“There is life after death” (Mark 12:18-27)

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As I was preparing this message, an elder from my home church passed away. Even though we were not close, he and his wife would invite me to eat in their home every time I visited Malaysia. I can’t imagine how difficult it is to lose a spouse that you love and have lived with for 4 or 5 decades. Even if you know that you’ll meet them again in heaven, I’m sure the grief is deep and may never go away—at least, not while you are on earth.

With this in mind, today’s passage from the book of Mark is about the afterlife and the resurrection.

Let’s pray.

[Read: Mark 12:18-27]

There is life after death

The Sadducees were a group of high priests, aristocratic families, and merchants. In other words, they were often well-educated and wealthy. In terms of religious beliefs, they were conservative Jews and only accepted only the Torah as Scripture—the Torah is the first 5 books of the Old Testament. Because they didn’t find evidence in the Torah to support the idea of the resurrection, they said there was no such thing as people coming back to life in the future.

Two verses in the Old Testament support the idea of an afterlife and future resurrection. The verses are in Isaiah 26:19 and Daniel 12:2. But the Sadducees did not accept Isaiah and Daniel as Scripture. Along with the afterlife and resurrection, they rejected the idea of an immortal soul and the existence of angels.

The Sadducees thought that even if there was such a thing as the resurrection, it would simply be a resuscitation of the human corpse; and if there were an afterlife, it would just be a continuation of earthly life.

So Jesus said to them in Mark 12:24, “Are you not in error because you do not know the Scriptures or the power of God?” Then, in verse 25, “When the dead rise, they will neither marry nor be given in marriage; they will be like the angels in heaven.”

In other words, he said: there is a resurrection, there is life after death, and life will be quite different from what you imagine. He gave the example of marriage as one difference between our earthly life now and the afterlife. Like angels, we will not marry or need to marry.

Then in verse 26 and 27, he said: “And as for the dead being raised, have you not read in the book of Moses, . . . how God spoke to him, saying, ‘I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob’? He is not God of the dead, but of the living.” Here Jesus provided Scriptural support for the afterlife by quoting from Exodus 3:6. The book of Exodus was part of the Torah that Sadducees accepted.

But how does this quote support the idea of an afterlife? The argument goes like this: God called himself the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, people who are supposed to be long-dead. But to be the God of someone, that person must be in relationship with God. Therefore, Abraham and the other ancestors are not dead but alive. This logic might seem strange to you and me, but according to Mark 12:28, Jesus’ audience considered Jesus’ answer a good answer.

Believing in the resurrection is necessary for Christians

Now that we’ve read the passage, let’s talk more about the afterlife and resurrection.

I would define the afterlife as our existence after this body dies. Meanwhile, resurrection—the kind the Bible talks about—is when God brings us back to life after physical death. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob died long ago but their souls remain alive in the presence of God. They are now experiencing the afterlife, but they have yet to be resurrected.

The Bible promises that those who are faithful to Jesus when they die will enter into the presence of God in heaven (Luke 23:43; John 14:2-6). But heaven is only a pitstop; those who die in the Lord are there waiting for the end times to take place, in which Jesus will return again to bring heaven and earth together. And in this new heaven and earth, we will experience bodily resurrection, having a new body, like the kind of body Jesus had after he died on the Cross and returned to life 3 days later. The Christian afterlife is a two-step process: first, an initial entry into heaven, and, later a future bodily resurrection.

Actually, the New Testament talks a lot more about resurrection than it does about going to heaven after death. That’s because the resurrection forms a major part of Christian beliefs. As the Apostle Paul says in 1 Corinthians 15, “But if there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, then our preaching is in vain and your faith is in vain.” (1 Corinthians 15:12-14) In other words, if Jesus didn’t come back from the dead, then he wasn’t the Son of God. If so, Christians are wasting their time believing in a lie.

But what if indeed Jesus did come back to life? That his resurrection was true? For me, the strongest evidence of the truth of Jesus’ resurrection is the power that it has in transforming the lives of people.

Jesus’ first disciples were uneducated, blue-collar workers who ran away after the authorities arrested and executed Jesus. But later, they experienced an incredible transformation after meeting the resurrected Jesus. They spoke about Jesus boldly in front of religious scholars and royalty.

The Apostle Paul, whom I quoted just now, used to arrest the early Christians and put them in jail. But after he personally encountered the resurrected Jesus, he traveled to many places to talk about Jesus, risking his life for the sake of this good news and eventually losing it. When given a chance to recant their belief in Jesus’ resurrection and live, early Christians like the disciples and Paul would rather suffer torture and die in the most horrific manner. People don’t often die for something they know is make-belief. They endured persecution because they believed the resurrection to be true and Jesus rising from death is proof of that.

