, cares, needs, and passions.

In the resurrection there will be no need for marriage and procreation, because there will be no more sickness, sorrow, bereavement or death! Neither can they die any more! Blessed and holy is he that hath part in the first resurrection: on such the second death hath no power! And there will be no imperfection of love and unity among Gods saints.

And in the resurrection we will, like the angels of God, possess the constant, full knowledge and assurance of Gods approval. We will enjoy uninterrupted assurance of complete security with Christ. We will have perfect, uninterrupted communion with our Redeemer. Like the heavenly angels, we will always be engaged in the suitable, gratifying service of our great God. Worshipping him! Singing his praise! Celebrating his wondrous works! Doing his will! We will have unbroken, everlasting rest! Like those celestial spirits above, we will gaze upon our God and Saviour. They do always behold the face of God. They shall see his face! As for me, I will behold thy face in righteousness: I shall be satisfied, when I awake, with thy likeness (Psa 17:15).

He Who Is Our God Is The God Of The Living.

Now that the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush, when he calleth the Lord the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him (Luk 20:37-38).

Again, there is much more here than I can explain; but certain things are clear. It is certain that Gods saints who have left this world are not dead, but living. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob represent all Gods elect. They were chosen of God. They were heirs of a covenant. They believed God. They lived in communion with God. But they did not fully enjoy the fulfilment of Gods promises until they left this vale of tears (Heb 11:13-16). Gods glory was wrapped up in their lives. I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. God is not ashamed to be called their God.

The Word Of God

Every time I read Luk 20:37 I think to myself, What a vast, immense Book the Word of God is! The more I study it, the bigger it gets. This is a Book altogether beyond the reach of our puny brains. When we have studied it as deeply and as fully as possible, when we have taken in and comprehended everything that it is possible for us to take in and comprehend in this mortal frame, we will have only begun to scratch the surface. We will be learning the secrets of the Word of God which liveth and abideth forever throughout the endless ages of eternity.

Let me show you what I mean. The passage our Lord quotes in Luk 20:37 is Exo 3:6. Moreover he said, I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. And Moses hid his face; for he was afraid to look upon God. Who would ever have dreamed that this passage of scripture has anything to do with the resurrection, if the Son of God himself had not stated it? No one in history ever gave Gods word to Moses such an interpretation, until the Lord Jesus explained it in our text. Someone once wrote

The Bible is the Word of the living God; each letter was penned with an almighty finger; each word came from the everlasting lips; each sentence was dictated by the Holy Spirit. Moses wrote with his fiery pen; God guided that pen. David played and sang the sweet psalms, but God moved his fingers over the strings and taught him the words. When Peter, James, and John tell of their Lords life, death, and resurrection, it is the voice of God, not a mans voice. The very words are Gods words, the words of the Eternal, the Invisible, the Almighty Jehovah. The Bible is Gods Word; and when I see it, I seem to hear a voice springing up from it saying, I am the book of God; man, READ ME! I am Gods writing, open my pages, for I was written by God; he is my author and you will find him manifested on every page.

Read the Book of God; and as you read it, pray that God the Holy Spirit, who wrote it, will take the things of Christ in it and reveal them to you. Oh, what great, boundless, free, indescribable grace the Lord God has bestowed upon us in Christ, making us in him to be the children of God, the children of the resurrection, and accounted worthy to obtain that world! One thing have I desired of the LORD, that will I seek after; that I may dwell in the house of the LORD all the days of my life, to behold the beauty of the LORD, and to inquire in his temple (Psa 27:4).

Fuente: Discovering Christ In Selected Books of the Bible

the Sadducees: Mat 16:1, Mat 16:6, Mat 16:12, Mat 22:23-33, Mar 12:18-27, Act 4:1, Act 4:2, Act 5:17, Act 23:6-8, 1Co 15:12, 2Ti 2:17, 2Ti 2:18

Reciprocal: Luk 11:53 – to speak Act 23:8 – General

Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge

7

The Sadducees are described at Mat 16:12.

Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary

WE see in these verses what an old thing unbelief is. We are told that “there came to our Lord certain of the Sadducees, which deny that there is any resurrection.” Even in the Jewish Church, the Church of Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob,-the Church of Moses, and Samuel, and David, and the prophets,-we find that there were bold, avowed, unblushing skeptics. If infidelity like this existed among God’s peculiar people, the Jews, what must the state of heathenism have been? If these things existed in a green tree, what must have been the condition of the dry?

