Mark Bradford's Bible Blog

The Resurrection and Marriage

²⁷Some 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 have children for his brother. ²⁹Now there were seven brothers. The first one married a woman and died childless. ³⁰The second ³¹and then the third married her, and in the same way the seven died, leaving no children. ³²Finally, the woman died too. ³³Now then, at the resurrection whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”

This exchange also takes place in Mark 12:18-27. See my post on that passage here. The Sadducees were a wealthy, aristocratic, intellectual sect of Judaism who did not believe in an afterlife, as opposed to the Pharisees, who did. They also only regarded the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament, as true scripture. They were literalists who rejected the Pharisees’ “tradition of the elders,” the “oral law” that “hedged” around the Law with hundreds of mini-rules. They didn’t impose as many rules and weren’t nearly as strict as the Pharisees.

There is actually much disagreement on the subject of an afterlife in the Old Testament. For instance, David did not believe in an afterlife. See Psalm 30:9:

“What gain is there in my destruction, ^[a]
in my going down into the pit?
Will the dust praise you?
Will it proclaim your faithfulness?

Also see Psalm 6:5 and Psalm 88:11. David always seemed to think that if God didn’t rescue him from his enemies, he would not be able to praise God after he died. Solomon also had his doubts, as shown in Ecclesiates 9:10. On the other hand, there are several references to resurrection in the Old Testament (1 Samuel 2:6, Job 19:26, Isaiah 26:19), but they are all in the prophets, and the Sadducees did not regard the prophets as scripture. If you’re interested in learning more about Jewish beliefs in an afterlife, I recommend reading Wikipedia’s page on it and this article from ReligionFacts.com.

The Sadducees were not trying to make a serious point or ask a serious question. They were trying to make the doctrine of resurrection seem ridiculous. This was like asking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, or if Adam had a belly button. But their question has some of the same flaws regarding the concept of Heaven that people have today. Jesus not only points out how wrong they are about marital relationships in Heaven, but also about resurrection in general.

³⁴Jesus replied, “The people of this age marry and are given in marriage. ³⁵But those who are considered worthy of taking part in that age and in the resurrection from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage, ³⁶and they can no longer die; for they are like the angels. They are God’s children, since they are children of the resurrection. ³⁷But in the account of the 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.’^{[c] 38}He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to him all are alive.”

In Mark’s version of this exchange, Jesus tells the Sadducees that they are mistaken because they don’t know the scriptures or the power of God (Mark 12:24). So many silly doctrinal and philosophical arguments arise from just those two problems, and one leads to the other. If we don’t know the scriptures, we will not know the power of God. On the subject of marriage in Heaven, Jesus says that marriages will not take place in the afterlife. Though marriage is ordained by God, and at its best, is a spiritual union, its origin lies in sexual attraction, which is a biological impulse. It’s the biological impulse to reproduce, and it’s very powerful. But when we get to Heaven, there will be no more reproduction, as far as we know. Marriage is God’s way of channeling our sex drive so we don’t behave like animals. But in Heaven that will no longer be necessary. Marriage and reproduction are necessary in a world where people die, but in Heaven, where we will never die, it’s obsolete. I believe we will know and recognize each other in Heaven, and we will see our loved ones there, but our relationships with them won’t be the same. Our joy will not be in being reunited with our loved ones, but in the fact that we are all there with Jesus. Romantic ideas of being “together forever”, even in Heaven, are not scriptural.

While talking about marriage, Jesus never leaves the subject of the resurrection of the dead. He makes sure the Sadducees know that he assumes the truth of that doctrine throughout all he says. In Mark 12:27, he tells them they are “badly mistaken.” Since the Sadducees only held that the first five books of the Old Testament were true scripture, he quoted from Exodus 3:6. Jesus’ point was that God did not say “I was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”, he said “I am their God”. The patriarchs were long dead when God said that to Moses, but Jesus said to the Sadducees that God is the God of the living, not the dead.

