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Biblical Ignorance in High Places
(Mark 12:18–27) 

Some Sadducees (who say that there is no resurrection) came to Jesus, and began questioning Him, saying, “Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves behind a wife and leaves no child, his brother should marry the wife and raise up children to his brother. There were seven brothers; and the first took a wife, and died leaving no children. The second one married her, and died leaving behind no children; and the third likewise; and so all seven left no children. Last of all the woman died also. In the resurrection, when they rise again, which one’s wife will she be? For all seven had married her.” Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are mistaken, that you do not understand the Scriptures or 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. But regarding the fact that the dead rise again, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the burning 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 the God of the dead, but of the living; you are greatly mistaken.” (12:18–27)

Throughout their history, the Jewish people had always believed in the resurrection, which they saw unfolding in two dimensions. They believed there would be a national restoration of Israel, as prophesied in Ezekiel’s vision of the valley of dry bones (Ezek. 37:1–14; cf. Isa 26:19). Israel would be raised to political prominence and political domination. All the promises to Abraham and David, along with the rest of the kingdom promises, would be fulfilled. Concurrent with that national resurrection would be the rise of the Messiah, the Son of David, whom they viewed as a military conqueror and king like David. The national resurrection under the Messiah would raise Israel from death to life and glory.

The Jewish people drew their view of a national resurrection from their confidence in a personal resurrection. The Old Testament apocryphal writings express that confident hope, as does the Talmud. An apocryphal writing known variously as the Apocalypse of Baruch, or 2 Baruch, describes the traditional Jewish belief in life after death:

More importantly, the Old Testament teaches that there will be a future, bodily resurrection:

But while most of the Israelites believed in both a national and a personal resurrection, there was one significant exception to the majority position—the Sadducees. They were one of the four major sects in first-century Israel, along with the Pharisees, Essenes (ascetic monastics), and Zealots (political revolutionaries dedicated to the overthrow of Roman rule). Of the four, the Sadducees and the Pharisees were the most influential.

As noted above, the Sadducees directly opposed the common Jewish belief by claiming that there is no resurrection. That led to theological controversy with the Pharisees, since “the Sadducees [said] that there is no resurrection, nor an angel, nor a spirit, but the Pharisees acknowledged them all” (Acts 23:8). The Sadducees rightly rejected the Pharisees’ absurdly literal view of the next life, which was based not on the Pentateuch’s teaching but on the other books, tradition, and speculation. For example, the consensus among the Pharisees was that people would be raised with the same infirmities, defects, characteristics, and relationships they had when they died. Many also believed that all Jews would be raised in Israel; some even arguing that there were tunnels all over the earth through which the bodies of Jews buried elsewhere would roll to Israel.

Although few in number, the Sadducees had considerable influence. They included many of the aristocratic, wealthy, and influential leaders in Israel, including the high priests, the chief priests (cf. Luke 19:47; 20:1, 19), and most of the Sanhedrin. Holding all the positions of authority over the temple made up for the Sadducees’ lack of numbers.

Politically, the Sadducees’ highest agenda was cooperation with Rome. Since they believed that life in this world is all there is, the Sadducees pursued power, wealth, position, and control. If obtaining those things required them to cooperate with their Roman overlords, they were more than willing to oblige them. Their accommodations to Rome caused them to be hated by the people in general. The Sadducees also ran the profitable business operations located on the temple grounds and were obviously furious with Jesus for twice disrupting their lucrative enterprise. They also feared that He might incite a rebellion that could cost them their privileged positions—or even lead to the destruction of their nation (cf. John 11:47–50).

Theologically, the Sadducees, while in one sense liberal in their denial of the resurrection, angels, and the age to come, were in another sense conservative. They rejected the oral traditions and rabbinic prescriptions that the Pharisees accepted and acknowledged only Scripture as authoritative. Further, the Sadducees were very narrow and strict and interpreted the Mosaic law more literally than others did. They also were more fastidious in the matters of ritual purity prescribed in the law.

The Sadducees held to the primacy of the Mosaic law, set forth in the five books of Moses, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. They were convinced that the rest of the Old Testament was subordinate to the writings of Moses and merely a commentary on it. They argued that nowhere in those five books is the resurrection taught and therefore any writing—even the rest of the Old Testament—that appeared to teach the resurrection must be understood in a different way. They constantly opposed those who taught the resurrection, not only the Pharisees but also the apostolic preachers (Acts 4:1–3; 5:17, 28).

