In this text we read about Christ’s dispute with the Sadducees concerning the resurrection. It took place on the same day that the Pharisees attacked Jesus about paying tribute to Caesar. Satan was now busier than ever, trying to ruffle and disturb Him. Revelation 3:10 describes this encounter as an hour of temptation. The truth in Jesus will always meet with opposition in some form or other.
At the time of Christ, there were two radical groups. One group believed in visions, the existence of angels and spirits, and their effect of the invisible world. The other group denied life after death and a future existence. Those in the latter group could not grasp any spiritual truth. Therefore, they believed only in the existence of what they could touch and see. The Sadducees were in this category. They didn’t plan to get rid of Christ violently, but they would ridicule Him and devalue Him in men’s eyes. The Sadducees fabricated a situation that was intended to prove that there was no life after death. If Jesus agreed to the possibility of such a case, He would lose the respect of thinking people. If He denied it, the strict Pharisees would incite the believers against Him because of what they believed about life after death.
The Pharisees, who professed to believe in resurrection, had carnal notions concerning it. In the afterlife, they expected to find the delights and pleasures of the natural life, which perhaps drove the Sadducees to deny any afterlife at all. Nothing gives greater advantage to atheism and infidelity than the carnality of those who make religion a servant to their sensual appetites and secular interests. Now the Sadducees, in seeking to discredit Jesus, appeared as if they were accepting the position of the Pharisees.
Christ described the fabricators of this case as ignorant. He said to them, “You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures nor the power of God.” By these words, He condemned their logic, broke their pride, and proved to them that the philosophizing human mind cannot understand the Holy Bible, which alone proclaims God’s power and mysteries. He who believes can recognize the mysteries of the Word inspired to us, and derive from it a heavenly power. Yet, he who makes his mind a teacher above the Holy Scriptures cheats himself. Read the gospel, and pray that you may receive eternal guidance, power and comfort.
Christ said that the resurrection does not return believers to the same existence that they had before, but it carries them to a higher level, to the spiritual world. In this spiritual world, the lusts of the flesh come to an end, imaginations disappear, and man becomes either pure love with joy and peace, or else he face eternal separation from God. He who believes in the living Christ will become spiritually alive. With a pure heart, He will give wholehearted service.
Those who believe in Christ will be like the angels of God in heaven, in that they will not be raised with their earthly bodies, but with spiritual ones. In the resurrection, they are not given in marriage, nor do they long for temporal delights and pleasures. Instead, they live in spirit, truth, and holiness. Whoever imagines or hopes for sexual relations in heaven is mistaken. He does not know the Holy Scriptures and has not yet experienced God’s renewing power.
All those who truly believe in Christ are united with Him in the power of His life. They become God’s beloved children, and they know their heavenly Father in a better way than what was revealed in the Old Testament. This is the privilege of the grace covenant. God adopts all those who accept Christ; He gives them everlasting life, and they will not come into judgment. They have already passed from death into life.
Jesus taught that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are not dead but alive, because they opened their hearts to the voice of the Holy Spirit and believed in the coming Christ. Whoever turns to Jesus shall live. For believers, God’s power overcomes the temptation toward sin and the seed of death so that the resurrection can begin now. Faith in Christ is life, joy, and hope, not pessimism and death. Because the life given to us by the Holy Spirit dwells in us, we do not desire earthly pleasures, but only communion with our glorious Holy God.