Remember that they are not talking about the eternal soul here, they are taking about the resurrection of the body. This is one of the great mysteries of the Bible, and of our faith. The patriarchs had not been resurrected by that point, from our perspective, but they were alive to God. Moses and Elijah had appeared bodily at the Transfiguration a few weeks before, but from an earthly perspective, the resurrection had not happened yet. I explain it this way. God and eternity exist outside of time. In Heaven, and to God, there is no past or future, only an eternal present. Therefore, from God’s perspective, everyone who will be in Heaven after the final resurrection is already there now. God is like someone watching a parade from the top of a tall building, whereas we are like people watching the same parade from street level. We only see a sequence of events, but God sees the whole picture from start to finish as one event.

But I digress. The Sadducees were arguing that there is no resurrection, but Jesus knew he would rise from the dead in just a few days. But he didn’t tell the Sadducees that. They would not have believed him anyway. These men were too in love with their position, wealth, and with arguing arcane points of doctrine. But there was legitimate disagreement in Judaism about resurrection and afterlife. Jesus answered those questions definitively here.

³⁹Some of the teachers of the law responded, “Well said, teacher!” ⁴⁰And no one dared to ask him any more questions.

Evidently there were Pharisees and scribes in the crowd as well, who were on the other side of this argument. For once, they agreed with Jesus. It seemed to them that Jesus was supporting their position. But Jesus was not taking their side in a debate. He was teaching from his own knowledge of the scriptures and of Eternity. In that moment, the Pharisees thought Jesus was on their side. But they did not prove to be on Jesus’ side. As Abraham Lincoln said, “My concern is not whether God is on our side; my greatest concern is to be on God’s side, for God is always right.”

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¹⁶ “Until John the Baptist, the law of Moses and the messages of the prophets were your guides. But now the Good News of the Kingdom of God is preached, and everyone is eager to get in.^{[d] 17} But that doesn’t mean that the law has lost its force. It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the smallest point of God’s law to be overturned. (NLB)

The Pharisees were very concerned about strict adherence to the law, and to the many rules they had added to the law. They thought this made them more righteous than everyone else. Jesus exposed their hypocrisy, showing them that even though they followed all of these rules and traditions, they still loved money, rule keeping, and prestige more than people and God. They had forgotten love, mercy, and justice, which are at the heart of the law. In this very brief teaching, Jesus explained to them how the era of the law of Moses was giving way to a new paradigm, the kingdom of God. The dividing line between the old paradigm and the new was John the Baptist, who prepared the way for Jesus. Jesus preached the good news of the kingdom of God, the Gospel. In the kingdom of God, things would be different.

There are conflicting translations of the second part of verse 16. The NIV translates it, “Since that time, the good news of the kingdom of God is being preached, and everyone is forcing his way into it.” The Amplified Bible says, “since then the good news (the Gospel) of the kingdom of God is being preached, and everyone strives violently to go in [would force his ^[l]own way rather than God’s way into it].” Most versions translate this part of verse 16 that way. But the New Living Bible translates it as above, “and everyone is eager to get in” or “everyone is urged to enter in.” The difference is in how the Greek word biazo, which means “to apply force” is translated. It can be translated that force is applied by everyone, or that force is applied to everyone. Most versions accept the former translation, but the NLB uses the latter. I prefer the New Living translation, because it seems more true to me. The problem with translating it the other way is that it’s simply not true that everyone is trying to force their way into the kingdom of God. Many reject the Kingdom altogether. But it is true that through the preaching of the Gospel, everyone is urged to go in. The law excluded all of those who were not Jews. But in the kingdom of God, all are urged to go in. I think that’s what Jesus is really saying in that verse.

Jesus did not come to destroy the law, but to fulfill it (Matthew 5:17). The law and the prophets all pointed to this moment, when the kingdom of God would be introduced. But does verse 17 mean that the laws of the Old Testament must still be followed? Look at what Jesus actually said in verse 17. “It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the smallest point of God’s law to be overturned.” The NIV says, “It is easier for heaven and earth to disappear than for the least stroke of a pen to drop out of the Law.” The New King James says, “And it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one tittle of the law to fail.” First, the law didn’t fail, it was fulfilled. Second, heaven and earth will pass away, so Jesus isn’t saying that it’s impossible for a new paradigm to supersede the law. Just that only God can do it, as only he can make heaven and earth pass away.

