Notes on Mark 12:18-27
Translation and Notes
Note: These notes accompany my podcast on this passage, Angels and Marriage.
18Some Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him and asked him, 19“Teacher, Moses wrote for us: ‘If a man’s brother dies, and leaves a wife, but no child, then his brother must take the wife, and raise up descendants for his brother.’
The command here comes from Deuteronomy 25:5-10, though it is not quoted precisely. The situation, however exaggerated, was a realistic one under the Mosaic law. Having everyone alive at once who ever has lived would produce some significant practical complications, and this was just one of those possibilities.
20There were seven brothers, and the first one took a wife and died without leaving a descendant. 21The second took her, and died, not leaving a descendant, and the third did the same thing. 22And all seven did so, but left no descendant. Finally the woman also died. 23In the resurrection, when they rise, to which of them does that woman belong? For they all had her!”
It’s easy for us to laugh at the Sadducees, but they are not alone in trying to understand the spiritual and the supernatural based on common logic. Try answering the question yourself. How do you think such a situation could be handled?
At the same time God is not nearly so limited in his ability to solve problems as we are. The bottom line here would be that we simply do not know how things will be done in the kingdom, or how relationships will operate.
24Jesus said to them, “Here’s why you’re wrong: You don’t know the scriptures nor the power of God.
Notice that Jesus does not merely tell them that they don’t know the scriptures. It is not a direct scriptural quote that will solve this problem for them, but rather an understanding of the power of God. The resolution is well beyond the level of discussion at which they are operating.
25For when the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage, but they will be like the angels in heaven.”
Now frequently people take this text as giving a definitive answer to how we’ll live in heaven. But I would suggest that this also results from not knowing the scriptures nor God’s power. The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection, but they also did not believe in angels. So Jesus points them to their own logic. Those raised from the dead live like the angels—whom the Sadducees also denied—making the whole discussion rather silly.
But God who could make a resurrection happen can also provide a life for those so raised. This doesn’t mean, by the way, that there will be marriage in the kingdom of heaven. It means that the same God who can raise the dead (as the Sadducees denied) can also provide a new life for those who have been raised. “But just as it has been written, Eye has not seen, neither ears heard, nor have entered the heart of any person, the things which God has prepared for those who love him” (1 Corinthians 2:9).
Without due consideration for the power of God, the scriptures will not make sense.
26But concerning the resurrection of the dead, have you not read in the book of Moses at the bush, how God spoke to him and said, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? 27God is not the God of the dead, but of the living! You are very deceived!” — Mark 12:18-27
It’s quite possible that this latter portion was not part of the same confrontation with the Sadducees, simply because the story ends so effectively with verse 25. Verses 26 and 27 may well have come from another answer to a question about the resurrection of the dead. In any case, they provide a very different response, in this case owing to the interpretation of the Torah. Since the Sadducees accepted only the Torah, or Pentateuch, as authoritative, it was important that the argument Jesus made for the resurrection come from that source (Exodus 3:6).
It’s an interesting piece of interpretation, because we modern folks usually assume that when God identified himself as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he meant that he was they God they worshiped, not that he was continuing to be their God in present time. That is, however, the sense in which Jesus takes the passage.
“God is the God of the living” suggests that we are not as ephemeral as it may appear.