Consistent with their denial of any future life, the Sadducees lived the present one as if there were no tomorrow (cf. Isa. 22:13; 1 Cor. 15:32). Further, since they were annihilationists and believed the soul did not survive death, they believed there were ultimately no penalties for bad behavior or rewards for good behavior, which rendered them religious, theistic humanists. Therefore they had no interest in personal salvation through the Messiah. Though they fastidiously observed the Mosaic law, they, even more so than the Pharisees, cruelly oppressed the common people. They took advantage of their positions of power and influence to indulge themselves at the expense of the populace, who became their victims.

Jesus’ assault on the theology of the Pharisees and the economics of the Sadducees caused those two groups, who were separated by their beliefs, to unite in their hatred of Him. The Pharisees attempted to destroy Jesus by trapping Him into making an inflammatory anti-Roman statement (cf. Luke 20:19–26), expecting that He would then be seized by the Romans and executed. The Sadducees, on the other hand, sought to discredit Him in the eyes of the people as ignorant by asking Him a question He could not answer. They decided to set up an impossible dilemma concerning the issue of marriage relationships after the supposed resurrection—a question designed to make belief in the resurrection appear absurd and Jesus appear foolish.

The confrontation between the Sadducees and the Son of God consists of two points: the absurd scenario proposed by the Sadducees, and the astute solution given by Him in reply. The Sadducees sought to trick Jesus with a logical absurdity that would make Him appear ridiculous to the people. Instead, they were revealed to be the fools, woefully ignorant both of the teaching of Scripture and the power of God.

THE ABSURD SCENARIO

“Teacher, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves behind a wife and leaves no child, his brother should marry the wife and raise up children to his brother. There were seven brothers; and the first took a wife, and died leaving no children. The second one married her, and died leaving behind no children; and the third likewise; and so all seven left no children. Last of all the woman died also. In the resurrection, when they rise again, which one’s wife will she be? For all seven had married her.” (12:19–23)

Like the Pharisees and Herodians (Mark 12:13), the Sadducees addressed Jesus respectfully before the people as Teacher, attempting to continue the flattery. They also raised the expectation among the people that He should be able to answer their question. His inability to do so would then reveal Him to be an incompetent teacher who, the Sadducees expected, the people would abandon as unwise, and so clearly not the Messiah.

As their introductory statement, Moses wrote for us that if a man’s brother dies and leaves behind a wife and leaves no child, his brother should marry the wife and raise up children to his brother, indicates, their question concerned the instruction regarding levirate marriage in Deuteronomy 25:5–6:

The purpose of levirate marriage was to keep inheritances within the tribe. It only applied when the surviving brother was single; he was not to divorce his existing wife, nor marry his deceased brother’s wife in addition to his own. The principle predates the Mosaic law, as the story of Onan (Gen. 38:6–10) indicates. Perhaps the most notable example of levirate marriage in the Old Testament is Boaz’s marriage to his relative Elimelech’s widowed daughter-in-law, Ruth (Ruth 2:1; 4:1–13). The story reveals that when there was no surviving unmarried brother to marry the widow, another close relative would assume the responsibility.

The Sadducees confronted Jesus with a hypothetical situation, designed to make the Pharisees’ and Jesus’ excessively literal view of the life after death seem absurd:

They were confident that His inability to answer their carefully crafted, yet absurd question would destroy any thought of Him as Messiah in the eyes of the people.

THE ASTUTE SOLUTION

Jesus said to them, “Is this not the reason you are mistaken, that you do not understand the Scriptures or 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. But regarding the fact that the dead rise again, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the burning 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 the God of the dead, but of the living; you are greatly mistaken.” (12:24–27)

Instead of fumbling over how to reply and then failing to come up with a coherent answer as the Sadducees expected, Jesus asked them a counterquestion that served to indict them for their ignorance. “Is this not the reason you are mistaken, He asked, that you do not understand the Scriptures or the power of God?” The Lord’s reply flipped the tables on them, metaphorically speaking. They had asked the question hoping to reveal His supposed ignorance and incompetence. Yet His question not only exposed them as fools but also unqualified to be teachers themselves, since they demonstrated lack of understanding of both the Scriptures and the power of God.