We know that sacrifices for sin are no longer required because of the sacrifice of Jesus. He fulfilled that part of the law, making further sacrifices unnecessary (Hebrews 7:27). That part of the law did not fail, it was not overturned, and it did not disappear. It was fulfilled. Other laws that have been superseded by the kingdom of God and the new covenant are laws whose purpose was to identify a person as Jewish as opposed to Gentile, like circumcision and concern about clean foods. These are no longer necessary (Acts 10–11, 15), because in Christ there is no Jew or Gentile (Gal. 3:28, Col. 3:11). To me, these are good principles to keep in mind when reading the Old Testament and trying to figure out which laws still apply to Christians and which don’t.

To this day, there is a tension between law and grace. I think a lot of it comes down to personality. Some people are more comfortable with law and some are more comfortable with grace. But there is danger in both schools of thought. For those who love rule keeping, it’s easy to become legalistic and judgmental of others like the Pharisees. For those who prefer grace, it’s easy to discard all rules and think they can live however they want, because they’re not under law, but grace. During my lifetime, I have seen the church in America swing from one extreme to the other. It’s interesting to me that in the space of two verses, Jesus depicted the tension between those two opposing views perfectly. In talking to the legalistic Pharisees, he started by saying that the law and prophets were the standard until John the Baptist, and in the next breath says that it’s easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one small part of the law to fail. And so the struggle to find a balance between law and grace continues 2,000 years later.

¹⁸ “For example, a man who divorces his wife and marries someone else commits adultery. And anyone who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.”

Here was an example of how the Pharisees had perverted the law. They were very strict about keeping their rules and the law of Moses, but they took the most liberal view of divorce. They thought it was OK to divorce their wife if she burned a meal, or they found someone prettier. Jesus used this as a way of pointing out a law of God which still was in effect, but that they were not keeping. Jesus taught much more about marriage and divorce in Mark 10:1-12. See my post on that passage here. Remember that this whole conversation started when the Pharisees in 15:2 accused Jesus of associating with sinners, which in their eyes, made him a sinner. But they were the ones who were committing adultery with their attitude toward marriage and divorce. Take the plank out of your own eye before you try to take the speck out of someone else’s eye (Luke 6:41-42).

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Marriage at the Resurrection

¹⁸Then the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. ¹⁹“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 have children for his brother. ²⁰Now there were seven brothers. The first one married and died without leaving any children. ²¹The second one married the widow, but he also died, leaving no child. It was the same with the third. ²²In fact, none of the seven left any children. Last of all, the woman died too. ²³At the resurrection^[c] whose wife will she be, since the seven were married to her?”

The Sadducees were a wealthy, aristocratic, intellectual group who did not believe in an afterlife, as opposed to the Pharisees, who did. There is actually much disagreement on the subject of an afterlife in the Old Testament. For instance, David did not believe in an afterlife. See Psalm 30:9:

“What gain is there in my destruction, ^[a]
in my going down into the pit?
Will the dust praise you?
Will it proclaim your faithfulness?

Also see Psalm 6:5 and Psalm 88:11. David always seemed to think that if God didn’t rescue him from his enemies, he would not be able to praise God after he died. Solomon also had his doubts, as shown in Ecclesiates 9:10. On the other hand, there are several references to resurrection in the Old Testament (1 Samuel 2:6, Job 19:26, Isaiah 26:19), but they are all in the prophets. The Sadducees only believed in the Torah, the first five books of the Old Testament. If you’re interested in learning more about Jewish beliefs in an afterlife, I recommend reading Wikipedia’s page on it and this article from ReligionFacts.com.

The Sadducees were not trying to make a serious point or ask a serious question. They were trying to make the doctrine of resurrection seem ridiculous. This was like asking how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, or if Adam had a belly button. But their question has some of the same flaws regarding the concept of Heaven that people have today. Jesus not only points out how wrong they are about marital relationships in Heaven, but also about resurrection in general.

