What does it mean that God is not the God of the dead (Matthew 22:32)?

God says at the bush, "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." But, if He were then in that relationship to them, they must be existent for Him to be so. He could not be the God of the dead (in the Sadducee sense of death, the non-existent), they must be in some sense alive, alive to Him, and so they are.

"God is not the God of the dead [utterly and eternally perished, which was the sense in which the Sadducees used it, with whom He was disputing] but of the living.

Then came the Sadducees, the infidels of Israel. Israel was the sphere of God's earthly government, and resurrection no express part of the law. They gave as a fine piece of reasoning what shewed their ignorance, but the Lord was plain on so capital a point. They erred, not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God. The Lord reveals the state of the raised, shewing the mere ignorance and folly of the reasoning of the Sadducees. It is a high and holy state where what is merely earthly will have passed away for ever. Things ordered of God, and owned here, will have passed away there. What is spiritual alone remains, and the body itself changed into suited glory. But the Lord goes farther, and shews that the origin and basis of Judaism before the law was given is God's revelation of Himself, the basis of all hope for them. His memorial name for ever condemned their thoughts.

175 If Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had ceased to exist, could God have still taken their names, the name of naught to characterise Himself to Israel? He might have said, I am He who was with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, when they existed; and even so it would have been an utterly unworthy relationship - the God of those who had a mere animal existence. God characterises Himself by them - is not ashamed to be called their God. Could He characterise Himself by a mere dying animal, who, when He calls Himself theirs, did not exist at all? He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. But this truth went farther, for, as to separation of soul and body, Abraham was dead, and, though living for God, was not what God meant him to be as his God. God was not even in this sense, as an abiding state, the God of the dead. They must be according to what He would have man, soul and body. Till all was accomplished they might wait with their spirits blessed, but this was not God's thought as to man. He was to be complete, and hence raised from the dead. The name of God indicating His relationship with those, gone for the moment, demonstrated the resurrection. For Him indeed, as we read, all are alive; but the ground of the argument here is God's relationship with them. He cannot be the God of those who do not exist. It was a living Abraham, body and soul, of whom God could be the God. Death therefore, for he was dead, proved the resurrection. Thus divine truth was established in contradiction to the Sadducees.

You give an interpretation of Luke 20 instead of receiving what is said. The Lord first speaks of the saints only, those who "shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world, and the resurrection from among the dead," "children of God, being the children of the resurrection." Then He says, even Moses shewed this at the bush: God is not "a God of the dead but of the living": and then lays the foundation of an absolute fact of which He had not spoken before at all: "For all live unto him." They have died as regards men, but as to God, wicked or saints, all live: it is not confined to saints, but it is so with every one. Before He had been speaking of the resurrection of the saints, and exclusively of that resurrection; now He declares that for God all live. He denies that death is the cessation of existence, and in an absolute and positive way. Nor is it exact to say it is of the question of resurrection God is speaking, in calling the things that are not as though they were. (Rom. 4:17) He is speaking of quickening Abraham's dead state so that he should be the father of many nations.

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." (Ver. 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.

Luke now adds a few words which are of universal importance, and deeply concern all men: "For all live to Him." Dead to us here, they live to God. Death, then, does not terminate any man's existence. They live to God. This refers of course to all the dead, and concerns therefore all the living. The Sadducees had raised a question of a resurrection of the body. The Lord in reply showed that He rejected all their distinctive tenets, as stated in Acts 23:8. The resurrection is a Scripture truth. Angels there are, and the saints when raised will be equal to them. Spirits, too, exist, for all the unclothed live to God. Into the far-reaching results of resurrection the Lord did not here enter. Resurrection from the dead was still a future event. When that, however, had been established by the Lord's resurrection, the Spirit of God opened up the subject further (1 Cor. 15).

