Whose wife is she? One simple question revealed the utter ignorance of a group of self-righteous scholars. They only accepted the first five books of the Old Testament as authentic scripture and they were convinced there was nothing in the Books of Moses, as those five books were known, about the resurrection. Their silly question revealed their ignorance about God and scripture.
First, Jesus points out how they are limiting God’s power when they presume there cannot be a resurrection. Second, they do not understand God’s purposes when they presume that if there were a resurrection life in the ‘after-life’ would simply be an extension of their present culture. (In their question the woman is treated as a piece of property and in the ‘after-life’ they assume she is still someone’s property.) When Jesus says we will be like angels he does mean that in the ‘after-life’ we will be like spirits. The use of the word angels is a way of saying that all things in the ‘after-life’ will be radically different than they are now. In our bodily resurrection in the coming Kingdom we will have been completely transformed into the image of God.
The religious leaders have done their best to discredit Jesus and they have failed miserably. Now they will prove Solomon right when he wrote, “Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.” (Prov. 16:18) They will reveal their total depravity by killing Jesus.
In these exchanges with the religious leaders I am reminded by Jesus that everything I need to know in life is in the Bible. I am also reminded that the very power that resurrected Jesus from the dead is the power of the Holy Spirit God placed in me when I was born again. With that power working in me I have the capacity to understand the Bible and apply its teachings to my daily life. I am blessed to have an abundance of modern English translations of the Bible available to me, plus scores of commentaries, dictionaries and other reference material to aid me in my study of the scriptures. I am so abundantly blessed by God that I have no excuse to say that I do not understand the scriptures.
If you are born again, you also are so abundantly blessed.
What does today’s reading reveal to you
about God?
What does it reveal to you about yourself?
Think about what God wants you to do
or remember about this passage.
Does God want you to change anything in your life?
10-Sep-11 Matthew 23:1-12
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