Even if you don’t believe in the resurrection, or miracles, or Christianity, I hope you will at least wonder what motivated these followers of Jesus. By the way, if you have questions about Jesus and the Christian faith, I and others here will be happy to chat about it with you.

Right now, let me share three reasons why the Christian faith gives us courage to face the future.

We do not need to fear death

First, as Christians we do not need to be afraid of death. Death is not the end of our story. It does not have to be the final goodbye. For us, death is simply turning the page from chapter one to chapter two of our lives.

Jesus says in John 11:25, “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die.” Just as Jesus returned to life, so shall we. Jesus promises in John 6:40, “For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”

Receiving life from Jesus doesn’t cost us a single yen or a single good deed. Jesus already paid the price for our lives when he died on the Cross. Jesus gave us his righteousness, so that we can stand before God’s judgment knowing he accepts us fully.

I love a hymn called “In Christ Alone.” The song says, “No guilt in life, no fear in death,/ This is the power of Christ in me;/ From life’s first cry to final breath,/ Jesus commands my destiny.”

We do not need to fear life

We as Christians live in a tension. On one hand, we see God’s resurrection power at work through life-changing transformation and miracles. On the other hand, we also continue to experience pain, sickness, death, and evil. Jesus through his death and resurrection has brought God’s kingdom here at present, but it is not fully here yet.

In the future when Jesus returns, his kingdom will fully come “on earth as it is in heaven.” On that day, we will receive new bodies. But it is more than just that—the resurrection is about God renewing the world and healing its brokenness. After all, what is the point of having an immortal body or soul if the world still broken, sad, and full of evil?

What our future resurrection reminds us is this: we do not need to fear life, which is my second point. This is because our present problems and the brokenness of this world have an expiration date. Revelation, the last book of the Bible says, the new heaven and new earth is a place where God “will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away” (Revelation 21:4).

This week I was reading a Christian book about parenting. The writer imagined God’s new world to be like this: “This is the world where you’re no longer worried about your children’s allergies or learning disabilities—because they’re better now. Your parents are not dying anymore. They are here with you. You’re not always at odds with your spouse. Your work has meaning, and you know it. Your body works. Friendship is possible, and you are not alone. These are the kinds of things that will be true in the kingdom to come.” (Habits of the Household, by Justin Whitmel Early)

So, if you’re doing not OK now, it’s not the end; because things will be OK in the end. It is not an endless cycle of suffering. In God’s time, he will put a final stop to the suffering.

We are not alone

Thirdly, as Christians we do not face the future alone. We have brothers and sisters in the family of God. And we have God himself, whom we will see face to face one day.

There is a prediction that by 2050, 20% of households in Japan will be elderly people living alone. I hope that Japanese people will discover the beauty of God’s family. Even if we have no spouse or children, we have each other.

I have noticed that, in Japan, there is a big gap between family and non-family (soto and uchi). I pray that God will teach us to bridge that gap and treat outsiders like our own family. May we be a testimony to Japanese people that God’s love is not just abstract theology but something real, tangible, physical, measurable.

Before the resurrected Jesus left his disciples, he promised to send the Holy Spirit to be his constant presence in their lives. In Matthew 28:20 he says, “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”

Marriage only lasts for one earthly lifetime, but our relationship with God is forever. In fact, God created marriage as a reflection of his loving nature. Those who are happily married may feel sad at the idea that they will no longer be married in heaven.

But marriage between two humans is just a painting; the painting is not the real thing, it is just a reflection of reality. The real thing is our relationship with God. The reason we want to love and be loved is because God designed us that way. We were designed, first of all, to love God and be loved by him. And we will experience this fully in the new heaven and new earth.

Is it hard to imagine that God can be enough for us? To imagine that we can be satisfied without a spouse? That is because we have a limited experience of God at the moment. We can only trust his promise in Revelation 21:4, “He will wipe every tear from their eyes. There will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.”

Conclusion

Let me end by saying again: We do not need to fear death. We do not need to fear life. Because in both life and death, we are not alone. He is with us always.

Let’s pray. Lord God, whose Son our Savior Jesus Christ triumphed over the powers of death and prepared for us our place in the new Jerusalem: Grant that we, who have this day given thanks for his resurrection, may praise you in that City of which he is the light, and where he lives and reigns for ever and ever. Amen.

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