The long view of eternity
Mark 12:13-27
What happens to people when they die? Is death really the end? You may have lost a family member or close friend and you wonder whether you will ever see them again. Where are they now? Are they gone forever? Are they just asleep? Or are they, in some way, alive?
Jesus’ opponents were constantly trying to catch him out with their questions (v.13).
First, they tried to trap him over money. However, even they recognized that Jesus was ‘a man of integrity’. They knew that Jesus spoke the truth whether or not it was popular (v.14). Jesus avoided the trap and gave an amazing answer (vv.15–17).
Next, they asked Jesus a hypothetical question to test him. This one was about life after death. There was an internal debate in Judaism between the Pharisees and the Sadducees about whether or not there was life after death. \[The way I remember the distinction is that it was the Pharisees (‘far I see’) who did believe in the resurrection, whereas the Sadducees (‘sad you see’) did not.\]
Jesus pointed out that the Sadducees were wrong for two reasons: First, they did ‘not know the Scriptures’, and second, they did not know ‘the power of God’(v.24).
The Scriptures
Jesus affirms the absolute certainty of the resurrection of the dead. Since the Sadducees only really believed in the authority of the Pentateuch (the first five books of the Bible) Jesus bases his argument on them and quotes from Exodus 3:6: ‘Now about the dead rising – have you not read in the book of Moses, in the account of the burning bush, how God said to him, “I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob”? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living’ (Mark 12:26–27). In other words, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are still living now!
The Power of God
In 1 Corinthians 15, there is the most sustained and in-depth argument of the New Testament on the subject of the resurrection of the dead. Paul emphasizes again and again the power of God, which the Sadducees denied. He writes that the body is sown ‘in weakness’, yet it is raised as a resurrection body after death, ‘in power’ (1 Corinthians 15:43). God ‘gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ’ (vv.56–57).
The wonderful truth is that the same power that was at work in raising Christ from the dead is at work in you now, bringing you more into the likeness of Christ (see Ephesians 1:19–20), and also in the future, in bringing your body to be a resurrection body in the new creation.
Therefore, everyone who has died in Christ is still living now. You will see them again. Even though the separation is so hard, all the struggles of this life have to be seen in terms of eternity. God takes the long view.
