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“Luke 20:27-47 - Resurrection, Relationships and Religious Hypocrisy”
Categories: Tuesday TidbitsWhile we are probably more familiar with Matthew’s or Mark’s accounts of this occasion, Luke’s account is fuller and offers more detail of Jesus counterargument.
Jesus offers a two-part counter to the Sadducees argument. 1) the first is to say that there is something different between this life and the next, namely no new marriages are being formed. Jesus goes on to explain this point in a way that might seem strange to us. The reason no new marriages are taking place Is because there is no more death. In order to understand the connection between death and marriage we have to understand something of how the Sadducees thought. In their view, death was overcome, not by a continued existence after this life but by building a progeny/lineage to carry on your name. Hence their appeal to the law of Levarite marriage and the absurd story they construct. Jesus says because there is no more death, there is likewise no need to marry and reproduce, and thus their entire perspective falls short. Further, Jesus grounds His assertion of the difference between this age (one where death rules) and the next age (one where death is no more) in the new nature of our resurrected state, we will be like the angels. (2 important things to note here: 1) we become like the angels in a way but that is not the same as saying we become angels when we die 2) the particular point of comparison Jesus draws between us and angels here is that we will no longer be subject to death as sons of God). We like the angels, will belong to and become like our Father who is the essence of life itself. What matters is not who our earthly parents were but who our Heavenly Father is and because we belong to Him we are children of the resurrection. In summary, there will be no need for marriage, because there will be no more death and thus need for reproduction, because like the angels we will be sons of God and partakers of life.
In the second part of Jesus’ counter-argument Jesus appeals to Scripture the Sadducees would have accepted (it is thought that they Sadducees would have only held Genesis-Deuteronomy aka the Torah/Pentateuch to be inspired. In this He forces them to wrestle with the text rather than to dismiss it offhand as unauthoritative. The story of the burning bush demonstrates 1) that the patriarchs(Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) though having physically died, were still alive in some sense and 2) that God was still their God and was fulfilling His promises to them by delivering the people out Egypt. If the patriarchs were dead as the Sadducees thought, God’s promises would have been limited to the duration of their lifetime. In this Jesus undermines the Sadducees' perception of this life, the afterlife, and their interpretation of Scripture. “They no longer dared to ask him any question.”
The pressing question we often want to know is, “what happens to our earthly relationships?” This text may have something to say about those. 1) I am not at all dogmatic about this point but here is something to chew on. It is often argued, typically from the shortened forms is Matthew or Mark, that we will be like angels, angels don’t marry, therefore marriage will cease. To add a slight nuance - as noted above, the fuller explanation Luke gives us connects our being like angels to being sons of God and thus not dying. It should also be kept in mind that Jesus’ counterargument in context is not against marriage itself but against the function of marriage to produce offspring. Thus, while we typically assume this text says that the marriage relationship will be dissolved, it actually only asserts that no new marriages will take place. Now we might extrapolate from this that marriage itself will be unnecessary and thus done away with but this an assumption, possibly a valid one, but an assumption none the less. The upshot of all of this would be that our relationships, as we experience them now, remain intact in the life to come. 2) Regardless of where one falls on the first point, the second point still stands and of this I can be much more certain: eternity will be better. When we think about our future in the New Heavens and the New Earth, we must keep in mind that it is great gain. If the marriage relationship is dissolved, as good as it may be on this earth, it is because God is giving us something better. We will live in a state, in the presence of God who is love, with no sin and no selfishness. Thus, all relationships, in whatever form they take, will be improved and transformed. We are not losing we are gaining. In reference to earthly bodies, of which the recreation of the world to come is analogous (Rom. 8:22-23), Paul employs the metaphor of a seed becoming a plant (1 Cor. 15:36-49). There are levels of continuity and discontinuity between the seed and the plant. The plant comes from the seed and is an extension of it and yet in the process the seed is destroyed in order to create something better. Nobody, once the rich, luscious, and productive plant is brought to fruition longs for the seed anymore. It has served its purpose. It was destined to become a plant. This is the case with our earthly bodies which will be transformed to glory and immortality, it will be the same with the New Heavens and the New Earth (Rom. 8:22-23, Rev. 21-22), and I imagine it will be the same way with our present relationships in whatever form they take. The good gives way to the grand in the presence of God for eternity.
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After having been challenged by the Jewish leadership (chief priests, elders, scribes, Pharisees, Sadducees) Jesus then turns and posses a question of His own about their understanding of the Messiah/Christ (the specific group Jesus is challenging is probably the scribes cf. Lk. 20:39, 45-47). Interestingly He leaves His question unanswered for His original hearers to ponder or perhaps better, for the question to probe the hearers. The scribes might have agreed with Jesus when it came to the resurrection (Lk. 20:39) but their categories of who the Messiah would be and what he would do needed serious tweaking. The question concerns the subject of lineage once again, and the belief that the Messiah was to be a descendant of David. We first encounter this in 2 Sam. 7:12-14, where God promises that He would establish David’s rule forever through His progeny. But Psalm 110, from which Jesus quotes, provides an interesting wrinkle. There, in a text that the Jews commonly associated with the Messiah, David prophetically calls the Messiah his Lord. He says, the LORD (when in small caps in our Old Testament this is inserted for the personal name of God, “YHWH” in most of our English translations) said to my Lord (“Adoni” the typical word for “master” in Hebrew). It was a typical convention for a son to bless and honor his father by calling him Lord, but the reverse was not done. Herein is the puzzle, the Messiah would be a descendant of David but would be at the same time greater than David. This is the point the religious leaders need to understand, the Messiah would indeed be Davidic, but the ultimate category for understanding him was not merely as the son of David but as someone greater than David. The fact that Jesus quotes this text about the greater than David Messiah being given victory over his enemies should not be overlooked in a context in which Jesus is at odds with those who oppose Him and would soon be enthroned over them and all His enemies through His death and resurrection.
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Jesus finally turns to their crowds as he publicly rebukes the scribes for their pretense of piety and their religious hypocrisy. A large part of the reason they, and many of the other religious leaders rejected Jesus as the Messiah was that they were most concerned about their prestige and prosperity.
