What About Eternal Life?

“Then Jesus was approached by some Sadducees-religious leaders who say there is no resurrection from the dead. They posed this question: ‘Teacher, Moses gave us a law that if a man dies, leaving a wife but no children, his brother should marry the widow and have a child who will carry on the brother’s name. Well, suppose there were seven brothers. The oldest one married and then died without children. So the second brother married the widow, but he also died. Then the third brother married her. This continued with all seven of them, who died without children. Finally, the woman also died. So tell us, whose wife will she be in the resurrection? For all seven were married to her!’ Jesus replied, ‘Marriage is for people here on earth. But in the age to come, those worthy of being raised from the dead will neither marry nor be given in marriage. And they will never die again. In this respect they will be like angels. They are children of God and children of the resurrection. But now, as to whether the dead will be raised; even Moses proved this when he wrote about the burning bush. Long after Abraham, Isaac and Jacob had died, he referred to the Lord as ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob.’ 

So he is the God of the living, not the dead, for they are all alive to him.’” (Luke 20:27-38) (Also read Haggai 1:15b-2:9; Psalm 98; Psalm 145:1-5, 17-21; 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17) A good number of people are reading books about heaven these days. There are lots of books about heaven out there to be read. And the topic is certainly one of interest among us; one filled with lots of questions. Among the questions: Are there really going to be pearly gates and streets of gold? I don’t know and I am not really concerned, but if that is what heaven is like, we’ll just have to get used to it; as different as that would be from our worldly experiences! This teachings text appears on the surface, to answer the question about marriage in heaven. The Sadducees came to Yeshua with an exaggerated account of a woman who had been married seven times and asked whom she would be married to in heaven. Yeshua replies that in the resurrection, we will not be married at all. Now for those whose marriages have been bliss, this may come as a disappointment. For those whose married life has been far from bliss, this may come as a relief. Yet if we centre only on the marriage issue, we tend to miss the greater teaching here.

I.) Can you imagine good and committed religious people having strong differences of opinion? It’s hard to believe, isn’t it? But then, even as now, there were people who had a hard time agreeing on much. Recall the Sadducees and Pharisees. The Sadducees were the more affluent group. They were members of the priesthood. Although they claimed to honour the Law of Moses, they rejected the authority of the rabbinic interpretations. They denied a belief in angels and in the resurrection. The Pharisees in contrast, were just the opposite. The question that came from the Sadducees about marriage in heaven was only a pretext. Their real issue was the reality of a bodily resurrection. Their question was a “gotcha” question. Read between the lines and you can sense a sneer in their voices. They thought they had Yeshua on a question He could not answer; that the question itself would prove the absurdity of a belief beyond the grave.

II.) Think now about Yeshua’s answer to the marriage-in-heaven question. In order to attain a fair interpretation, let’s be aware that marriage in the first-century Jewish world was not what we think of marriage today. For us, marriage pictures a devoted couple committing themselves in love one to another, for better or for worse, till death do them part. In the first-century Jewish world, marriage was almost a system of ownership in which the man controlled the woman. He had a right to a wife who would please him and could divorce himself from her by simply drawing a line in the sand and stepping over it, thus declaring the end to his marriage. The woman in this arrangement had the right to be taken care of by the man; as long as she didn’t burn the biscuits. Yeshua said that marriage like that, apart from deep and abiding affection and reciprocal sacrificial love, will not be in heaven. And aren’t we glad.

III.) Then comes the larger issue: resurrection from the dead. Yeshua affirms His own belief in the resurrection. He speaks of those who have already passed through death as “children of the resurrection.” But then Yeshua told them that Moses, who they were said to revere, also believed in the resurrection. He called their attention to Moses’ experience of the burning bush where he encountered the Elohim of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. These patriarchs were very much alive, as YAHVEH is the Elohim of the living and not of the dead. They had been resurrected. Later, this theme of resurrection of the dead became one of the cardinal themes of Paul. Unlike those in our day who buy into an unsubstantiated idea about “rapture,” Paul emphasized resurrection of the dead. In fact, the only place in the Bible where anything resembling a rapture occurs is in 1 Thessalonians 5:13-18, where Paul declares that our Adonai will come again, bringing with Him those who have died in our Adonai. Then the “dead in HaMashiach”; that is the bodies of the departed believers, will be resurrected from their graves. Then after all this, those believers still alive on the earth will be “caught up with them in the clouds to meet our Adonai in the air.” Rapture? No. This is resurrection! Yeshua believed it, Moses did, so did Paul and so do I.

IV.) So what to all this? To think about the afterlife is surely puzzling. And especially puzzling if we seek a clear blueprint from the scripture as to what it will be like. We can’t possibly imagine the exquisite virtue of life lived in perfection. It is too far removed from our current human experience. But what we can do is stand on the sure word of promise the Bible offers. The resurrection is the promise of life eternal. Our capacity to understand is limited, so we depend on faith to grasp that which lies beyond us. Paul said, “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I reasoned as a child; when I became an adult, I put an end to childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then we will see face to face. Now I know only in part; then I will know fully, even as I have been fully known” (1 Corinthians 13:11-12). YAHVEH made us in His own image, gave to us life on earth, provided fulfilling relationships (including marriage) and has made ready life eternal for believers in every age. Of these matters we can be sure. For me, that’s enough.