²⁴Jesus replied, “Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God? ²⁵When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. ²⁶Now about the dead rising—have you not read in the book of Moses, in the account of the bush, how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’^[d]? ²⁷He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!”

First, Jesus points out their error in two areas. They don’t know the scriptures, and they don’t know the power of God. So many silly doctrinal and philosophical arguments arise from just those two problems, and one leads to the other. If we don’t know the scriptures, we will not know the power of God. Second, Jesus addresses the question of marriage in Heaven. Though marriage is ordained by God, and at its best, is a spiritual union, its origin lies in sexual attraction, which is a biological impulse. It’s the biological impulse to reproduce, and it’s very powerful. But when we get to Heaven, there will be no more reproduction, as far as we know. Marriage is God’s way of channeling our sex drive so we don’t behave like animals. But in Heaven that will no longer be necessary. I believe we will know and recognize each other in Heaven, and we will see our loved ones there, but our relationships with them won’t be the same. Our joy will not be in being reunited with our loved ones, but in the fact that we are all there with Jesus. Romantic ideas of being “together forever”, even in Heaven, are not scriptural.

Third, Jesus corrects their mistaken ideas about resurrection. Since the Sadducees only held that the first five books of the Old Testament were true scripture, he quoted from Exodus 3:6. Jesus’ point was that God did not say “I was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob”, he said “I am their God”. The patriarchs were long dead when God said that to Moses, but Jesus said to the Sadducees that God is the God of the living, not the dead. Remember that they are not talking about the eternal soul here, they are taking about the resurrection of the body. This is one of the great mysteries of the Bible, and of our faith. The patriarchs had not been resurrected by that point, from our perspective, but they were alive to God. Moses and Elijah had appeared bodily at the Transfiguration a few weeks before, but from an earthly perspective, the resurrection had not happened yet. I explain it this way. God and eternity exist outside of time. In Heaven, and to God, there is no past or future, only an eternal present. Therefore, from God’s perspective, everyone who will be in Heaven after the final resurrection is already there now. God is like someone watching a parade from the top of a tall building, whereas we are like people watching the same parade from street level. We only see a sequence of events, but God sees the whole picture from start to finish as one event.

But I digress. The Sadducees were arguing that there is no resurrection, but Jesus knew he would rise from the dead in just a few days. But he didn’t tell the Sadducees that. They would not have believed him anyway. These men were too in love with their position, wealth, and with arguing arcane points of doctrine. But there was legitimate disagreement in Judaism about resurrection and afterlife. Jesus answered those questions definitively here.

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Divorce

¹Jesus then left that place and went into the region of Judea and across the Jordan. Again crowds of people came to him, and as was his custom, he taught them.

²Some Pharisees came and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful for a man to divorce his wife?”

³“What did Moses command you?” he replied.

⁴They said, “Moses permitted a man to write a certificate of divorce and send her away.”

The Pharisees were trying to trap Jesus again. The scripture reference Jesus is referring to is Deuteronomy 24:1-4.

¹ If a man marries a woman who becomes displeasing to him because he finds something indecent about her, and he writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, ² and if after she leaves his house she becomes the wife of another man, ³ and her second husband dislikes her and writes her a certificate of divorce, gives it to her and sends her from his house, or if he dies, ⁴ then her first husband, who divorced her, is not allowed to marry her again after she has been defiled. That would be detestable in the eyes of the LORD. Do not bring sin upon the land the LORD your God is giving you as an inheritance.

You can see from this passage that what Moses wrote about divorce was merely a reference to what was already going on. Moses wasn’t saying it was good or even OK for men to divorce their wives this way, he was acknowledging that it was happening, and setting boundaries for it. The key phrase is in verse 1, “because he finds something indecent about her”. There were two schools of thought on divorce in Judaism at that time, one very liberal, and one more conservative. The conservative view held that indecent or unclean meant only sexual immorality. The liberal view was that if a man found his wife unacceptable for any reason, he could simply write her a note and send her away. According to that view, a woman could be divorced for burning a meal, or if her voice could be heard in the next house, or even if her husband found someone he liked better. It’s not surprising that many men liked the more liberal view. The Pharisees were asking Jesus if it was lawful for a man to divorce his wife for any reason, trying to trap him into either speaking against the law of Moses or speaking against a popular idea.

