Eternal Marriage and Resurrection: Daily Thoughts from Mark (Mark 12:18-27)

Marriage vows often include the promise to remain faithful until death do us part.  Latter Day Saints, however, have a way to be married eternally (not because of eternal love but as a means to becoming more like the Father, who bore Jesus, who became God, etc.).  What does Jesus teach?

Jesus is facing wave after wave of opposers who want to shut him down.  Next in line are the Sadducees, a group of unknown origin who were at odds often with the Pharisees.

And Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection. And they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife, but leaves no child, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. There were seven brothers; the first took a wife, and when he died left no offspring. And the second took her, and died, leaving no offspring. And the third likewise. And the seven left no offspring. Last of all the woman also died. In the resurrection, when they rise again, whose wife will she be? For the seven had her as wife.”

Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God? For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong.” (Mark 12:18-27, ESV)

The Sadducees did not believe in the resurrection or the interaction of angels with humans and only accepted the books of Moses (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy) as authoritative Scripture.  So though Daniel 9 speaks clearly of interaction with angels and Daniel 12 speaks clearly of resurrection, the Sadducees would frequently argue with the Pharisees against these being Biblical.  The Pharisees accepted the resurrection and angelic interaction with humans, and as authoritative Scripture, all of what we consider the Old Testament.

So the Sadducees see their opportunity to upstage Jesus with this hypothetical conundrum with which they had undoubtedly confounded the Pharisees.  Old Testament law required a brother whose brother died childless to marry his widow and seek to raise up children in his dead brother’s name (Deuteronomy 25:5-10).  If this happened to seven brothers, they asked, in the resurrection whose wife would the widow be?

Jesus says they don’t know the Scriptures and deliberately quotes from Exodus 3:15,16 and 4:5, Scripture the Sadducees accept, where Moses is told that God is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, with whom He had made a covenant that God still honors.  This could only be the case if Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were still going to be “alive” to receive the promise.  God is the God of the living to whom He fulfills His promises and so their bodies must be resurrected one day so they can receive what was promised.

Jesus also says the Sadducees do not understand the power of God to be able to raise the dead.  And they have wrongly assumed that in the resurrection there will be such a thing as marriage.  It will be a new order of things and we will be like the angels, without a marital relationship.  Of course, the Sadducees don’t believe in angels, so Jesus is zinging them on several counts here.  He does not hesitate to say to them, “You are quite wrong.”

Some are disturbed that there will be no marriage in heaven, but that does not mean that there won’t be a richness of relationship with your earthly spouse, richer than it ever was on earth.  Rather, there will be many rich relationships and the history that you had with someone on earth will be an additional richness which will never be forgotten.  Will there be sex in heaven?  That is unknown.  Sex is a representation of intimacy and a picture of the ecstasy of relationship with our Creator and one another.  There may be some form of that in the kingdom, though it waits to be revealed.

Jesus is here in Jerusalem, in his last week before being killed, showing that he is the leader worth following.  The Herodians, the Pharisees and now the Sadducees have proven unable to withstand his wisdom.  Will the scribes or any other faction in Israel do any better?