Luke 20:27-40 - The God of the Living

The Sadducees bring Jesus a story in which death seems to defeat every possible answer. Seven brothers die without children; last of all, the woman dies. Whose wife will she be if the dead rise? Their puzzle assumes that resurrection can only restart a world still governed by loss. In the temple, as His own Passion approaches, Christ reveals a life their question cannot contain: the dead are raised, and God is the God of the living.

The God of the Living (Luke 20:27-40)

²⁷ Then some of the Sadducees, who deny that there is a resurrection, came to Him and asked Him, ²⁸ saying: “Teacher, Moses wrote to us that if a man’s brother dies, having a wife, and he dies without children, his brother should take his wife and raise up offspring for his brother. ²⁹ Now there were seven brothers. And the first took a wife, and died without children. ³⁰ And the second took her as wife, and he died childless. ³¹ Then the third took her, and in like manner the seven also; and they left no children, and died. ³² Last of all the woman died also. ³³ Therefore, in the resurrection, whose wife does she become? For all seven had her as wife.”

³⁴ Jesus answered and said to them, “The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage. ³⁵ But those who are counted worthy to attain that age, and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage; ³⁶ nor can they die anymore, for they are equal to the angels and are sons of God, being sons of the resurrection. ³⁷ But even Moses showed in the burning bush passage that the dead are raised, when he called the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ ³⁸ For He is not the God of the dead but of the living, for all live to Him.”

³⁹ Then some of the scribes answered and said, “Teacher, You have spoken well.” ⁴⁰ But after that they dared not question Him anymore.

Luke identifies the questioners precisely as Sadducees “who deny that there is a resurrection.” Their denial must not be spread across the Jewish people as a whole. Their story has one controlling assumption: if the dead rise, the life to come must reproduce the arrangements of mortal life. Seven brothers die, the woman dies, and death governs every turn of the argument. They can imagine resurrection only as the same world beginning again.

Jesus distinguishes “this age” from “that age.” Marriage is honored within this age, where human generations are born and where husband and wife must one day part in bodily death. Christ neither belittles marriage nor says that persons cease to know or love one another. He reveals that resurrection life is deathless. “Neither marry nor are given in marriage” answers the Sadducees’ imagined problem because the age to come is no longer organized under death and succession.

“Equal to the angels” explains this deathlessness: those raised “cannot die anymore.” Human beings do not become angels or lose their embodied humanity. They are called “sons of God” and “sons of the resurrection,” language of received life and filial communion. Resurrection is more than survival. God raises human persons into a life in which death can no longer take them away.

The phrase “counted worthy” keeps the Lord’s judgment before us, but the verse does not explain worthiness as a score earned apart from grace. The right response is neither presumption nor panic. It is repentance joined to hope: asking mercy from the One who alone raises the dead and learning even now to live as His children.

The deliverance promised through Hosea helps us hear the scale of this answer. Hosea 13:14 says, “I will deliver them out of the power of Hades, and will redeem them from death” (Brenton). This is not merely a solution to a marriage puzzle. The Lord who speaks is the Savior who will overcome the death on which their puzzle depends.¹

Christ then answers from Moses, the very authority invoked by His opponents. At the bush, Moses names the Lord as “the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” Exodus 3:6 gives the words at the bush: “I am the God of thy father, the God of Abraam, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob” (Brenton). The names are not a list of relationships God once had and has now lost.²

The patriarchs died bodily, yet the covenant God does not speak of them as extinguished. “All live to Him” means that their life is held in relation to God. At the same time, Jesus explicitly says “the dead are raised.” Christian consolation therefore holds both truths together: the departed live to God, and the promised hope is the resurrection of the dead, not a denial of bodily death or a hope reduced to disembodied existence.

This changes the speech of grief without forbidding tears. Death is real, separation wounds us, and the body awaits resurrection. Yet the person we mourn has not fallen outside the presence or faithfulness of God. At the grave, the Church can grieve and still confess the resurrection, because Christ has named God as the God of the living.

Gems from the Fathers 💎

Cyril places this answer within Christ’s resurrection, the firstfruits of ours. He reads the likeness to angels as a life freed from fleshly lust and admitted to glory, not the disappearance of human persons. Those raised are “counted worthy of a glory such as that which the angels enjoy.”³ Marriage is not mocked, and the body is not discarded. The promise is humanity delivered from corruption, not humanity erased.