We must never be surprised when we hear of infidels, deists, heretics and free-thinkers rising up in the Church, and drawing away disciples after them. We must not count it a rare and a strange thing. It is only one among many proofs that man is a fallen and corrupt being. Since the day when the devil said to Eve “ye shall not surely die,” and Eve believed him, there never has been wanting a constant succession of forms of unbelief.-There is nothing new about any of the modern theories of infidelity. There is not one of them that is not an old disease under a new name. They are all mushrooms which spring up spontaneously in the hot-bed of human nature. It is not in reality an astonishing thing that there should rise up so many who call in question the truth of the Bible. The marvel is rather, that in a fallen world the sect of the Sadducees should be so small.

Let us take comfort in the thought that in the long run of years the truth will always prevail. Its advocates may often be feeble, and their arguments very weak. But there is an inherent strength in the cause itself which keeps it alive. Bold infidels like Porphyry, and Julian, and Hobbes, and Hume, and Voltaire, and Paine arise from time to time and make a stir in the world. But they produce no lasting impression. They pass away like the Sadducees and go to their own place. The great evidences of Christianity remain like the Pyramids, unshaken and unmoved. The “gates of hell” shall never prevail against Christ’s truth. (Mat 16:18.)

We see, secondly, in these verses, what a favorite weapon of skeptics is a supposed case. We are told that the Sadducees brought to our Lord a difficulty arising out of the case of a woman who had married seven brothers in succession. They professed a desire to know “whose wife of the seven” the woman would be in the resurrection. The intention of the inquiry is clear and plain. They wished to pour contempt on the whole doctrine of a life to come. The case itself is one which we cannot suppose had really arisen. It seems the highest probability that it was a story invented for the occasion, in order to raise a difficulty and found an argument.

Reasoning of this kind will often meet us, if we are thrown into company with persons of a skeptical turn of mind. Some imaginary difficulty or complication, and that connected probably with some fancied state of things in the world to come, will often prove the stronghold of an unbeliever.-“He cannot understand it! He cannot reconcile it! It seems to him revolting and absurd! It offends his common sense!”-Such is the language which is often used.

Reasoning of this kind should never shake us for a moment. For one thing, we have nothing to do with supposed and imaginary cases. It will be time enough to discuss them when they really arise. Enough for us to talk and argue about facts as they are. For another thing, it is mere waste of time to speculate about difficulties connected with a state of existence in a world to come. We know so little of anything beyond the visible world around us, that we are very poor judges of what is possible or not possible in the unseen world. A thousand things beyond the grave must necessarily be unintelligible to us at present. In the meantime it is our wisdom to wait patiently. What we know not now, we shall know hereafter.

We see, thirdly, in these verses, something of the true character of the saints’ existence in the world to come. We read that our Lord said to the Pharisees, “They which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage: neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels.”

Two things are abundantly clear from this description, respecting the saints in glory. For one thing, their happiness is not a carnal happiness, but a spiritual one. “They neither marry nor are given in marriage.” The glorified body shall be very unlike what it is now. It shall no longer be a clog and a hindrance to the believer’s better nature. It shall be a meet habitation for a glorified soul. For another thing, their happiness shall be eternal. “They can die no more.” No births shall be needed, to supply the constant waste caused by death. Weakness, and sickness, and disease, and infirmity, shall be no more at all. The curse shall be clean removed. Death himself shall die.

The nature of what we call “heaven” is a subject which should often engage our thoughts. Few subjects in religion are so calculated to show the utter folly of unconverted men, and the awful danger in which they stand. A heaven where all the joy is spiritual, would surely be no heaven to an unconverted soul!-Few subjects are so likely to cheer and animate the mind of a true Christian. The holiness and spiritual-mindedness which he follows after in this life will be the very atmosphere of his eternal abode. The cares of family relationship shall no longer distract his mind. The fear of death shall no longer bring him into bondage. Then let him press on and bear his cross patiently. Heaven will make amends for all.

We see, lastly, in these verses, the antiquity of belief in a resurrection. Our Lord shows that it was the belief of Moses. “That the dead are raised, even Moses showed at the bush.”

