By Father Thomas Hopko
He came to them, but we must remember that those who were literally dead were also still somehow alive in the hands of God, even before the Messiah came. When, for example, the Sadducees, who did not believe in the resurrection of Christ, tried to catch Him in his words by saying that according to the Levite law of Moses, if a man had a wife, and he died, his brother had to take her and raise up seed so she would have children. And then the Sadducees said to Jesus, “There was a woman, and her husband died, and then his brother died, and his other brother died, and his other brother died, so that this woman ultimately ended up having seven husbands.” And then they try to make a fool of Jesus, saying, “If there is a resurrection, whose wife will she be?” We could put it this way, “Who gets the girl?” If there is a resurrection, who gets the girl? They are trying to make a fool of Jesus. They are trying to make a fool of Him, asking such a question, in order to try to make the doctrine of the resurrection to be ridiculous. But Jesus answers them, “You know neither the Scripture, nor the power of God. The sons of this age marry and are given in marriage.” But those who are counted worthy to attain to that age, the age to come, the age of the risen Christ, which begins when Jesus enters into the realm of death to destroy it, who are worthy to enter into that age and to the resurrection from the dead, they neither are marrying nor are given in marriage. They cannot die anymore, because, it says in Luke, they are eisangeli, equal to the angels (Luke 20:36). In Mark and Matthew it says hos angeli, like angels (see Mark 12:25). We do not become angels. We become angel-like, but we are still human beings. And they are sons of God. And even the women have the condition of being sons of God, because they are raised with the only begotten Son of God, who is Jesus Christ, and have the relationship to God as Abba, Father, that He has. It says, “Showing themselves to become sons of the resurrection.”
But that the dead are raised, Jesus says in Luke’s Gospel, to the Sadducees, even Moses showed in the passage about the bush, where he calls the Lord 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, for all live to Him. And then it says, some of the scribes answered, “Teacher, you have spoken well,” and they no longer dared ask Him any question.
So it seems to me, and you have to decide, but it seems to me that what Jesus is saying here is that the dead believers, the dead who follow the law, the dead who love God, yes, they are dead, and they have to be raised, and they are only raised by the Messiah, and they are only raised by the death of the Messiah. But they are already somehow in anticipation, children of the resurrection. They already belong to the resurrection that is planned for them from all eternity by God through Christ. That is why you even have the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. In fact, some commentators point out that Jesus does not say, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. He says the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. They are not dead, but they are living. They are living in anticipation in the bosom of Abraham, awaiting the Messiah, and they are living forever when they are raised from the dead by Christ. So he says, “You do not even know what you are talking about, Sadducees.” In the Kingdom of God, yes, if a man has a wife, that is his wife forever, and if a woman had seven men as husbands, somehow that remains also forever. But there is no marrying or giving in marriage. We do not live as married couples, we live hos angeli, like angels.
~Thomas Hopko, The Descent of Jesus into Hades, http://www.ancientfaith.com/podcasts/hopko/the_descent_of_jesus_into_hades.