Jesus’ answer is intriguing for a couple of reasons. One, he asked the Pharisees what Moses commanded, but the Pharisees answered what Moses permitted. The other thing that intrigues me is that Jesus did not ask what God commanded, but what Moses commanded. Both get to the same point. This was not a law of God, but an allowance made for popular custom. In that time and culture, women were considered property, more or less. But over the centuries, God was nudging his people toward true monogamous marriage. In much of Old Testament times, it was acceptable for a man to have more than one wife, but by the time of Jesus, that was no longer allowed. Now Jesus corrects the mistaken ideas they still have about marriage and divorce, and points them back to God’s ideal for marriage.

⁵“It was because your hearts were hard that Moses wrote you this law,” Jesus replied. ⁶“But at the beginning of creation God ‘made them male and female.’^{[a] 7}‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife,^{[b] 8}and the two will become one flesh.’^[c] So they are no longer two, but one. ⁹Therefore what God has joined together, let man not separate.”

Jesus steers the conversation away from talking about divorce to talking about marriage. The Pharisees were so interested in when it was OK to divorce they had forgotten what marriage was about. Each of his points are telling. By going back to creation, he shows that God ordained marriage from the very beginning. In verse 7, he reinforced that by quoting from Genesis 2:24. The term for united literally means yoked together, like two oxen pulling a plow. A farmer couldn’t plow his field if the two oxen who were yoked together wouldn’t pull in the same direction, and marriage works the same way. There are lots of interpretations of what the two becoming one flesh means, but the simplest interpretation, for me, is in the act of sex and in childbirth. In the most intimate act of a married relationship, two bodies literally do become one. And when a child is born from that act of unity, the child is a combination of the two parents, physically. It’s great to talk about spiritual and emotional unity, and those things are vital to a good marriage, but I don’t think Jesus is talking about that here. He didn’t say one spirit, he said one flesh.

The word he uses for separate in verse 9 implies amputation. If the two are one flesh, to separate that is like separating a body from itself. Sometimes amputation is necessary medically, but only in the most extreme cases. The Pharisees had a casual attitude toward divorce, much like we do today. Jesus reminded them that marriage is not something to be thrown away like yesterday’s newspaper.

¹⁰When they were in the house again, the disciples asked Jesus about this. ¹¹He answered, “Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery against her. ¹²And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.”

Divorce is a difficult topic, and we have to base our conclusions on what the Bible says about it on the whole of scripture, not just this one passage. But I believe that divorce is the cause of many of our problems as a culture, and it has torn the heart out of the church. Pastors are afraid to preach against divorce on Biblical grounds because so many in their own congregation are divorced. Evangelicals in America get all worked up over other perceived “threats” to marriage, and want to pass laws to “protect” marriage, but the real threat to marriage is divorce. Marriage is not just a social contract, it is a sacred vow before God. Making a vow is a serious matter, and breaking one is even more serious. Far too many who call themselves Christians break a vow they made to God because of how they feel. Our feelings are unimportant compared to keeping our vow. I don’t want to imply that there are no good reasons for divorce. According to the Bible, sexual immorality and abandonment are reasons God allows divorce. But we can’t just walk away from our marriage because of how we feel.

Remember that the idea of marrying for love is a recent idea in Western culture. We have this popular notion that we will find our soulmate, get married, and have this magical romantic love for life, like in the movies. But when God laid down his principles for marriage, marriages were arranged by the families, often when the bride and groom were still children. Today, we get married because of how we feel about that person, and then later, if we feel differently, we want to move on to someone else and have that feeling again. Even Christians are guilty of this! And we wonder why the church is weak in America. We say we want to see revival in this country, and want to see the church be the church again, but it will never happen as long as we have this casual attitude toward marriage and divorce.

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