Matthew 22:23 - 33
23 That same day the Sadducees, who say there is no resurrection, came to him with a question. 24 “Teacher,” they said, “Moses told us that if a man dies without having children, his brother must marry the widow and raise up offspring for him.25 Now there were seven brothers among us. The first one married and died, and since he had no children, he left his wife to his brother. 26 The same thing happened to the second and third brother, right on down to the seventh. 27 Finally, the woman died. 28 Now then, at the resurrection, whose wife will she be of the seven, since all of them were married to her?”
29 Jesus replied, “You are in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. 30 At the resurrection people will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven. 31 But about the resurrection of the dead—have you not read what God said to you, 32 ‘I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’[b]? He is not the God of the dead but of the living.”
33 When the crowds heard this, they were astonished at his teaching.
Question:
ReplyDelete- Jesus talks about the resurrection being a future event, but also seems to be indicating that Abraham, Isaac and Jacob were alive at that moment. What does he mean?
http://biblelight.net/gotl.htm says:
ReplyDeleteNote that the topic at hand deals with the Sadducees denial of a resurrection (the power of God to raise the dead) and their lack of knowledge of scripture on the matter.
Some Catholics will point to the phrase "God is not the God of the dead, but of the living" as proof that people never really die, but rather their "soul" continues to live on after death. However it is clear from the above passages that the issue in question is God's power to raise the dead from the grave in a resurrection, something the Sadducees clearly rejected. The question posed does not address who's wife the woman would be after she is dead, while still in the grave, but rather after her resurrection, because the Sadducees assumed death to be final and irreversible. Catholics who cite these passages to support Catholic teaching on the state of the dead (purgatory etc.) are doing so out of context, and this is apparent to most any reader who will merely take the time to study the matter.
The dead are in the grave, corrupt, decayed, dust, awaiting their resurrection at the last trumpet. At their resurrection they will put on incorruption, immortality, but until then they rest in the grave.
http://www.jba.gr/God-of-Abraham-and-Isaac-and-Jacob.htm says:
ReplyDeleteAll that Jesus said was about the resurrection! When he said “have you not read what was spoken to you by God, saying, ' I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob?' God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.", his sentence did not start there! Instead he said this speaking about the resurrection: “But concerning the resurrection of the dead…”. Indeed, God is not a God of dead but of living. Why? Not because the dead are now living somewhere, but because God will raise the dead and they will live again. It is “concerning the resurrection of the dead” that “He is not a God of dead but of living”.
http://www.desiringgod.org/articles/lord-of-the-dead says:
ReplyDelete“To this end Christ died and lived again, that he might be Lord both of the dead and of the living” (Romans 14:9). Jesus is Lord of the dead.
I will be dead one of these days. Jesus is my Lord now and he will be my Lord then.
What does this mean?
Daniel, for example, must have gotten carried away when he wrote that “many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Daniel 12:2). And Isaiah must have let his mind wander when he said, “Your dead shall live; their bodies shall rise. You who dwell in the dust, awake and sing for joy!” (Isaiah 26:19). The Sadducees preferred the sturdy, down-to-earth Moses. He never said anything about resurrection.
“I am the God of Abraham.” The assumption is: If God is your God, then there is so much power working for you that you can never be robbed of life.
But now back to Jesus who is Lord of the dead. Isn’t it strange that Jesus should say, God is not the God of the dead, but Paul should say, Jesus is Lord of the dead? It’s not so strange if we let the word of Jesus help us interpret the word of Paul. If God cannot be God of the dead, then Jesus cannot be Lord of the dead. That is, he cannot rule over people who stay in the grave. Those whom he rules live! If Jesus is Lord of the dead, they are not dead! If God is the God of Abraham, Abraham is not dead!
IMO, that is one of the worst explanations ever. "If Jesus is Lord of the dead, they are not dead!" Really? That logic seems quite twisted.
ReplyDeleteWhat about the simple and straight forward reading of Isaiah 26 and Dan 12 are foretelling future events? We "shall" be resurrected. It hasn't already happened. But it will. Guaranteed.
Piper does a lot of good but his exegesis here is pretty screwy. To me it seems he sometimes put doctrine above scripture in his writings. I think thats the wrong way a round.
(BTW, I checked out the whole article by Piper and it doesn't explain this logic of Piper's any better. It just uses more words.)
I agree that the logic was weak. I included it for completeness. Hopefully I will find a better argued article for that side of the fence.
