Alive in Christ

The Living And Dead Are All One In Christ

Mk 12:18-27 12:18 Sadducees (who say there is no resurrection) also came to him and asked him, 12:19 “Teacher, Moses wrote for us: ‘If a man’s brother dies and leaves a wife but no children, that man44 must marry45 the widow and father children46 for his brother.’47 12:20 There were seven brothers. The first one married,48 and when he died he had no children. 12:21 The second married her and died without any children, and likewise the third. 12:22 None of the seven had children. Finally, the woman died too. 12:23 In the resurrection, when they rise again,49 whose wife will she be? For all seven had married her.”50 12:24 Jesus said to them, “Aren’t you deceived51 for this reason, because you don’t know the scriptures or the power of God? 12:25 For when they rise from the dead, they neither marry nor are given in marriage, but are like angels52 in heaven. 12:26 Now as for the dead being raised,53 have you not read in the book of Moses, in the passage about the bush,54 how God said to him, ‘I am the God of Abraham, the55 God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’?56 12:27 He is not the God of the dead but of the living.57 You are badly mistaken!”

Commentators expositing on these verses rightly see what Christ is saying here, i.e., that the dead must be raised because God claims that he is their God (present tense), not was their God (past tense). But the implications of this passage are even more important than they would appear to be on the surface. It means that all God's people, whether living or dead in this world, are alive in Him for eternity. Our patriarchs, saints and loved ones are still alive in Christ. They are still part of the Church. We may still pray for them, and ask them to pray for us, just as we might when they were in this world with us. They are not gone, but only their state of being has changed. This is not necromancy. We are not performing divination or attempting to conjure those who have departed. But rather, we are recognizing that the barrier between life and death has been broken by Christ, through his resurrection.