Thoughts on Matthew 22

Today’s reading: Jeremiah 17; Matthew 22

Jesus was not afraid to call out wrong and damaging theology from mainstream religious teachers of His day.

We don’t often see Jesus directly confronting people’s theology in the gospel accounts. There are plenty of times He calls the scribes and Pharisees hypocrites for not living out what they are preaching, but in Matthew 23 He even affirms their underlying theology when He says, “The scribes and Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat, so do and observe whatever they tell you, but not the works they do. For they preach, but do not practice.” And there are other times He gently leads someone toward a better or more complete theological understanding, like with Nicodemus or the woman at the well. But for Him to directly, and publicly, contradict a group’s underlying theology, that maybe only happens here in Matthew 22.

The Sadducees didn’t believe in a resurrection, or really in the spiritual world at all, other than God Himself. So when they joined with the scribes and Pharisees, trying to trap Jesus in his words, they brought out their “big gun” question to disprove the notion of a resurrection. Their “unanswerable” question goes back to the Jewish law in Deuteronomy requiring that if a man is married and dies without having a child, his brother is to marry his widow and raise up a child in his name so that his family line is not lost. The crux of their question is basically, how could God institute both this system and resurrection? Clearly if this system was ordained by God, then in the resurrection there would be women running around who were the legitimate wife of multiple men, clearly disproving the resurrection.

I do love, as a side-note, that this is their big concern and not the other way around. King Solomon had over 700 wives, not including his concubines, and they evidently don’t see that as an issue, that a man would have multiple wives in the resurrection, but as soon as a woman would have multiple husbands, clearly the resurrection is a false doctrine!

What’s notable to me here though, like I mentioned at the beginning, is how Jesus answers. Before He gets into actually answering their question, he says, “You are wrong, because you know neither the Scriptures nor the power of God.” Jesus directly, and publicly, tells a significant group of leaders and teachers in Israel that they are wrong and do not know the Scriptures! He doesn’t pull them aside and try to correct them privately, or gently respond, nudging them back toward a better theology, like He does elsewhere, He publicly and unequivocally declares them to be wrong. End of story.

Why does He do that here when this isn’t generally how He operates? The doctrine of the resurrection is simply too important for them to get wrong. Consider what Paul says about the resurrection in 1 Corinthians 15:

Now if Christ is proclaimed as raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? 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. We are even found to be misrepresenting God, because we testified about God that he raised Christ, whom he did not raise if it is true that the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile and you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ have perished. If in Christ we have hope in this life only, we are of all people most to be pitied.

Without the resurrection, Jesus’ life and mission would make no sense. He came and died for our sins so that He might reconcile us to Himself and redeem us. But if, as Paul puts it, even Christ was not raised, we have no hope that our sins would be forgiven. But even if they were forgiven, to what end did He forgive them? If there is no hope of eternity for us, what’s the point? There would be none at all! In order for people to understand and believe the gospel, they need to believe in the resurrection, so Jesus boldly confronts this wrong teaching with truth because it will otherwise stand in the way of the gospel He is there to proclaim.

This is the pattern we need to be following today as well. Too many Christians make mountains out of theological molehills, fighting and dividing over relatively minor issues that the Scriptures say little about, but then say little to nothing about the actual heresies and false teachings that are constantly worming their way into Christian circles all around us. There are progressive Christian churches that are essentially teaching universalism because they are unwilling to call anything wrong or sinful. There are new-age teachings masquerading as simply a “deeper” or “more spiritual” Christian experience. There are the false teachings of the prosperity gospel, or law of attraction that are constantly gaining in popularity. There are all these teachings and doctrines which undermine, or are entirely antithetical to, the gospel, but too many Christian leaders and teachers are either too ignorant of them, or are too busy name-calling across the aisle to pay attention to them, leaving the people at large vulnerable to terrible spiritual deception.

We should be willing to discuss, argue, and debate with one another in love and charity about so many questions and issues, but we also need to be willing to boldly and publicly stand united against the teachings that are working their way into our churches that undermine the very gospel that is the bedrock of our faith.