In Matthew 22:23-33 the Lord Jesus, in whom God has spoken to us and told us all the truth, answered and demolished the infidelity of the Sadducees. They were the materialists of that day and denied the survival of the soul. They brought to the Lord a story of a woman who had had seven brothers one after the other for a husband. It was a fable of course, but they thought it would serve their turn, and make the idea of survival and resurrection ridiculous. At once the Lord turned them to the Scriptures, and to the Books of Moses, that part of the Scriptures that the evolutionists deny. "Ye do err," He said, "not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God." The words of the Lord are wonderful and plain and assuring. He gave to those ancient Scriptures their credentials when he said, "HAVE YE NOT READ THAT WHICH WAS SPOKEN UNTO YOU BY GOD?" Is it a fact that God has spoken to us in the Books of Moses? Our Lord has said so, and that should be enough for us. What God said was, "I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob." And when He said this these men had been dead for centuries, had they, then, ceased to exist? No, for then would God have said, "I was their God," for He is not the God of the dead, of people who don't exist, but of the living. In this memorable answer the Lord not only showed conclusively that those who are dead to this present life live in the next, but He gave special emphasis to the fact that individuality is maintained. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, were still Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and were in conscious individual relationship with God.

Then He settles the matter absolutely with the decisive statement, "He is not the God of the dead, but the God of the living." Though the bodies of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob have died, their spirits live; and this fact necessitates their being eventually raised, for man is not complete without his spirit and soul and body (1Thess.5:23). The Lord therefore emphasized a second time the greatness of the error of the Sadducees.

This our Lord quotes adding the words, “God is not the God of the dead, but of the LIVING” (Matt. 22:32), thus emphasising the present existence of the patriarchs, long centuries after the death of their bodies. No limit is put to their existence. It teaches the immortality of the soul.

Does Scripture speak of the life after death? Most distinctly and plainly. We have no need to go to spiritism to find out whether the dead survive. That has been the faith of God's saints from the very beginning. It is recorded in Matthew 22. that the Sadducees came to Jesus hoping to trip Him up, and they told that "cock-and-bull" story about a woman who had seven husbands. I have no doubt it was an absolute fiction; but they concocted this story in the hope of trapping the Lord, and they said, "In the day of resurrection whose wife shall she be?" And the Lord Jesus replied, "Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures or the power of God," and then He went on to say, "Have ye not read that which was spoken to you by God, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob." When did God say that? Centuries after those patriarchs had been laid in their graves, and He said it to them through Moses, whom the spiritists would laugh out of court. He did not say, "I was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." That disposes of the false notion that the dead have no consciousness, or cease to exist until the resurrection of the body. God is not the God of the dead but the living. If they for the time being had been extinct, He would have said, "I was their God." If He looked forward to the resurrection He would have said, "I shall be," but He said neither; He said, "I am the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." God is not the God of the dead but of the living. All live to Him. With that agrees most beautifully Romans 14:7-9, where we read, "For none of us lives to himself, and no man dies to himself. For whether we live, we live to the Lord; and whether we die, we die to the Lord: whether we live therefore, or die, we are the Lord's. For to this end Christ both died, and rose, and revived, that He might be Lord both of the dead and living." A wonderful passage, full of the deepest possible comfort to the heart. I shall never forget how in a time of deepest distress and darkness, that one passage sang its comfort into my soul "Whether we live or die, we are the Lord's." I speak now to those who have trusted in Jesus, those who have come to His feet as poor sinners, and cast their souls upon Him, and can say, "He is my Saviour." "Whether we live or die, we are the Lord's." Yes, those loved ones who have passed out of our sight trusting in our one and only Saviour, have gone beyond our ken, but they have not passed out of the Lordship of Christ. Whether we live or die we are His, He is Lord both of the dead and the living. John 10:27-28, will fit in here, "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me: and I give to them eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand." Have you been confining that to the living saints? Don't confine it to them any longer; it includes those fallen asleep in Jesus, they are in His mighty hand even as we are. And none can pluck us from that hand, and none can pluck them from that hand. They shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of His hand. The hand that broke the power of death holds in absolute and everlasting safety all those who have put their trust in Him. Safe, eternally safe, and in His hand! So near to Him they are in His keeping, and we are also. Thank God, they could not be in a better place, could they? They could not be in safer keeping, for none, either in this life or the next, shall take His blood-bought sheep from Him.