The God of the Living

Scripture affirms the afterlife and the resurrection of the dead (Dan. 12:2; Luke 16:19–31), but it does not give us many details about what resurrected life will be like. John says we will be like Christ, but even he does not relay much about our resurrected state, writing that "what we will be has not yet appeared" (1 John 3:2). The lack of specific information about our post-resurrection state, however, has not stopped people from speculating about the afterlife. People often assume that life in the world to come will be just like life on the present earth, only better. We tend to think it will differ from our life now only in degree, not in kind.

Assuming the life to come will be just like life in the present led the Sadducees to ask Jesus what they considered a resurrection-disproving question: Which of the seven brothers would have as his wife the one woman they all married in succession before they died (Mark 12:18–23)? The Sadducees believed such a situation demonstrated that people will not rise from the dead. Their scenario would make one or all of the brothers guilty of adultery if all of them were living and married to her (Lev. 18:16; 20:21), and surely God would not cause people to break His law by raising them to an adulterous situation.

Jesus responded by criticizing the Sadducees for not knowing God's Word (Mark 12:24). First, they wrongly assumed that life in the resurrection would be exactly the same as life in this present world. There will be continuity, but there will be no marriage in the resurrection. We will be like angels, who do not get married (v. 25).

More importantly, the Sadducees were wrong about the resurrection of the dead because Scripture proclaims that we will rise from the grave. Even the five books of Moses, the only portion of the Old Testament that the Sadducees used for their theology, teach the resurrection. Jesus pointed to Exodus 3 as proof for the resurrection, noting that God said to Moses, "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob" (Mark 12:26–27). Implicitly, our Lord argued on the basis of both the verb tense and theology. If death ended the patriarchs' existence, God would have said, "I was the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob." Our Creator's use of the present tense implies that they live on to worship Him. Moreover, the Lord always keeps His promises, and His promise to the patriarchs—long life in the Promised Land, ultimately, the new creation (Gen. 12:1– 3; Matt. 5:5)—can be ful lled only if they will live forever.