Thoughts on the Resurrection

"And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush, how God spoke to him, saying,‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living. You are quite wrong.” -Mark 12:26-27

As Jesus is correcting the Sadducees on their wrong view of the resurrection, He uses a very interesting argument to prove the resurrection. He refers to the story of Moses encountering God in the burning bush. As God spoke to Moses, He said, "I am the God of Abraham..." The use of the present tense in this verse is most interesting in its implications. Certainly Jesus is speaking of the fact that the benefits of God's covenant promise are not nullified through death, and therefore there is still the promise that one day Abraham's body will be physically raised. But Jesus does not simply stop there. He continues and says "He is not God of the dead, but of the living." Therefore, in tying this statement back to the resurrection, we conclude that Jesus is stating more than simply God's faithfulness to His covenant, but also the truth that there God's people are living. This resurrection of which Jesus' speaks must surely be a spiritual resurrection in heaven. We know that Abraham is not yet clothed in his glorified body, yet Jesus says that Abraham is living, and therefore God can say that "I am the God of Abraham."

In comparing this passage with Revelation 20, we find much illumination on what Jesus might mean when He makes this statement. For instance, in Revelation 20, John refers to the "first resurrection," by which I take it he means life in the intermediate state. So it seems to me that this quotation by Christ may be in reference to that spiritual resurrection which takes place before the final resurrection, the resurrection of the body.