DeleteUnderstood and I hope you know I meant no criticism of you Bruce. Sometimes the celebrities like Piper, MacArthur, etc, (and probably most of us to be honest) fudge the truth a little to try and make a scripture passage squeeze into pre-conceived ideas and doctrine. Not everything in the Bible is 100% clear on how it is to be understood but occasionally the interpretation is so blatantly wrong-headed that's it hard to keep quiet, at least among friends.
DeleteEarlier this week I came across an explanation of a verse in the ESV study Bible that in effect said the verse in reference didn't mean what it seemed to clearly say. The study Bible notes gave no indication why it didn't mean that, just that it didn't. Ughh !!
http://www.postost.net/commentary/god-not-dead-living says:
ReplyDeleteHere is the question: When Jesus says, “He is not God of the dead, but of the living,” does he mean that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are alive somewhere, awaiting resurrection? Those who maintain that the New Testament teaches at least a conscious intermediate state in the presence of Jesus will often find support for their view in this passage.
These two verses are an argument for resurrection directed against the Sadducees, who rejected all belief in an afterlife and for whom only the Torah was authoritative.
If Jesus means, therefore, that the patriarchs are currently alive and conscious, he must believe that they have already been raised, otherwise it is an argument not for resurrection but merely for the continued existence of the dead—as shades in Sheol, for example. With the exception of the anomalous account of the raising of the dead from their tombs in Matthew 27:52-53, this would run contrary to the broad biblical understanding of resurrection as an end of the age event—though what is meant by “end of the age” is another matter. In the New Testament Jesus is the “first fruits of those who have fallen asleep” (1 Cor. 15:20), the “firstborn from the dead” (Col. 1:18).
The quotation from Exodus 3:6, therefore, means that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob is committed to the future life of his people: he is God not of the dead but of the living. The specific thought is simply that the patriarchs will also be raised in the coming resurrection.
I should point out that belief in the continuing existence of the patriarchs is found in 4 Maccabees 7:19 and 16:25. Faithful Jews who die under torture will live, as Abraham, Isaac and Jacob live. Two things need to be taken into account, however. First, these martyrs expect to be raised from dead (cf. 2 Macc. 7:9, 14), not simply to enter an afterlife. Secondly, the reference is always to the patriarchs. Why this particular group? Why not other righteous Jews? Arguably it is the symbolic significance of the patriarchs that is at issue here rather than any more literal belief in their continued life.
http://www.postost.net/2015/11/why-you-wont-go-heaven-when-you-die says:
ReplyDeleteThe traditional view is that when Christians die, they go to heaven. This notion is almost as erroneous as the view that the unsaved will be subjected to an eternity of unalloyed suffering in “hell”. Both beliefs are distortions of the biblical perspective and—I modestly propose—should be erased from the Christian consciousness and the popular imagination as soon as possible. They are wrong in themselves, and they contribute to a serious misunderstanding of the identity and purpose of the church.
The New Testament does not teach the departure of a Christian “person”—in any shape or form—to heaven at death. Not even Jesus went to heaven when he died. The New Testament teaches the resurrection of the body, which conceptually presupposes, at one level, the restoration of God’s “new creation” people following judgment, and at a further level, the final restoration of all things.
Jesus went to heaven—by way of the ascension—only after he had been raised from the dead. When the New Testament speaks of others going to be with Christ, who is at the right hand of the Father, the same sequence applies. Those who have fallen asleep, who have died, will be raised from death at the parousia in order to be reunited with the living; then all those who have believed “will always be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4:17). We find the same argument in 1 Corinthians 15:22-23. Because of our solidarity with Adam we all die; but at the parousia of Jesus, those who died “in Christ” will be made alive—they will be raised from the dead. In a rather different idiom, John relates his vision of the souls of the martyrs who had resisted the idolatry of Rome, who “came to life and reigned with Christ for a thousand years”. This was the “first resurrection”, preceding the thousand year reign of Christ and the martyrs (Rev. 20:4-5).
Nothing in these texts suggests a conscious intermediate state. People die in Adam; they are raised to life at the coming of Jesus.
Three passages from the Gospels that are sometimes adduced as evidence for the continuing existence of the soul after death are examined elsewhere: the destruction of body and soul in gehenna; the story of the rich man and Lazarus; and Jesus’ promise that the penitent “thief” would be with him in paradise. My view is essentially that they have to be understood in the context of the narrative of judgment against Israel and the hope of national restoration. They should not be used to construct a generalized account of what happens to people when they die.
