Marriage in the Kingdom – Matthew 22:22-33

Have you considered why it is that there will be no marriage in the kingdom? Or how that will affect your relationship to your spouse, assuming you and your spouse will both be in the kingdom? This has caused a disturbance for some. Surely our spouses will still be special to us in the kingdom and I fully expect that God will not put us in a situation that makes us unhappy. I don’t have the answers to why it will be this way in the kingdom, but Jesus states it pretty emphatically in response to a test put to him by the Sadducees.

The same day Sadducees came to him, who say that there is no resurrection, and they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses said, ‘If a man dies having no children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for his brother.’ Now there were seven brothers among us. The first married and died, and having no offspring left his wife to his brother. So too the second and third, down to the seventh. After them all, the woman died. In the resurrection, therefore, of the seven, whose wife will she be? For they all had her.”

But Jesus answered them, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God. For in the resurrection they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. And as for the resurrection of the dead, have you not read what was said to you by God: ‘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.” And when the crowd heard it, they were astonished at his teaching. (Matthew 22:23-33 ESV)

The Sadducees try their hand at tripping Jesus up.  They didn’t believe in the resurrection because they did not believe that any books of the Old Testament other than Moses’ five books were authoritative.  So, though Daniel mentions the resurrection (12:2), that did not count with them.  “Show it to us from Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers or Deuteronomy,” they would say, and the Pharisees, who did believe in the resurrection, could not do so.  So the Sadducees were emboldened to come to Jesus with this ridiculous story wanting to prove their point and make Jesus look silly before the people.  “In the resurrection, which we don’t believe in, whose wife will she be because she can’t be married to all of them?”

Jesus challenges two assumptions of the Sadducees: (1) there is marriage in the kingdom, and (2) the books of Moses do not teach the resurrection.  Jesus speaks to an issue that is not directly taught in the Old Testament but about which he claims to have authoritative knowledge. There is no marriage in the kingdom. So it doesn’t matter if this woman had seven husbands in this age or not.  In the age to come there will be no marriages, and, we may presume, no birth of offspring, though Jesus does not specifically say that. 

As for Moses teaching the resurrection, Moses shows that Yahweh addresses His people by calling Himself the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, as if they are still alive, because they are still alive, as souls without bodies awaiting the resurrection.  The crowd sees (and the Pharisees see, we may presume) how effectively Jesus answered the Sadducees, and the lack of response from the Sadducees, and they marvel.  We hear no more from the Sadducees after this.