In chapter 20 we have the various classes of religionists and worldly men trooping one after another, hoping somehow to ensnare or accuse the Lord of glory. Each of them falls into the trap which they had made for Him. Accordingly they do but discover and condemn themselves. We have the priests with their question of authority (vss. 1-8), then the people hearing the history of God’s dealings with them, and their moral condition fully brought out (vss. 9-19). We have further the crafty spies, hired by the chief priests and scribes, that feigned themselves just, and thought to take hold of His words, and embroil Him with the earthly powers (vss. 20-26).
We have, after these, the Sadducees denying the resurrection (vss. 27-38). But here we may pause for a moment; for there are special and profoundly instructive touches peculiar to Luke. More particularly remark this—that he alone, of all the evangelists, here characterizes men, in the activities of this life, as “the children of this world” or age. They are persons who live merely for the present. “The children of this world [age] marry, and are given in marriage: but they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world [age], and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry nor are given in marriage: neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels.” In the resurrection state there will be no such relations. The difficulty existed for, or rather was made by, unbelief only. Indeed, what else can incredulity ever pretend to? It imagines difficulties, and nowhere so much as in the most certain truth of God. The resurrection is the great truth to which all things turn—which the Lord has shown in its final form, too, in His own person now raised from the dead, then just about to follow. This truth was combated and refused by the most active sect among the Jews at that time, the most intellectual and the best informed naturally. These were the persons who most of all set themselves against it.
But our Lord brings in another remarkable point here. Not only is God not the God of the dead, but of the living; but “all live unto him.” (vs. 38). Two great truths are here present—living unto God after death, and future resurrection, when Jesus comes and brings in the new age. This was especially of value for Gentiles, because it was one of the great problems for the heathen mind, whether the soul existed after death, not to speak of the resurrection of the body. Naturally the Jews, save the unbelieving portion of them, looked for resurrection; but for the Gentiles the Spirit of God gives us our Lord’s answer to the Sadducees, both proving the resurrection which is common to all the Gospels, and bringing in the living of dead men in the separate state. It peculiarly fell within the domain of Luke.
This truth is not confined to the present portion of our Gospel. We have similar teaching elsewhere. Does not the account of the rich man and Lazarus intimate the same thing? Yea, more, not only the existence of the soul separate from the body, after death, of course, but also blessedness and misery at once. They are not absolutely dependent on the resurrection. Besides, there is the final publicly adjudicated portion of misery for body and soul before the great white throne. But, in chapter 16, blessedness and misery at once are felt by the soul in the dissolution of the link with the body. The figures, no doubt, are taken, as they must be, from the body. Thus we find the desire for cooling of the tongue, which men of speculative mind use to prove that it was the time of being clothed with a real body. Nothing of the sort. The Spirit of God speaks to be understood, and (if He is to be understood by men) He must deign to use language adapted to our comprehension. He cannot give us the understanding of a state which we have never experienced, unless it be by figures taken from the present state. A similar truth appears also later on in the case of the converted thief. The point there is just the same immediate blessedness, and not merely when the body is raised from the dead by and by. That is what he looked for when he sought to be remembered, when Jesus comes in His kingdom. But the Lord adds more immediate blessedness now: “This day shalt thou be with me in paradise.” Depend upon it, we cannot be too stringent in maintaining the importance both of the resurrection, and of the immediate blessedness or misery of the soul separate from the body before the resurrection. To give up the reality of the soul’s existence in either misery or blessedness at once is only a stepping-stone to materialism; and materialism is but a prelude to giving up both the truth and the grace of God, and all the awful reality of man’s sin and Satan’s power. Materialism always is essentially infidel, though far from being the only form of infidelity.
Towards the end of the chapter (vss. 39-44) our Lord puts the great question of His own person and the position He was just going to take, not on the throne of David, but on the throne of God. Was not He Himself, David’s son, owned as his Lord by David? On the person and position of Christ depends the whole of Christianity. Judaism, lowering the person, sees not, or denies the position. Christianity is based, not on the work only, but on the glory of the person and place of Him who is glorified in God. He takes that place as man. He who humbled Himself as man in suffering, is exalted as man to the glory of God on high.