Luke 20:35, commentary and pictures

Luke 20:35 belongs to the answer given to the Sadducees' challenge about the resurrection. It stands as part of the warning that rejecting the Son brings doom, a warning that applies in every age to those who refuse him as Redeemer, with the foreshadowed doom coming unless they repent. The Sadducees were wrong to assume the resurrection would simply continue life as before death and restore earthly relationships and marriage along with bodily life, a mistake rooted in a faulty view of the resurrection and of divine power.

Worthiness involves truly repenting of sin and by faith claiming Christ's blood as the atoning sacrifice, so that pardon is recorded in heaven and sins are blotted out in the closing judgment. Those accounted worthy obtain the coming world and share in the resurrection of the just, the resurrection of life to eternal life, rising free from the tomb through Jesus to share in the life and glory of his kingdom. The hope of meeting the dead in reunion at that resurrection is conditional on being among the worthy. The righteous dead are not raised until after the judgment has examined their records and decided that they are worthy, so they are not present in person when their cases are examined.

Those counted worthy to attain the coming world and the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor enter marriage there, so the resurrection does not restore earthly life with its marriages, relationships, frailties and passions. This rules out the idea that the redeemed will form families through marriage in the world to come. The risen are immortal and, in this respect, like the angels. The marriage relation instituted in Eden will not continue in Paradise and there will be no births in the new earth. This applies both to those raised from the dead and to those translated without seeing death, who will be immortal and in this respect like the angels, as members of the royal family.