I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
Ver. 32. God is not the God of the dead] That is, in the Sadducees' sense, utterly dead and extinct for ever; but in St Paul's sense,Romans 14:9, He is the God of the dead. For the dead bodies also of the faithful, while they lie rotting in the grave, and resolved into dust, are united to Christ; by means whereof a substance is preserved, sin only is rotted with its concomitant infirmities. But the rotting of the body is but to refine it; it is but as the rotting of grain under the earth, 1 Corinthians 15:36, that it may arise more glorious. Once, death to the saints is neither total, but of the body only; nor yet perpetual, but for a time only. See both these together, Romans 8:10,11. Further, front this verse we may learn, that there is a two-fold knowledge to be gotten from holy Scriptures: 1. Express, "I am the God of Abraham," &c. 2. By due deduction and firm inference, God is the God of the living.