Largely on the basis of Philippians 1:23, however, Tom Wright argues that between death and resurrection the believer is somehow consciously in the presence of Jesus. Here are three quotations in order of increasing scholarly weight:
-----Begin quote------
We know that we will be with God and with Christ, resting and being refreshed. Paul writes that it will be conscious, but compared with being bodily alive, it will be like being asleep.1
Had Paul thought that, I very much doubt that he would have described life immediately after death as ‘being with Christ, which is far better’. Rather, ‘sleep’ here means that the body is ‘asleep’ in the sense of ‘dead’, while the real person—however we want to describe him or her—continues.2
What we have here, therefore, is a reinforcement of what we saw in 1 Thessalonians 4: between death and resurrection, Christians are ‘with the Messiah’. Paul describes this in such glowing terms (‘better by far’) that it is impossible to suppose that he envisaged it as an unconscious state. He looks forward to being personally present with the one who loved him and whose love will not let him go.3
---End quote-----
http://www.postost.net/2015/11/why-you-wont-go-heaven-when-you-die (continued):
ReplyDeleteActually, Paul does not say in 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17 that dead Christians are “with the Messiah”—rather the dead must be raised first if they are to be with the Lord. Nevertheless, Paul expresses the conviction that he and the apostles have been called to imitate Christ in an exceptional way, and it is in this context that we find statements about dying or departing to be with Christ in a more immediate sense.
In Philippians 3:10-11 he expresses a driving apostolic ambition—that “I may know him and the power of his resurrection, and may share his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, that by any means possible I may attain the resurrection from the dead”. This is not abstract theologizing: it reflects the extreme circumstances of his ministry.
Similarly, the statement about being “away from the body and at home with the Lord” (2 Cor. 5:8) belongs to an extended passage about the ministry of the apostles, who are “always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our mortal bodies” (2 Cor. 4:11). Paul does not speak on behalf of all Christians here. He speaks on behalf of that particular group that finds itself led in triumphal procession (2:14), that has a ministry that surpasses the ministry of Moses (3:7-18), that “has this treasure in jars of clay” (4:7), that is afflicted, perplexed, persecuted, struck down, that carries in the body the dying of Jesus (4:8-10), that would love to relinquish the “outer self” or put on over it a new resurrected body (4:16-5:5).
Even then, it is not so obvious that when Paul speaks in such an exceptional context and quite realistically of dying and being with the Lord, his words are in tension with the resurrection statements. Arguably, the death-resurrection sequence has simply been compressed under the weight of the overwhelming personal experience: his desire is to depart life now—not least because it is so painful—and be with Christ when he is raised at the parousia.
But I will also make the point again that this whole argument about the resurrection of the dead in Christ at the parousia needs to be framed historically. It has reference to a particular state of affairs—the intensifying persecution of the churches and the anticipated victory of Jesus over aggressive, idolatrous pagan imperialism.
Paul’s personal conviction that having suffered with Christ he will be raised and vindicated with Christ sits right at the heart of this eschatology and gives it much of its immediacy and poignancy. It is in the fierce cauldron of suffering that the belief that nothing—not even death—can separate him from his Lord is generated. But I don’t think this disrupts the basic schema, which, to my mind, is that the suffering communities of Jesus would be raised in conjunction with the victory of Jesus over Greek-Roman paganism and would reign with him throughout the coming ages as a “reward” for their faithfulness unto death.
Then, as John has it, the rest of the dead are raised—a second resurrection of all the dead—to face a final judgment; and those whose names are not written in the book of life are thrown into the lake of fire, which is the second death (Rev. 20:12-15).
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/transcript/what-happens-when-we-die says:
ReplyDeleteRecently there have been a number of books written by or about people who have died, or been very near death, and who claim to have gone to heaven and then returned.
I’m afraid that people may begin to base their views of the afterlife and heaven on these near-death experiences rather than on what the Bible teaches about the afterlife.
First of all, these experiences are often inconsistent with one another.
the Bible is our authoritative, God-given resource for Christian doctrine, including doctrine about the afterlife and about heaven.
The biblical hope is not that the soul will someday be separated from the body and fly off to heaven and be forever with God in heaven in this disembodied existence. That’s actually a very Greek understanding of the afterlife, from the Greek philosophers like Plato, and it’s very different from the Jewish-Hebrew way of thinking of the afterlife. For Jews and for the early Christians alike, the hope of immortality was not the immortality of the soul alone but rather the resurrection of the body. This physical body will be raised from the dead and transformed to immortal life.
Christ’s resurrection is our model here. Here Christ is said to be the first fruits of the general resurrection of the dead that will eventually take place; but His resurrection has already taken place in advance as a forerunner and a harbinger of our eventual resurrection, so that our resurrection bodies will be modeled on, or patterned on, Christ’s.
http://www.reasonablefaith.org/transcript/what-happens-when-we-die (continued):
ReplyDeleteNow that raises the next question: When do we receive our resurrection bodies?
