Matthew 22:23-33
‘The Sadducees, who say…there is no resurrection, came to Him…. “If a man die, having no children — his brother shall marry his wife and raise up seed to his brother. Now, there were…seven brothers…. The first, when he had married a wife, deceased…, having no children…. Like the second also…; unto the seventh…. In the ‘resurrection’ — whose wife shall she be?!”… Jesus answered…them: “You err, not knowing the Scriptures!… Have you not read…: ‘I am the God of Abraham?’… God is not the God of the dead, but of the living!”‘ Matthew 22:23-32.
Calvin comments: “The Sadducees…denied…the final resurrection of the body and also the immortality of the soul (Acts 23:8)…. God does not declare that immediately after the death of the body, souls live as if their glory and happiness were already enjoyed by them in perfection — but delays the expectation…, till the last day…. The Scriptures inform us that the spiritual life depends on the hope of the resurrection; and that souls, when separated from the bodies, look forward to it….
“(In) the Jewish ‘Church’…part of the chief leaders in religion…took away the expectation of a future life, so that after the death of the body men differed in no respect from brute beasts…. Experience plainly shows that they were chargeable with the grossest stupidity. Since it is manifest that the reward which is laid up for the good, is left incomplete till another life….
“It is impossible to conceive anything more absurd than this dream — that men, formed after the image of God, are extinguished by death like the beasts…. The holy fathers earnestly aspired to the heavenly life…. The covenant which God had made with them, was spiritual and eternal. They who remained blind in the midst of such clear light, must have been worse than stupid!…
“Those men form and express just and wise sentiments respecting the mysteries of the heavenly Kingdom, who join the power of God with the Scriptures…. The (dead) children of God…will no longer be exposed to the wants of a frail and perishing life…. The dead shall rise!…. Christ confirms, by the testimony of Scripture, the doctrine of the final resurrection…. Christ seized on…Exodus 3:6…, because it ought to have been well-known and distinctly remembered by the Jews — being a declaration that they were redeemed by God because they were the children of Abraham…. He assigns the first rank of honour to the fathers…. In what respect would they have the preference, if they had been extinguished by death?… No man can be a father, without children…. So…the Lord cannot be called the God of any — but the living…. Since therefore the Lord promises salvation to all to whom He declares that He is their God, and since he says this respecting (the dead) Abraham…, it follows that there remains for the dead a hope of life!”
Calvin says in his Treatises III:347 and in his Psychopannychia: “Abraham survives death…. He Who is the God not of the dead but of the living declares that He is the God of Abraham…. If…Abraham…and Jacob had departed this life when God spoke to Moses, calling Himself their God…, they were living another life! Those must surely exist…, of whom God say that He is their God…. Abraham…and Jacob are alive!” God is not the God of the dead, but of the living!
