Whose Wife Is She?

March 9, 2016

Whose Wife Is She?

Jesus replied, “Your mistake is that you don’t know the Scriptures, and you don’t know the power of God.

Matthew 22:29

Whose wife is she? One simple question revealed the utter ignorance of a group of self-righteous scholars. (Matthew 22: 23-33) The Sadducees 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 question to Jesus 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 presumed the ‘after-life’, if there were a resurrection, would simply be an extension of their present culture. (In their question, the woman is treated as a piece of property and in their description of an ‘after-life,’ they assume she is still someone’s property.)  Jesus makes it clear 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.

As I ponder Jesus’ encounter with the Sadducees, I don’t want to be too hard on them. In our present age, we too have difficulty separating the values of our culture from the teaching of scripture. Far too many Christians confuse the American Dream with their Christian ideals. Whereas the American Dream focuses on the wealth and happiness of the individual, the Christian ideal is, according to Saint Paul:   “Let each of you look not to your own interests, but to the interests of others” (Philippians 2:4 NRSV).

Sē’lah

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(Selah is a word that appears in the Book of Psalms that I often use as the Complimentary Closing in my correspondence. Its meaning, as I use the word, is to pause and think about these things.)

These meditations are written by Alex M. Knight as he seeks the life in Christ as his way of life.  The meditations are published on the BLOG, http://seekingthelifeinchrist.blogspot.com/ and they are also distributed on the Constant Contact email server. You may subscribe to this email service by sending an email to: amkrom812@gmail.com. The BLOG is also available on Amazon Kindle, by subscription.

Publications by Alex M. Knight:

·        Seeking the Life in Christ, Meditations on the New Testament and Psalms has been published and is now available at Amazon.com in paperback and Kindle.

·        The second edition of First Think – Then Pray is available on Amazon Kindle.

·        Meditations on The Story of My Life as told by Jesus Christ has been released as an e-book on Amazon Kindle.

Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible. New Living Translation copyright© 1996, 2004, 2007, 2013 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.