Luke 20:27 - Meaning and Application

This discussion with the Sadducees appears earlier in the Gospel, almost word for word, though here Jesus explains the future life in greater detail. Notice first that in every age there have been people with corrupt minds who try to tear down the basic truths of revealed religion. Today we have deists, who call themselves free thinkers but are really false thinkers. In Jesus’ time, there were Sadducees, a Jewish group that mocked the teaching about the resurrection of the dead and the life to come, even though both were clearly taught in the Old Testament and belonged to the Jewish faith.

The Sadducees denied that there would be any resurrection, any future life, or any continuance of the soul. They rejected the whole unseen world of spirits and any future reward or judgment for what people did in the body. Take that away, and all religion collapses. When people want to weaken a truth from God, they often confuse it and pile up hard questions against it. That is what these Sadducees did.

When they wanted to shake people’s faith in the resurrection, they raised a case they thought could not be answered either way. The story may have been real, or at least it could have been. A woman had seven husbands in succession. They asked, “In the resurrection, whose wife will she be?” But that question was beside the point, because death ends that marriage relationship, and it is not taken up again.

There is a great difference between life in this world and life in heaven, a huge difference between this world and the next. We do ourselves and the truth of Christ a disservice when we picture the world of spirits by what we know from the world we now see and touch. In this present life, people marry and are given in marriage. That is true of the children of this age, both good and bad. Much of life here is spent raising families and providing for them. Much of our pleasure also comes from our relationships, especially husbands, wives, and children.

Marriage is God’s gift for this life, where we live in bodies. It is also a safeguard against sexual sin, so our natural desires are guided and controlled instead of becoming animal-like. People in this world are dying and leaving the stage, so they marry and have children to keep the human race going. One generation passes away, and another comes. They also hope to leave behind their own children, especially because marriage is meant to raise a godly seed, a people who will serve the Lord, a generation belonging to Him (Malachi 2:15).

The world to come is a very different thing. It is called “that world” with special weight and emphasis. There are, in that sense, two worlds, the present visible one and the future invisible one. Each of us should compare them and give the better place in our thoughts and concerns to the world that truly deserves it.

Who will live in that world? It will be those who are counted worthy to obtain it, meaning those who belong to Christ, who bought that world for us, and who have been given a holy fit for it by the Spirit, whose work is to prepare us for it. This is not a worthiness earned by law through anything we have done. It is gospel worthiness, based on the priceless price Christ paid to redeem what He purchased. Just as we are counted righteous by Christ’s righteousness, so we are also counted fit for glory by His grace. They are made suitable for that world. The old corruption in their nature is removed, and God’s grace reshapes their hearts for that life. By grace they are made and counted worthy to obtain that world, which also suggests that we must press toward it with effort and care, because there is danger of missing it. We must run in such a way that we may obtain it.

They will obtain the resurrection from the dead, that is, the blessed resurrection. The resurrection of condemnation, which Jesus calls the resurrection of judgment (John 5:29), is really a rising to death, a second and eternal death. No one can fully describe or imagine the happiness of that world (1 Corinthians 2:9). But Christ gives us several things to know about it.

First, they neither marry nor are given in marriage. Those who have entered the joy of their Lord will be completely filled with that joy, and they will not need the special joy of bridegroom and bride. The love in that world is wholly heavenly, and it outshines the purest and sweetest loves we know here in this world of sense. There, the body itself will be a spiritual body, so all the pleasures of the senses will be gone. And where holiness is perfect, marriage is no longer needed as protection against sin. Nothing that defiles enters the new Jerusalem.

Second, they cannot die anymore, and this is one reason they do not marry. In this dying world, marriage is needed because death keeps opening empty places that must be filled. But where there are no funerals, there is no need for weddings. This is part of the comfort of that world: there is no more death there. Death spoils all beauty and weakens all comfort in this world. Here death rules, but there it is shut out forever.

Third, they are equal to the angels. In the other Gospels it says they are like the angels, but here it says they are equal to them, angels’ peers. Their glory and joy are in no way less than those of the holy angels. They will see the same sight, take part in the same work, and share the same joys with the holy angels. When saints come to heaven, they are welcomed as citizens there. By nature they were strangers, but Christ has paid the great price for their freedom, and now they have the same privileges as those who were born there, the angels who belong to that country by nature. They will be companions with the angels and speak with those blessed spirits who love them dearly, along with an uncountable company to whom they are already joined by faith, hope, and love.

Fourth, they are the children of God, and in that they are like the angels, who are also called sons of God. Then the inheritance of sons will be fully complete in the adoption of sons. That is why believers are said to wait for adoption, meaning the redemption of the body (Romans 8:23). As long as the body remains in the grave, adoption is not yet complete. Even now we are the children of God (1 John 3:2).

We have the nature and disposition of sons now, but that will not be complete until we reach heaven. They are children of the resurrection, meaning they are made fit for the work and joy of the life to come. They are born for that world, belong to that family, were trained for it here, and will receive their inheritance there. They are also children of God, because they are children of the resurrection. God owns only those as his children who are children of the resurrection, born from above, joined to the world of spirits, and prepared for that world.

It is certain that there is another life after this one, and God gave clear proof of that in the early days of the church (Luke 20:37, Luke 20:38). Moses showed this, as it was shown to him at the burning bush, when he called the Lord what the Lord called himself, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were long dead to this world. Their bodies had turned to dust in the cave of Machpelah. So how could God say, not “I was,” but “I am” the God of Abraham? It makes no sense for the living God, the source of life, to keep that relation to them if they were no more than bones and dust in a cave. We must conclude that they were still alive in another world, because God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.

Luke adds, “For all live to him,” meaning all true believers live to God in this sense. Though they die, they still live. Their souls return to God who gave them (Ecclesiastes 12:7), and they live to him as the Father of spirits. Their bodies will also live again at the end of time by God’s power, for he calls things that do not exist as though they already did, because he is the God who gives life to the dead (Romans 4:17). But there is more here still. When God called himself the God of these patriarchs, he meant that he was their happiness and portion, a God fully enough for them (Genesis 17:1), and their very great reward (Genesis 15:1). Their story shows that he did not give them the full answer to that promise in this life. So there must be another life after this, where he will do for them all that his promise truly meant, and fully pay what he pledged when he said he would be their God. He is able to do this, because all live to him, and he has enough to make every soul happy that lives to him, enough for all, and enough for each one.