Faith in a resurrection and a life to come has been the universal belief of all God’s people from the beginning of the world. Abel, and Enoch, and Noah, and Abraham and all the Patriarchs, were men who looked forward to a better inheritance than they had here below. “They looked for a city which had foundations.” “They desired a better country, that is, an heavenly.” (Heb 11:10-16.) The words of our own seventh Article are clear and unmistakeable: “They are not to be heard which feign that the old fathers did look only for transitory promises.” This witness is true.

Let us anchor our own souls firmly on this great foundation truth, “that we shall all rise again.” Whatever ancient or modern Sadducees may say, let us believe firmly that we are not made like the beasts that perish, and that there shall be “a resurrection of the dead, both of the just and unjust.” (Act 24:15.) The recollection of this truth will cheer us in the day of trial, and comfort us in the hour of death. We shall feel that though earthly prosperity fail us, there is a life to come where there is no change. We shall feel that though worms destroy our body, yet in the flesh we shall see God. (Job 19:26.) We shall not lie always in the grave. Our God is “not a God of the dead, but of the living.”

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Notes-

v27.-[Certain of the Sadducees.] The only certain thing which we know about the sect of the Sadducees is this, that they denied that there was any resurrection, or angel, or spirit. (Act 23:8.) The common opinion that they rejected all the books of the Old Testament, excepting the five books of Moses, appears to be a vulgar error. There is no foundation for it. Josephus, the historian, was a Pharisee, and not likely to spare the errors of Sadducees in describing them. But though he charges them with rejecting traditions, he nowhere charges them with rejecting any of the sacred books.

[Any resurrection.] Campbell has a long note to prove that by this term “resurrection” we are not to understand the reunion of soul and body, but simply a renewal of life, in whatever manner this may happen. He holds that the fundamental error of the Sadducees was not barely the denial of the resurrection of the body, but the denial of the immortality of the soul, and that our Lord’s argument in this passage tends to prove no more than that the soul survives the body, and subsists after the body is dissolved.

The opinion must be received with caution. It solves some difficulties undoubtedly, but involves us in others.

v28.-[His brother should take his wife.] The law of Moses here referred to, (Deu 25:5,) ought to be carefully studied, and compared with Lev 18:16. It is clear that marriage with a deceased husband’s brother was only allowed under certain peculiar circumstances, and as a general rule was unlawful. How any Bible reader can advocate a man’s marriage with a deceased wife’s sister, in the face of such texts as Lev 18:16, and Lev 20:21, is, to my mind, quite incomprehensible. If it is wrong for a woman to marry two brothers, it must be wrong for a man to marry two sisters. The exceptional permission to a woman to marry two brothers was only granted when the first brother had died without leaving any children. To argue from this permission that a man may marry two sisters in succession, on the ground that the first wife left children, who need an aunt’s care, seems very singular logic!

v29.-[First took a wife, and died childless.] Let it be noted that Ambrose and Jerome attach allegorical meanings to this story, and regard the woman as an emblem of the Jewish synagogue. The idea seems utterly improbable.

v31.-[The seven also…left no children.] The possibility of such a thing happening as that which is here described, of course cannot be denied. The gross improbability of it, however, must be evident to all reflecting minds. The most probable view is that the story was a supposed case invented to supply a foundation for a difficulty.

v34.-[Children of this world marry.] We must beware that we do not allow these words to give any sanction to Roman Catholic notions of the superior holiness of the state of virginity to the state of matrimony. The distinction our Lord draws implies no reflection on matrimony. It is simply a declaration that the condition of men and women in a world to come is utterly unlike their condition in this world.

“The children of this world,” we must remember, do not in this place signify unconverted people, but simply people who are living on earth.

v35.-[The resurrection from the dead.] The Greek words here are remarkable. They would be rendered more literally, “the resurrection out from the dead.” They seem strongly to favor the opinion that there is a first resurrection peculiar to the righteous. (Rev 20:5, &c.) The expression, “children of the resurrection,” in the following verse, seems to point the same way.

v36.-[Equal to the angels.] We must not conclude from these words that the glorified saints are exactly like the angels. Angels have not bodies, like ours, but are spiritual beings. The meaning appears to be, that in freedom from death and disease, and in complete deliverance from a condition of being in which marriage and birth are needful to supply the continual waste occasioned by death, the saints shall be like the angels.

