MARK 12:24-27

MARK 12:24-27

They denied the possibility of resurrection, because they taught that the soul of man died with the body. Jesus explained that those who are physically dead, are alive unto God, and that when the dead rise they do not again take up the same conditions that they knew on earth. They do not resume the marital state, but are as the angels in heaven: that is, they are sexless. The distinctions between man and woman will be done away in that new life.

Our Lord appealed to two great reasons for accepting the fact that the dead will rise. It is revealed in the Bible, which is God’s inspired Word, and it rests upon the power of the omnipotent God. When God has spoken, it is not for man to reason, but to accept His declaration with becoming reverence. To ask how anything can be done because contrary to the ability of finite creatures is to forget that all power belongeth unto God, with whom nothing is impossible (Luke 18:27).

“As the angels.… in heaven.” The angels are sexless beings who do not have the power of reproducing their kind. In the resurrection the same will be true of mankind. In the eternal condition following the rising from the dead, marriage will have no place. Each will be a distinct individual capable of endless bliss or woe, but human relationships, as we know them here, will be ended.

“God spoke … saying, I am the God of Abraham, and … Isaac, and … Jacob.” He did not say, “I was their God,” but, “I am their God.” He spoke of them as definite personalities related to Him by grace though their bodies were dead long since. In His own time they would rise again and be acknowledged as His own.

“He is not the God of the dead.” If these patriarchs were reduced to unconsciousness, or annihilated by death, He would not still be their God. But “all live unto Him.” Though they are dead as to the body and hidden from the eyes of men, He, the God of the spirits of all flesh (Numbers 16:22), sees and knows everyone in his present state between death and resurrection.

It was a crushing blow to their crass materialism, and they found no words with which to answer Him.

The Scriptures teach not merely the survival of the soul after the body dies (Matt. 10:28), but the literal, physical resurrection unto life, or else a resurrection unto judgment (John 5:28, 29). By this is not meant a reincarnation in some other form, as held by certain Oriental mystics and their misguided Occidental followers, but an actual rising again from the dead of the very same person who died. Our Lord Himself came out of the grave in the same body that had hung upon the cross, bearing still the marks of His passion (John 20:20, 27). In like manner death shall yield up the bodies of all men, even those which have been long since reduced to their chemical elements, for our God is the God of resurrection. He who created these bodies with all their marvelous powers can reassemble them and make them again when the time comes for the saved to be caught up to meet the Lord (1 Thess. 4:13–17), and later for the wicked to rise and stand before the great white throne for judgment (Rev. 20:11–14). Surely nothing should have a more solemnizing affect upon us as we remain in this scene than the knowledge that this life is only a prelude for that which is to come, to be lived forever in the joy of heaven or endured amid the sad and gloomy horrors of hell. Faithfully Jesus Christ portrayed both aspects of the life beyond the grave, that none might presume or be deceived by the vain hope of a happy immortality if living and dying in sin. He would have all men remember that there are two resurrections, and following these, two destinies. Therefore the importance of receiving Christ now, that we may be assured of felicity hereafter.