When we die, do we immediately receive our resurrection body? Well, the answer to that is, no. That idea fails to take seriously the physical nature of the resurrection. The resurrection body is not some different body. It is this body transformed into a glorious, immortal, Spirit-filled, incorruptible form. So if we received our resurrection body immediately upon death, the graves of all the Christians would be empty! Rather the Scriptures are fairly clear that this takes place at the second coming of Christ, when Christ returns to earth.
1 Corinthians 15:21-23 and 51-52: “Behold, I tell you a mystery! We shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet. For the trumpet will sound, and the dead will be raised incorruptible, and we shall be changed.”
Now that occasions another question: What happens to us in between our death and our resurrection? Do you simply go extinct? Do you cease to exist when you die, and then at the resurrection God recreates you anew? He brings you back to life after you have been non-existent for a period of time? Or do you continue to exist after death, but perhaps in an unconscious state, so that, as it were, you die and go to sleep, and then when you wake up, you’re in heaven with your resurrection body, and you’re not even aware that all that time has lapsed in between?
Well, I don’t think either of those is the correct answer. Rather what the Bible indicates is that the soul does survive the death of the body. Human death does not mean extinction. Human death is simply the separation of the soul from the body. While the body dies biologically and decays away, the soul continues to exist and continues to live in a disembodied state. In between your death and your resurrection you will exist as a disembodied soul, a soul without a body, in a conscious state.
For the believer, what awaits us when we die is this intermediate state of disembodied existence, which will bring us into a closer, more intimate fellowship with Christ, and we await in that state our eventual resurrection, which will occur when Christ returns.
Now, you might ask, “What about unbelievers, people who don’t know Christ? What happens to them?”
We pass through this intermediate state until the resurrection. Then we appear before the judgment seat of God. The believers then go into heaven, and the unbelievers are cast into hell. In the intermediate state, unbelievers are already in a conscious state of torment called Hades.
When people die, the righteous go to be with Christ, where they will await their resurrection from the dead. The damned go to Hades, where they are in a disembodied state where they await their resurrection to final judgment. Only then are people ushered in to their final state, which is heaven or hell.
My 2 cents:
ReplyDeleteI think that the Bible is clear on this: There will be a physical resurrection of Christ-followers when Jesus comes back.
I'm not sure about the rest. But let's tackle some of the questions and list the options:
Question 1: What happens between death and resurrection (or what is the soul)?
There's a wide range of views/interpretations on this. Some believe that the soul is completely integrated with our bodies. When the body dies, the soul dies (both will be resurrected when Jesus comes back). Some believe that the soul always lives and goes to be with Jesus right away. An intermediate belief is that the soul is unconscious during "death" to be woken at Jesus' coming.
Personally, I think that the Greek influence (and probably more so, cartoons) has corrupted our understanding of what a soul is. I've pretty much am going back to the drawing board and trying to see just what the Bible says about it. And what I find is . . . unclear. It's irrefutable that Jesus is going to come back to bodily resurrect the dead. Beyond that, there are some verses that may or may not give clues to the state of the soul during death.
I find that there are verses that can be argued away, leaving me unsure of the answer (not that I need one). However, I must admit that the "soul is annihilated" group has their stuff together much more that the "soul is always alive" people. The "soul is annihilated" people look at all the verses and have well reasoned arguments on each verse (explaining the context on any that, on the surface, seems to point the other way). While the "soul is always alive" people have pretty poor arguments (they go so far and then engage in what I judge to be flights of fancy). I quickly point out that this isn't enough to sway me (much) either way. It may be that the majority view has not bothered to argue against the minority view.
In that vein, I am going to put forth speculation that may bridge the two views - a third possible option. It's based on the fact that God is much bigger than we can imagine.
I speculate that God exists outside of our time. Imagine God looking at the entire earth and it's entire history as we look at a goldfish bowl (and imagine Him being able to "zoom in and out" on what He wants). Is it possible that both groups are right? That we die, body and soul, are resurrected, body and soul? But, when Jesus comes back, He lifts us out of the fish bowl (of space and time)? If that sort of describes what's going on, it would explain both that the soul dies, but that Christ-followers also exist outside the fish bowl (outside of our space and time), and in a sense, are alive right now.
It's just wild speculation. But it does explain how both ideas could be right. Part of this speculation comes from a question I ask myself - "how am I going to make all the birthday parties that people throw in heaven if we are on a linear time stream?" How am I not going to miss all kinds of happenings if I can't attend/witness them simultaneously? Well, I will be able to if time is not an issue anymore.
:-)