[The children of God.] This means evidently, that the saints are introduced into a state of peculiar privilege as members of God’s family, and residents in God’s house, after a fashion that they know nothing of here on earth.

v37.-[That the dead are raised…Moses showed, &c.] The quotation contained in this verse has caused much controversy. At first sight it does not appear to be any proof of a resurrection, but only of a life to come.

Some have thought that stress ought to be laid on the expression in the original quotation, “I am,” and not “I was” the God of Abraham, &c.

Some think, with Mede and others, that our Lord refers to the promise of the land of Canaan to Abraham and his seed, and to the fact, that this promise, yet unfulfilled, will literally be fulfilled one day by Abraham rising again, and possessing the land.

Some think, with Campbell, that our Lord’s object all through is not so much to prove a resurrection as a life to come.

One thing, however, is very clear. The argument which our Lord used completely silenced the Sadducees, and called forth the approbation of the Scribes. Now if the Sadducees had not felt the argument convincing and silencing, they would not have submitted to it so quietly as they did. If we do not see the full force of the argument, the fault is evidently in ourselves. We do not see the fulness of Scripture as we ought to do. There is depth of meaning in many texts which we have not fathomed.

v38.-[All live unto him.] This expression is remarkable, and peculiar to Luke’s Gospel. It probably means, “In His sight all are living,” though long dead, buried, and removed from this world. There is no such thing as annihilation.

Fuente: Ryle’s Expository Thoughts on the Gospels

Luk 20:27-40. THE QUESTION OF THE SAD-DUCEES. See on Mat 22:23-33; Mar 12:18-27.

Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament

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.

Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament

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 Abrahams. 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.

Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

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; : who oppose (), maintaining that ().

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

Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)

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]

Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)

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.

Fuente: William Godbey’s Commentary on the New Testament

Luk 20:27-40. The Question of the Resurrection Life (Mar 12:18-27*, Mat 22:23-33*).The first peculiarity in Lk.s account is Luk 20:34-35 a, the contrast between people in this world and those deemed worthy to attain the other world and the resurrection (which, as in Luk 14:14, seems limited to the righteous). In Luk 20:36 there is a further addition; in the other world men and women do not die, hence they need not (and so do not) marry. They are sons of the resurrection, i.e. have the characteristics of the risen and endless life. With Luk 20:37 f., especially all live unto Him, cf. 4Ma 7:18 f.as many as make righteousness their first thought are able to master the weakness of the flesh, believing that unto God they die not, as our patriarchs, A. and I. and J. died not, but that they live unto God. Similarly 4Ma 16:25, of the seven brother martyrs, who knew that men dying for God live unto God, as Uve A. and I. and J., and all the Patriarchs. The meaning seems to be that the pious dead, even before the Judgment, when the world regards them as dead, live with God in true bliss. Luk 20:39 is in Lk. only. With Luk 20:40 cf. Mar 12:34, Mat 22:46, also Luk 14:6. Lk. has already (Luk 10:25-28) dealt with the question of the greatest commandment which Mk. and Mt. insert here.

Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible

20:27 {4} Then came to [him] certain of the Sadducees, which deny that there is any resurrection; and they asked him,

(4) The resurrection of the flesh is affirmed against the Sadducees.

Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes

4. The problem of the resurrection 20:27-40 (cf. Matthew 22:23-33; Mark 12:18-27)

This incident was also relevant for Luke’s original Greek readers. The question of the resurrection of the body was important in Greek philosophy (cf. 1 Corinthians 15). Luke used this incident in his narrative to bring Jesus’ confrontations with His critics in the temple courtyard to a climax.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

Luke had not identified the party affiliations of Jesus’ former critics as Matthew and Mark did. These Jewish parties would not have been of much interest to his original readers. However here he identified the Sadducees by name. He needed to do this because of their denial of the resurrection that was the central problem that they brought to Jesus. Most Greeks denied the resurrection of the body too (cf. 1Co 15:12). Much Greek psychology viewed the body as the temporary prison of the soul that was immortal.