Mistaken translates a form of the verb planaō, which means “to wander,” or “to go astray” (the noun form of this verb is the source of the English word “planet”). Due to their ignorance of Scripture, the Sadducees had wandered from the truth into error. Further, the grammatical structure of the phrase, Is this not the reason you are mistaken, suggests that they were not only negatively ignorant but also positively unwilling. They had neither the ability nor the willingness to understand the Scriptures—a charge that could be leveled against all false teachers.

The Sadducees failed to comprehend that the Scriptures teach the reality of the resurrection (even in the Pentateuch, as Jesus soon demonstrated). Thus it follows logically that they also failed to comprehend the resurrection, life-giving power of God, which is declared in Scripture. Surely the God who spoke the universe and all its inhabitants into existence has the power to raise the dead in the life to come. Like all proponents of false religion, they were spiritually dead and blinded to the truth.

The Sadducees’ failure to understand God’s power would later be paralleled by some who were troubling the church at Corinth. They denied the physical resurrection of the body and argued for a purely spiritual one, a teaching consistent with the Greek philosophy of the day. In 1 Corinthians 15:35–53, the apostle Paul rebuked their folly:

Actually, it was not the reality of the resurrection that was absurd, it was the Sadducees’ contrived question. The answer to their question is simple and straightforward: there is no marriage in heaven. When people rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels in heaven. The pronoun they refers to those living in the present age, whom Luke, in the parallel account, described using the Hebraism “sons of this age” (Luke 20:34; cf. 16:8). Like other human relationships, marriage is for this present life only. There will be no need in heaven for sex, reproduction, and families to maintain the population. There will be only one relationship between the glorified saints—perfect love and joy. Since they will be like the angels in heaven, who are glorious, eternal beings and do not reproduce or die, those eternally living in God’s presence “cannot even die anymore” (Luke 20:36) and hence do not need to be replaced. Nor will there be any need for marriage and family relationships to pass truth and righteousness from generation to generation, since everyone will be in perfect holy union with the triune God and each other. Because of the eternal perfection of every person, there will be no need for marriage partners to complement and complete each other, as husbands and wives do in this life.

The Sadducees’ misguided objection to the resurrection was irrelevant and indicative of their ignorance regarding life in the age to come. Having disposed of it quickly, Jesus then refuted their claim that the Pentateuch did not teach the resurrection, once again exposing their inexcusable ignorance of Scripture. “But regarding the fact that the dead rise again,” He said to these men who prided themselves on their knowledge of the writings of Moses, “have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the burning bush (Ex. 3:6) 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 the God of the dead, but of the living; you are greatly mistaken.” In that passage (Ex. 3:6) God used the present tense, saying to Moses, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” He did not say, in the past tense, “I was,” even though all three men had already died. The past tense would have been appropriate to use if those three no longer existed (cf. the similar use of the present tense in relation to those who had died in Gen. 26:24; Ex. 3:15–16; 4:5). The God who declared Himself to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob does not receive worship from people who no longer exist; He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. Once again, the Sadducees’ mistaken misunderstanding of Scripture had caused them to wander and go astray from the truth (see the discussion of v. 24 above). It should be noted that the Lord Himself affirms the inerrancy and accuracy of Scripture by making His entire point based on the tense of one verb. In John 10 He made His case based on one word (vv. 34–36), and declared that “Scripture cannot be broken” (v. 35) anywhere, not even one word can be removed or altered (cf. Matt. 5:17–18; 2 Tim. 3:15–17; 2 Peter 1:20–21).

For believers, the truth of the resurrection is a comforting reality. The sorrow, suffering, and sin that marks this present life will end. We will one day receive a glorified body, perfect in every way, when God “transform[s] the body of our humble state into conformity with the body of [Christ’s] glory, by the exertion of the power that He has even to subject all things to Himself” (Phil. 3:21). We will perfectly love God and each other, and be able to worship God in holy perfection. We will have perfect knowledge: “Now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face; now I know in part, but then I will know fully just as I also have been fully known” (1 Cor. 13:12). We will be perfectly motivated to do perfect service, rendering perfect obedience. The redeemed will never be weary, tired, bored, discouraged, or disappointed but will experience eternally undiminished joy, unmarred by any sadness or sorrow, because God “will wipe away every tear from their eyes; and there will no longer be any death; there will no longer be any mourning, or crying, or pain; the first things have passed away” (Rev. 21:4; cf. Isa. 25:8).