27 Some of the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to Jesus with a question. 28 “Teacher,” they said, “Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, the man must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. 29 Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a woman and died childless. 30 The second 31 and then the third married her, and in the same way the seven died, leaving no children. 32 Finally, the woman died too. 33 Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”
34 Jesus replied, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. 35 But those who are considered worthy of taking part in the age to come and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, 36 and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection. 37 But in the account of the burning bush, even Moses showed that the dead rise, for he calls the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ 38 He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”
39 Some of the teachers of the law responded, “Well said, teacher!” 40 And no one dared to ask him any more questions.
Read Luke 20:27-40 in context and/or in other translations on BibleGateway.com!
Have you ever read a passage and had it change your perspective on the world?
Well today’s passage is a passage that has done this for me – specifically with the big idea that I want to draw from it. However, as we dig into this idea, remember that we must not let our preconceived ideas cloud the angle that this phrase takes.
In the broader story of this passage, Jesus has pushed back on the Sadducees’ question challenging the validity of the resurrection, and this event is found in Matthew, Mark, and Luke – but Luke includes a phrase that the other two gospels leave out: “. . . for to him all are alive” (v. 38b)
Prior to studying out this passage and looking at all three gospel accounts, I had never noticed this phrase before – and I have never heard someone preach on it either.
On the surface, this phrase appears to support the idea that there is immediate life following death – and not just for Christians following Jesus’ death and resurrection, but for God’s people throughout history – “for to him all are alive.” On the surface, this phrase undermines the foundation for the resurrection that Jesus was defending, because if everyone is alive to God, there isn’t any need to “resurrect” them.
Luke’s phrase bothers me. Is he placing words in Jesus’ mouth, or have Matthew and Mark failed to include all of Jesus’ key point?
Let’s look at the context of Jesus’ main point. All three gospels have Jesus supporting the resurrection by pointing out that several key people from Jewish history are “alive” to God, even though they have long decayed. The first thing Jesus does is shift our focus. Our focus wants to default to our view of the world, but Jesus wants us to look instead from God’s point of view – but what makes it especially difficult in this case is that God is outside of time, while we have only known a life within time. Jesus is saying that in God’s eyes, these historical figures are alive.
It is as though God is standing outside of a long storyline, and He can step in and view any “chapter” in history and see the people in that chapter as alive, while also being able to move through the timeline to see other events that happen much later.
To help illustrate God’s perspective further, imagine you are watching a movie, and about 15 minutes in, one of the main character’s friends dies. For the rest of the movie, this friend will be dead, but at any point if we restart or rewind the movie to near the beginning, the friend will again appear alive.
Let’s take our movie illustration further and say that this is an older movie, and both the actor who played the friend and the actor who played the main character have died. At any point, we can play the movie and see these actors as though they are alive – but what we are really viewing is a single point in their past that was recorded.
Then let’s move out further, into God’s perspective. He can see the timeline of history, and can fast forward or rewind to any point in it. At whatever point He focuses on, the people who are in that story are alive, but if He fast forwards several generations (i.e. chapters), they might not be alive any more.
This is a very different perspective than what we are use to thinking, but Jesus likes shifting our perspective, because God’s ways and thoughts are higher than our thoughts, and life rarely makes sense when only looking at it from our “human” perspective.
P.S. While writing, I kept going, but instead of giving you an extra long post (2-3x longer than average), I decided to break it up and give key points along the way. In a future post, we’ll continue where we left off and dig deeper into what this unassuming but tricky phrase could mean.
This thought was inspired by studying the Walking With Jesus “Reflective Bible Study” package. To discover insights like this in your own study time, click here and give Reflective Bible Study a try today!
Subscribe to this blog and never miss an insight.