Jesus had taught much about the future and had implied that He believed in the resurrection of the body (e.g., Luk 19:11-28). The Sadducees opposed the Pharisees at many points because they believed the Pharisees had departed too far from the teachings of the Old Testament. In one sense the Sadducees were liberal in their theology since they denied much that is supernatural (e.g., the resurrection, angels, and spirits; Act 23:8). On the other hand they were quite conservative in that they based their views on a strict interpretation of Old Testament teachings and rejected the oral traditions.

Fuente: Expository Notes of Dr. Constable (Old and New Testaments)

Chapter 23

THE ESCHATOLOGY OF THE GOSPEL.

COIFI, in his parable to the thanes and nobles of the North Humber country, likened the present life of man to the flight of a sparrow through one of their lighted halls, coming out of the night, and then disappearing in the dark winter whence it came; and he asked for Christianity a candid hearing, if perhaps she might tell the secrets of the beyond. And so indeed she does, lighting up the “dark winter” with a bright, though a partial apocalypse. It is not our purpose to enter into a general discussion of the subject; our task is simply to arrest the beams of inspired light hiding within this Gospel, and by a sort of spectrum analysis to read from them what they are permitted to reveal. And-

1. The Gospel teaches that the grave is not the end of life. It may seem as if we were stating but a truism in saying this: yet if a truism, it perhaps has not been allowed its due place in our thought, and its restatement may not be altogether a superfluous word. We cannot study the life Of Jesus without noticing that His views of earth were not the views of men in general. To them this world was everything; to possess it, even in some infinitesimal quantity, was their supreme ambition; and though in their better, clearer moments they caught glimpses of worlds other than their own, yet to their distant vision they were as tile twinkling stars of the azure, far off and cold, soon losing themselves in the haze of unreality, or setting in the shadows of the imposing earth. To Jesus earth was but a fragment of a vaster whole, a fragment whose substances were but the shadows of higher, heavenlier realities. Nor were these outlying spaces to His mind voids of silence, a “dark inane,” without life or thought; they were peopled with intelligences whose personalities were as distinctly marked as is this human “Ego,” and whose movements, unweighted by the gyves of flesh, seemed subtle and swift as thought itself. With one of these worlds Jesus was perfectly familiar. With heaven, which was the abode of His Father, and immeasurable hosts of angels, He was in close and constant correspondence, and the frequent prayer, the frequent upward looks tell us how near and how intensely real the heavenly places were to Him. But in the mind of Jesus this empyrean of happiness and light had its antipodes of woe and darkness, a penal realm of fearful shadow, and which, borrowing the language of the city, He called the Gehenna of burning. Such were the two invisible realms, lying away from earth, yet closely touching it from opposite directions, and to one or other of which all the paths of human life turned, to find their goal and their self-chosen destiny.

And not only so, but the transition from the Seen to the Unseen was not to Jesus the abrupt and total change that it seems to man. To us the dividing-line is both dark and broad. It seems to us a transmigration to some new and strange world, where we must begin life de novo. To Jesus the line was narrow, like one of the imaginary meridians of earth, the “here” shading off into the “hereafter,” while both were but the hemispheres of one round life. And so Jesus did not often speak of “death”; that was too human a word. He preferred the softer names of “sleep” or “exodus,” thus making death the quickener of life, or likening it to a triumphal march from bondage to liberty. Nor was “the Valley of the Shadow” to Jesus a strange, unfamiliar place. He knew all its secrets, all its windings. It was His own territory, where His will was supreme. Again and again He throws a commanding voice across the valley, a voice which goes reverberating among the heights beyond, and instantly the departed spirit retraces its steps, to animate again the cold clay it had forsaken. “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living,” said Jesus, as He claimed for Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob an existence altogether apart from the crumbling dust of Hebron; and as we see Moses and Elias coming to the Mount of Transfiguration, we see that the departed have not so far departed as to take no interest in earthly things, and as not to hear the strike of earthly hours. And how clearly this is seen in the resurrection life of Jesus, with which this Gospel closes! Death and the Grave have done their worst to Him, but how little is that worst! How insignificant the blank it makes in the Divine Life! The few hours in the grave were but a semibreve rest in the music of that Life; the Easter morning struck a fresh bar, and the music went on, in the higher spaces, it is true, but in the same key and in the same sweet strain. And just so is it with all human life”; the grave is not our goal.” Conditions and circumstances will of necessity change, as the mortal puts on immortality, but the life itself will be one and the same life, here amid things visible and temporal, and there amid the invisible and eternal.

