Luke 20: 27-38
“They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise.” (Luke 20:36)
Who are the Sadducees and why are they asking Jesus about the resurrection? The Sadducees were a religious group that only believed in the teachings of the first five books of the Bible. They saw no basis for a belief in an afterlife and no basis for the belief of the resurrection. The Sadducees approach Jesus with a hypothetical scenario meant to make the resurrection seem ridiculous. They pose a question about a woman married to seven brothers, in the afterlife, whose wife will the woman be?
The question is meant to trap Jesus, but Jesus sees through their dishonest question. He refutes the question by saying that in the new life, there will be no marriage. Jesus says, “the children of this age marry and remarry; but those who are deemed worthy to attain to the coming age and to the resurrection of the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage. They can no longer die, for they are like angels; and they are the children of God because they are the ones who will rise.” Jesus’ response points out that the afterlife is not a continuation of our earthly life. The resurrected state is a new creation where we are sharing in the divine life with God.
Believing in our own personal resurrection after death is a wonderful gift in this life. It can give meaning to all that makes up our earthly lives. If we embrace the Bible’s teaching of life beyond death and embrace the truth of what Jesus tells us, then we need to ask ourselves how would we live if we truly believed what the Bible affirms about life beyond death? We might spend less time worrying about temporary things and more time preparing ourselves for Heaven.
Since, “he is not God of the dead, but of the living" we don’t need to worry about dying. Instead, we should live and serve God through a life lived with purpose and direction. I pray that we can concentrate on living the life we have now to the glory of God knowing that we will have eternal life with Him in Heaven.