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Luke 20:37–40
“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. Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him” (vv. 37–38).
Continuity exists between life in this age and the age to come. The doctrine of the resurrection, in which we confess that our existing physical bodies will be raised to life at the return of Jesus, assumes as much. First Corinthians 15 tells us that the resurrected body of Christ is the paradigm for what our resurrected bodies will be like, and we know that His postresurrection body, though perfected, shared some characteristics with His preresurrection body (e.g., see John 20:24–29). Thus, we can expect that our resurrected bodies in the age to come, although perfected in glory, will share attributes with our preresurrection bodies. Despite this continuity, however, resurrected life will not be identical with life in the present age. Marriage will not be a part of the age to come, so there will be no complications in the resurrection related to marriage in the current age. The Sadducees were wrong to assume that the age to come will be identical to the present age and therefore wrong to reject belief in the resurrection on that basis (Luke 20:27–36).
In his dialogue with representatives over the resurrection, Jesus next turned to give a positive case for the doctrine. To do this, our Lord referred to the passage about Moses and the burning bush from Exodus 3. This text appears in the Pentateuch, the first five books of the Old Testament and the only portion of the Scriptures that the Sadducees believed could be used to define doctrine. Thus, Jesus’ appeal to this text, as recorded in Luke 20:37–38, strategically refuted the Sadducees’ denial of the resurrection on their own terms.
Calling back to Exodus 3, especially verses 6 and 15–16, Jesus noted that when God called Moses, He said that He remained the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob even though those men were long dead by the time of the burning bush. When God spoke to Moses, He said, “I am the God of the patriarchs,” not “I was the God . . .” We would expect the latter if the patriarchs ceased to exist when they died; the former makes sense only if Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob live on beyond the grave. Furthermore, God promised to give the patriarchs the promised land (Gen. 12:7), but as we know from Genesis, all the patriarchs died before receiving the full promised inheritance. Yet God cannot lie and cannot fail to keep His promises (Heb. 6:13–20). The only way for Him to fulfill His promises to the patriarchs, therefore, is for them to live on past the grave so that they can receive the promised land in their resurrection.
Coram Deo Living before the face of God
God is sovereign over death, but He is the Lord and Savior of the living, the personal protector and reward of those who have been granted spiritual life now and resurrected, glorified bodies in the age to come. He is the God of those who in the resurrection are cast into the lake of fire, for He is their Creator, but His relationship to them is not that of Savior but of punishing Judge, repaying them in wrath for their sins.
For further study
- Jeremiah 10
- Daniel 12:1–3
- Matthew 22:23–33
- Acts 24:14–15
The bible in a year
- Isaiah 41–42
- Colossians 1:1–2:5