2. The Gospel shows in what respects the conditions of the after-life will be changed. In Luk 20:27 we read how that the Sadducees came to Jesus, tempting Him. They were the cold materialists of the age, denying the existence of spirits, and so denying the resurrection. They put before Him an extreme, though not impossible case, of a woman who had been the wife, successively, of seven brethren; and they ask, with the ripple of an inward laugh in their question, “In the resurrection therefore whose wife of them shall she be?” Jesus answered, “The sons of this world marry, and are given in marriage: but they that are accounted worthy to attain to that world, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: for neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels; and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.” It will be observed how Jesus plays with the word around which the Sadducean mind revolves. To them marriage was a key-word which locked up the gates of an after-life, and threw back the resurrection among the impossibilities and absurdities. But Jesus takes up their key-word, and turning it round and round in His speech, He makes it unlock and open the inner soul of these men, showing how, in spite of their intellectuality, the drift of their thoughts was but low and sensual. At the same time Jesus shows that their test-word is altogether mundane. It is made for earth alone; for having a nature of flesh and blood, it cannot enter into the higher kingdom of glory. Marriage has its place in the life whose termini are birth and death. It exists mainly for the perpetuation and increase of the human race. It has thus to do with the lower nature of man, the physical, the earthly; but in the world to come birth, marriage, death will be outdated, obsolete terms. Man then will be “equal unto the angels,” the coarser nature which fitted him for earth being shaken off and left behind, amongst other mortalities.

And exactly the same truth is taught by the three posthumous appearances recorded in this Gospel. When they appeared upon the Mount of Transfiguration, Moses and Elias had been residents of the other world, the one for nine, the other for fourteen centuries. But while possessing the form, and perhaps the features of the old body of earth, the glorious body they wear now is under conditions and laws altogether different. How easy and aerial are its movements! Though it possesses no wings, it has the lightness and buoyancy of a bird, moving through space swiftly and silently as the light pulses through the ether. Or take the body of Christs resurrection life. It has not yet become the glorified body of the heavenly life; it is in its transition state, between the two: yet how changed it is! Lifted above the needs and laws of our earth-bound nature, the risen Christ no longer lives among His own; He dwells apart, where we cannot tell. When He does appear He comes in upon them suddenly, giving no warning of His approach; and then, after the bright though brief apocalypse, He vanishes as mysteriously as He came, passing at the last on the clouds to heaven. There is thus some correspondence between the body of the old and that of the new life, though how far the resemblance extends we cannot tell; we can only fail back upon the Apostles words, which to our human ear sound like a paradox, but which give us our only solution of the enigma, “It is raised a spiritual body”. {1Co 15:44} It is no longer the “natural body,” but a supernatural one, with a spiritual instead of a material form, and under spiritual laws.

But taking the Apostles words as our baseline, and measuring from them, we may throw our lines of sight across the hereafter, reading at least as much as this, that whatever may be the pleasures or the pains of the afterlife, they will be of a spiritual, and not of a physical, kind. It is just here that our vision sometimes gets blurred and indistinct, as all the descriptions of that after-life, even in Scripture, are given in earthly figures. And so we have built up before us a material heaven, with jasper walls, and gates of pearl, and gardens of perennial fruits, with crowns and other palace delights. But it is evident that these are but the earthly shadows of the heavenly realities, the darkened glasses of our earthly speech, which help our dull vision to gaze upon glories which the eye of our mortality hath not seen, and which its heart cannot conceive, except dimly, as a few “broken lights” pass through the dark lenses of these earthly figures. What new senses may be created we do not know, but if the body of the after-life is “a spiritual body,” then its whole environment must be changed. Material substances can no longer affect it, either to cause pleasure or pain; and though we may not yet tell in what the delights of the one state, or the pains of the other will consist, we do know that they must be something other than literal palms and crowns, and other than material fires. These figures are but the stammerings of our earthly speech, as it tries to tell the unutterable.

