Reflective Bible Study

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 a simple phrase that Luke included in his gospel that Matthew and Mark leave out: “. . . for to him all are alive” (v. 38b).

Most people feel/believe that there is life of some type after death. In this post, the Sadducees are challenging Jesus on this idea. Their question is one that they had used to disprove the idea of resurrection based on the writings of Moses.

The phrase Luke includes seems to support the idea of an immortal soul, but when we push past the surface, we find some interesting issues. If those who have “died” in this present life are conscious, and are either alive in heaven or alive in hell, then we have an interesting dilemma: Either God is in charge of both heaven and hell and Satan is trapped within time like the rest of us, or both God and Satan are outside of time and each have their respective “kingdoms”.

The fallacy in this argument is not in its logic, but in its assumptions – because it over-extends God’s perspective and superimposes our perspective onto it. We are assuming that because God sees everyone as “alive”, that everyone is “alive” throughout all points in history, or at the very least, for all points in history after they are born, and that they have simply transitioned “outside” of history’s timeline.

In our own storyline-movie example, would we think that someone dying in a movie means that they have died in real life or that if they are dead in real life, that watching a movie they acted in will bring them back to life? That would involve these actors shifting between two different timelines – and while it is easy for an actor to move into a movie timeline, a movie character cannot jump out of the movie and re-enter history at a later date.

However, if the creator of the character (i.e. the script-writer) wants to bring the character back in a sequel, they are perfectly capable of doing so.

What God promises to do is the same – to bring all of His people back into history in a “sequel” we call “the new heaven and the new earth”. God has promised a sequel for His followers – and what is great about this “perfect” sequel is that God has promised us that it will never end and that it will not have the negative points of the first history.

What happens between history and its sequel? Between two storylines, sometimes things happen, but if anything, the events between the present and the sequel are left to our imagination and are only uncovered when the sequel has begun. From our perspective, living in our chapter of history, we can only imagine what happens between the present and the sequel. This imagination is like a dream, which may be one reason why one of death’s parallel ideas in the Bible is “sleep”.

Have those who died left history and entered eternity? Perhaps, but when we dig into this passage, what might appear as a phrase that supports this thought really becomes a phrase that shifts our perspective – not a phrase that challenges the future resurrection that Jesus promised.

Is it possible for us to really understand God’s perspective? I don’t think so, but by paralleling God’s perspective alongside similar perspectives of our own, I do believe that we can have a better glimpse of how God sees life.

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.

If you have ever been in a church were those in the congregation talk back to the speaker, you may understand something that happens in this passage more than those who attend congregations where there is no dialog.

In a crowd where people are likely to speak up, whether it is simply to say “amen” in agreement, or if it is challenging something the pastor or presenter said, there is a completely different feeling in the room itself. I have preached in both types of places, and while each has its strengths, I prefer the more vocal crowds.

However, one challenging thing in vocal crowds is that there can be one person who speaks up and who can possibly derail the moment. We actually can see an example of this in Luke’s gospel during one of the times Jesus was speaking to the crowd.

Right when it seems like Jesus was about to hit on a key point about how to avoid being repeatedly trapped by an evil spirit and its friends, we read, “While Jesus was still talking, a woman in the crowd spoke up, ‘The woman who gave birth to you and nursed you is blessed!’” (v. 27)

Now this woman was giving Jesus and His mother a compliment. That is something that was very nice to do – but I really wonder what Jesus would have said next had it not been for this interruption.

Sometimes interruptions are inevitable, but how does Jesus respond to this statement? He replies: “That’s true, but the people who are really blessed are the ones who hear and obey God’s message!” (v. 28)

Perhaps this blends what Jesus was going to say, or perhaps it is simply a response to the distraction.

Whatever would have been said was derailed, but I wonder if Jesus jumped straight to His main point: We are blessed when we hear and obey God’s message. Perhaps Jesus was finished with the warning portion and this interruption served as a great transition that also emphasized the key idea He wanted to get across.

But the big thing I see with this interruption is that Jesus does not seem fazed or irritated. Instead, He simply goes along with the compliment, but wraps it into His big thought.

We can learn from this too. When life throws unexpected things at us, we may be tempted to get angry or upset, but either of these emotions don’t help solve the situation. Instead, we should accept the facts of what happened, and then continue moving forward despite how far we were set back.