An Artful Question Well Answered
WHEN there is an issue between us and the one with whom we are examining a question, it is well to go with our friend as far as we can in the premises and the principles laid down, and especially is it essential to have some common authority to which both parties agree, and to which they can mutually appeal. In the time of Christ such an issue arose between Him and the class of people whom He was trying to teach. His mode of procedure on that occasion will be a pertinent and instructive lesson to all who engage in defending the truth in these last days. In arguing with the Jews, Christ quoted a passage from the Old Testament. They and He both believed in the Old Testament as a book of truth; and whatever it declared, they could both accept as authority. The passage Christ quoted was that recorded in Matt. 22: 23–32,—that God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,—and then He immediately adds, “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” From this declaration it is argued that therefore Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are living; but as they were known and acknowledged to be dead, modern theologians contend that they were living as disembodied, immaterial, and therefore immortal, spirits, their bodies being in the grave; which is the point that modern theology would prove. To understand the words of Christ, we must fully comprehend the point in controversy between Him and those Jews with whom He was arguing, that we may see clearly what His words were designed to prove, and what He designed to teach them thereby. We must then look carefully at the whole narrative, which reads as follows:— “The same day came to Him the Sadducees, which say that there is no resurrection, and asked Him, saying, Master, Moses said, If a man die, having no children, his brother shall marry his wife, and raise up seed [children] unto his brother [and these children would be considered as belonging to that brother, and have all the rights of primogeniture, and inheritance belonging to such children]. Now there were with us seven brethren [or brothers]: and the first, when he had married a wife, deceased [or died], and, having no issue, left his wife unto his brother; likewise the second also, and the third, unto the seventh. And last of all the woman died also.” Now comes the puzzle. “Therefore in the resurrection [when the dead come to life] whose wife shall she be of the seven? for they all had her. “Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God. For in the resurrection [or after the resurrection] they neither marry, nor are given in marriage, but are as the angels of God in heaven. But as touching the resurrection of the dead, have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead [while they are dead, they are no honor to God, nor credit to His work; and if there is to be no resurrection, and they are forever to remain dead, as you Sadducees believe, how could God call himself their God? Hence they will live again].” Therefore Christ completes the idea, by adding the words “but of the living,” making the whole sentence read: “God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.” Did Moses Teach the Resurrection?
The point then at issue between Christ and the Sadducees was whether the dead would ever be raised, as Christ taught, or would not be, as the Sadducees asserted. The Sadducees believed the writings of Moses, but denied the resurrection; Christ also believed the writings of Moses, and taught the resurrection. Here, then, was a distinct issue between them. The Sadducees heard Christ teaching that the dead would be raised, which they denied; and to sustain their faith in opposition to His, they refer to the law of Moses concerning marriage, and then state the case of the seven brethren, which was either an actual occurrence, or might have been, in which case it would serve their purpose just as well. Seven brothers had been married successively, one to one woman, and all had died; and last of all the woman died also. Thus the case was all closed up till the next world; and now they say, If these persons are all going to be raised from the dead and live again, to which one of these seven brothers will this woman belong in that future world? This problem they doubtless thought would completely overthrow the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead; but they calculated without their host. He caught them in their own ignorance. “Ye do err,” He said, “not knowing . . . the power of God,” who is able to make alive again all those who have gone into their graves; and they erred also in not knowing the Scriptures, which teach that the dead will live again. They erred further, not knowing the nature and condition of that future state, which would have removed all their objection; for in that state “they neither marry, nor are given in marriage;” so it would make no difference how many husbands the woman had had here; their relations there are not to be based on any such conventional arrangements. The question which Christ was here discussing with the Sadducees had no respect whatever to an intermediate state to which people nowadays try to apply it; neither did the question of the Sadducees refer to such a state. They did not inquire whose wife she was then, or which one of the seven men’s immortal souls claimed the immortal soul of the woman in the spirit world there; but, Whose shall she be in the resurrection (a future event)? So Christ told them that they erred, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God. And then to condemn them out of their own mouths, He proceeds to prove from the writings of Moses—what? A conscious intermediate state?—No; that was not the question; but that the dead will be raised, as He had claimed. “But as touching the resurrection of the dead,” He says (“as touching the dead, that they rise,” Mark says; and “that the dead are [or will be] raised,” Luke says), “have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living?” Did this language sustain Christ’s position, as against the Sadducees, that the dead will be raised?—Most assuredly; for God is not the God of the dead, of those who are irrecoverably, or eternally, dead, as the Sadducees believed, but of the living, or those who will live again.