3. Our Gospel teaches that character determines destiny. “A mans life,” said Jesus, when rebuking covetousness, {Luk 12:15} “consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.” These are not lifes noblest aim, nor its truest wealth. They are but the accidents of life, the particles of floating dust, caught up by the stream; they will be left behind soon as the sediment, if not before, when they reach the barrier of the grave. A mans possessions do not constitute the true life, they do not make the real self, the man. Here it is not what a man has, but what a man is. And a man is just what his heart makes him. The outer life is but the blossoming of the inner soul, and what we call character, in its objective meaning, is but the subtle and silent influence, the odor, as we might call it, fragrant or otherwise, which the soul unconsciously throws out. And even in this world character is more than circumstance, for it gives aim and direction to the whole life. Men do not always reach their goal in earthly things, but in the moral world each man goes to his “own place,” the place he himself has chose, and sought; he is the arbiter of his own destiny.

And what we find to be a law of earth is the law of the kingdom of heaven, as Jesus was constantly affirming. The future life would simply be the present life, with eternity as its coefficient. Destiny itself would be but the harvest of earthly deeds, the hereafter being only the after-here. Jesus shows us how while on earth we may lay up “treasures in the heavens,” making for ourselves “purses which wax not old,” and thus becoming “rich toward God.” He draws a vivid picture of “a certain rich man,” whose one estimate of life was “the abundance of the things which he possessed,” the size and affluence of his barns, and whose soul was required of him just when he was congratulating it on the years of guaranteed plenty, bidding it, “Take thine ease, eat, drink, and be merry”. {Luk 12:16-22} He does not here trace for us the destiny of such a soul-He does this in another parable-but He pictures it as suddenly torn away, and eternally separated, from all it had possessed before, leaving it, perhaps, to be squandered thriftlessly, or consumed by the fires of lust; while, starved and shriveled, the pauper soul is driven out from its earthly stewardship, to find, alas! no welcome in the “eternal tabernacles.” In the appraisement of this world such a man would be deemed wise and happy, but to Heaven he is the “foolish one,” committing the great, the eternal folly.

The same lesson is taught in the parables of the House-builders {Luk 6:47} and of the Talents. {Luk 19:12} In each there comes the inevitable test, the down-rush of the flood and the reckoning of the lord, a test which leaves the obedient secure and happy, the faithful promoted to honor and rewards, passed up among the kings; but the disobedient, if not entombed in the ruins of their false hopes, yet all shelterless from the pitiless storm, and the unfaithful and slothful servant stripped of even the little he had, passed downwards into dishonor and shame.

In another parable, that of the Rich Man and Lazarus, {Luk 16:19-31} we have a light thrown upon our subject which is at once vivid and lurid. In a few graphic words He draws for us the picture of strange contrasts. The one is rich, dwelling in a palatial residence, whose imposing gateway looked down upon the vulgar crowd; clothed in garments of Tyrian purple and of Egyptian byssus, which only great wealth could purchase, and faring sumptuously every day. So, with perpetual banquets, the rich man lived his selfish, sensual life. With thought all centered upon himself, and that his lowest self, he has no thoughts or sympathies to spare for the outlying world. They do not even travel so far as to the poor beggar who is cast daily at his gate, in hopes that some of the shaken-out crumbs of the banquet may fall within his reach. Such is the contrast-the extreme of wealth, and the extreme of poverty; the one with troops of friends, the other friendless-for the verb shows that the hands which laid him down by the rich mans gate were not the gentle hands of affection, but the rough hands of duty or of a cold charity; the one clothed in splendid attire, the other not possessing enough even to cover his sores; the one gorged to repletion, the other shrunken and starved; the one the anonymous Epicurean, the other possessing a name indeed, but naught beside, but a name that had a Divinity hidden within it, and which was an index to the soul that bore it. Such were the two characters Jesus portrayed; and then, lifting up the veil of shadows, He shows how the marked contrast reappears in the after-life, but with a strange inverting. Now the poor man is blessed, the rich in distress; the one is enfolded in Abrahams bosom, the other enveloped in flames; the one has all the delights of Paradise, the other begs for just a drop of water with which to cool the parched tongue.