As a direct witness to Christ’s answer to the Sadducees, St. Irenaeus of Lyons reads it as a united revelation of resurrection and of the one living God who spoke from the bush. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob have not passed out of existence before Him. The same Word who silences the denial of resurrection bestows resurrection life.⁴

St. John Chrysostom, in close Synoptic-parallel commentary on Matthew, follows the order of Christ’s answer. First the Lord corrects the Sadducees’ false picture of resurrection; then He proves resurrection from Moses. Chrysostom presses the tense of God’s covenant name: “He said not, I was, but, I am”.⁵ His point strengthens Luke’s “all live to Him” without collapsing the future resurrection into the present state of the departed.

The Church’s Voice in Worship ⛪

At Matins on Friday of the third week of Great Lent the Coptic Church reads Luke 20:27-38; on Friday of the first week of the Holy Fifty Days she reads Luke 20:27-39. The same promise sounds before and after Pascha. Fasting does not despise the body, and Paschal joy does not evade the grave: Christ is the Resurrection and the Life.

On Mesra 28, the Commemoration of the Patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the Liturgy Gospel is Mark 12:18-27. The Church names the patriarchs while hearing the Lord confess their God as the God of the living. Mark’s parallel is also read at the Liturgy on Thursday of the seventh week of Great Lent.

Luke 20:27-38 is also read in the funeral rite for monks and monk-priests. At a funeral, the promise does not ask mourners to deny their sorrow. It lets grief speak before the God to whom the departed live, while awaiting the resurrection of the body.⁶

Spiritual Fruit 🍇

Let Christ’s words enter grief without asking you to pretend that death does not hurt. When you remember someone who has departed, resist both despair and vague sentiment. Pray with the Church’s hope: the departed live to God, the body awaits resurrection, and the Lord who rose will not surrender His children to death. Say Christ’s own words, “all live to Him,” with names and faces in your heart, and entrust those you love to the God of the living.

Lord Jesus Christ, teach us to grieve without despair and to hope without pretending that death is harmless. Keep those we mourn in Your mercy, and raise us in the life of Your resurrection.

Teaching Notes

The God of the Living (Luke 20:27-40)

• Ask: What assumption about resurrection makes the Sadducees’ story seem decisive to them?
• Emphasize: Jesus distinguishes this mortal age from the deathless age of resurrection. “Equal to the angels” describes deathlessness; it does not mean that human beings become angels.
• Watch for: Demeaning marriage, spreading a Sadducean denial across all Jewish belief, or reducing resurrection to the soul’s survival after death.
• Connect: Invite the group to speak about Christian grief honestly. “All live to Him” consoles us, while “the dead are raised” keeps bodily resurrection at the center of hope.

Sources

Scripture is from NKJV. Embedded Old Testament quotations are from Brenton’s English Septuagint (LXX).

1. St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on Luke, Sermon CXXXVI on Luke 20:27-38, https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/cyril_on_luke_13_sermons_135_145.htm.

2. St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, IV.5.2, https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.ix.vi.vi.html.

3. St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew, Homily LXX, §2, on Matthew 22:23-33, https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf110.iii.LXVII.html.

4. Brenton, Hosea 13:14 and Exodus 3:6.

5. Coptic Orthodox Katameros, Great Lent, Holy Fifty Days and Mesra 28; funeral rite for monks and monk-priests.

Footnotes

1. Hosea 13:14, Brenton, https://ebible.org/eng-Brenton/HOS13.htm. Brenton titles Hosea “Osee.” ↩

2. Exodus 3:6, Brenton, https://ebible.org/eng-Brenton/EXO03.htm. ↩

3. St. Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on Luke, Sermon CXXXVI on Luke 20:27-38, https://www.tertullian.org/fathers/cyril_on_luke_13_sermons_135_145.htm. ↩

4. St. Irenaeus of Lyons, Against Heresies, IV.5.2, https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/anf01.ix.vi.vi.html. ↩

5. St. John Chrysostom, Homilies on Matthew, Homily LXX, §2, on Matthew 22:23-33, https://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/npnf110.iii.LXVII.html. ↩

6. Coptic Orthodox Katameros and Synaxarium: Friday, third week of Great Lent; Friday, first week of the Holy Fifty Days; Mesra 28; Thursday, seventh week of Great Lent; funerals of monks and monk-priests. ↩