Resurrection and Marriage in the Kingdom – Luke 20:37-40

She had two questions, “When we reach heaven, will we join our spouse there, or is it ’till death do us part’? If we do join our spouse for eternity in heaven, what of the people who remarried after being widowed?”  Jesus’ remarks to the Sadducees addresses this question in part, though not directly.  My answer to her, based on Jesus’ teaching, can be found here.

There came to him some Sadducees, those who deny that there is a resurrection, and they asked him a question, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies, having a wife but no children, the man must take the widow and raise up offspring for his brother. Now there were seven brothers. The first took a wife, and died without children. And the second and the third took her, and likewise all seven left no children and died. Afterward the woman also died. In the resurrection, therefore, whose wife will the woman be? For the seven had her as wife.”

And Jesus said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage, but those who are considered worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die anymore, because they are equal to angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. But that the dead are raised, even Moses showed, in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord the God of Abraham and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob. Now he is not God of the dead, but of the living, for all live to him.” Then some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well.” For they no longer dared to ask him any question.  (Luke 20:27-40 ESV)

The Sadducees were a sect of Judaism that claimed relationship and loyalty to the high priest.  Unlike the Pharisees they did not believe in the resurrection or angels, nor did they give authority to any but the books of Moses in the Old Testament.  Resurrection is taught directly only in later Old Testament books like Daniel.  They had used this argument about the woman who had seven husbands many times to defeat the Pharisees, so why not try it on Jesus and so discredit him?

But Jesus turns the tables on them, quoting from Moses and arguing that God still calls Himself the God Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and since only the living have a God He is God of the living and there will be a resurrection to complete that process.  Besides, in the kingdom there will not be marriage, so their argument is pointless.  The scribes like this argument because they sided with the Pharisees on this issue, and because it shut up the Sadducees who no longer dared to challenge Jesus.