It may be said that this is simply parable, set forth in language which must not be taken literally. So it is; but the parables of Jesus were not merely word-pictures; they held in solution essential truth. And when we have eliminated all this figurative coloring there is still left this residuary, elementary truth, that character determines destiny that we cast into our future the shadow of our present selves; that the good will be blessed, and the evil unblessed, which means accursed; and that heaven and hell are tremendous realities, whose pleasures and whose pains lie alike deep beyond the sounding of our weak speech. When the rich man forgot his duties to humanity; when he banished God from his mansion and proscribed mercy from his thoughts; when he left Heavens foundling to the dogs, he was writing out his book of doom, passing sentence upon himself. The tree lies as it falls, and it falls as it leans; and where is there place for the unforgiven, the unregenerate, for the sensual and the selfish, the unjust and the unclean, but somewhere in the outer darkness they themselves have helped to make? To the sensual and the vile heaven itself would be a hell, its very joys curdling into pain, its streets, thronged with the multitudes of the redeemed, offering to the guilty and unrenewed soul but a solitude of silence and anguish; and even were there no final judgment, no solemn pronouncement of destiny, the evil could never blend with the good, the pure with the vile; they would gravitate, even as they do now, in opposite directions, each seeking its “own place.” Wherever and whatever our final heaven may be, no one is an outcast but who casts himself out, a self-immolator, a suicide.

But is it destiny? It may be asked. May there not be an after-probation, so that character itself may be transformed? May not the “great gulf” itself disappear, or at least be bridged over, so that the repentant may pass out of its penal but purifying fires? Such, indeed, is the belief, or rather the hope, of some; but “the larger hope” as they are pleased to call it, as far as this Gospel is concerned, is a beautiful but illusive dream. He who was Himself the “Resurrection and the Life,” and who holds in His own hands the keys of death and of hades, gives no hint of such a posthumous palingenesis. He speaks again and again of a day of test and scrutiny, when actions will be weighed and characters assayed, and when men will be judged according to their works. Now it is at the “coming” of the Son of man, in the glory of His Father, and with a retinue of “holy angels”; now it is the returning of the lord, and the reckoning with his servants; while again it is at the end of the world, as the angel-reapers separate the wheat from the tares; or as He Himself, the great Judge, with His “Come ye,” passes on the faithful to the heavenly kingdom, and at the same time, with His “Depart ye,” drives from His presence the unfaithful and unforgiven into the outer darkness. Nor does Jesus say one word to suggest that the judgment is not final. The blasphemy against the Holy Ghost, whatever that may mean, shall not be forgiven, {Luk 12:10} as St. Matthew expresses it, “neither in this world, nor in that which is to come.” The unfaithful servant is “cut asunder”; {Mat 12:46} the enemies who would not have their Lord to reign over them are slain {Luk 19:27}; and when once the door is shut it is all in vain that those outside cry, “Lord, open to us!” they had an open door, but they slighted and scorned it, and now they must abide by their choice, outside the door, outside the kingdom, with the “workers of iniquity,” where “there is weeping and gnashing of teeth” {Luk 13:28}.

Or if we turn again to the parable of the Rich Man, where is there room for “the larger hope?” where is the suggestion that these “pains of hell” may be lessened, and ultimately escaped altogether? We listen in vain for one syllable of hope. In vain he makes his appeal to “father Abraham”; in vain he entreats the good offices of Lazarus; in vain he asks for a momentary alleviation of his pain, in the boon of one drop of water: between him and help, yea, between him and hope, is a “great gulf fixed that none may cross.” {Luk 16:26}

“That none may cross.” Such are the words of Jesus, though here put in the mouth of Abraham; and if finality is not here, where can we find it? What may be the judgment passed upon those who, though erring, are ignorant, we cannot tell, though Jesus plainly indicates that the number of the stripes will vary, as they knew, or they did not know, the Lords will; but for those who had the light, and turned from it, who saw the right, but did it not, who heard the Gospel of love, with its great salvation, and only rejected it-for these there is only an “outer darkness” of eternal hopelessness. And what is the outer darkness itself but the darkness of their own inner blindness, a blindness which was willful and persistent?

Our Gospel thus teaches that death does not alter character, that character makes destiny, and that destiny once determined is unalterable and eternal. Or, to put it in the words of the angel to the seer, “He that is unrighteous, let him do unrighteousness still: and he that is filthy, let him be made filthy still: and he that is righteous, let him do righteousness still: and be that is holy, let him be made holy still”. {Rev 22:11}

Fuente: Expositors Bible Commentary