Jesus and the Sadducees and Pharisees: Matthew 22 Explained
Short answer: The Sadducees and Pharisees were the two main rival parties among first-century Jewish leaders. The Sadducees were tied to the temple priesthood, accepted mainly the five books of Moses, and denied the resurrection of the dead. The Pharisees were lay interpreters of the whole law, believed in resurrection, angels, and spirits, and shaped the synagogue. Matthew 22:23-33 records a test from the Sadducees, who pose a contrived riddle about a woman widowed seven times. Jesus answers that they are wrong because they do not know the Scriptures or the power of God, and he argues the resurrection from Exodus 3:6, where God says he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The living God cannot be the God of the permanently dead.
Two parties, one temple, and a shared blind spot
The Gospels present the Sadducees and Pharisees as distinct groups who could still unite against Jesus. Matthew 16:1-12 shows Pharisees and Sadducees coming together to test him and asking for a sign from heaven. Whatever divided them did not stop them from treating Jesus as a threat. Their partnership is instructive: theological opponents can become political allies when a common rival appears. Many readers assume the two parties were simply the good guys and the bad guys of the Gospels. The reality is more layered. Each group held convictions about Scripture, tradition, worship, and Israel's future, and each had blind spots that Jesus exposed directly.
The Sadducees were closely linked to the temple establishment, the high priesthood, and the wealthy aristocracy of Jerusalem. Acts 4:1-12 opens with the priests, the captain of the temple, and the Sadducees confronting the apostles. They were disturbed because the apostles were proclaiming in Jesus the resurrection from the dead. That detail matters: the content of the early Christian message touched the Sadducees' most sensitive denial. Their power base was the temple, and the temple order was what they defended. They were not village skeptics but establishment figures who held real authority and were willing to use it. When resurrection preaching spread, they moved against it politically as well as doctrinally.
The Pharisees were different in origin and temperament. They were not priests first; they were serious lay students of the law who applied it to ordinary daily life. Their name likely relates to being separated, set apart for purity and obedience. They believed in resurrection, in angels, and in spirits, as Acts 23:6-10 makes plain. Paul himself says, in that passage, that he is a Pharisee, a son of Pharisees, and that he is being judged concerning the hope and resurrection of the dead. They were not the enemies of resurrection faith. On many points of doctrine they stood closer to Jesus and the apostles than the Sadducees did. Jesus' sharpest rebukes of the Pharisees came precisely because they were close, not distant, to the truth.
Both parties shared one serious flaw: each had a framework that filtered Scripture rather than submitting to it. The Sadducees filtered out anything not anchored in the Torah as they read it. The Pharisees added layers of tradition that could end up setting aside the command of God. Both could quote texts. Both could debate. Both could miss the living God speaking in the very passages they handled. Matthew 22:23-33 shows Jesus dealing with the first group, and Matthew 23 shows him addressing the second. The two chapters belong together, because the same Lord corrects unbelief in both its skeptical and its religious forms.
The riddle about seven brothers and one wife
Matthew 22:23 begins with a note that frames everything that follows: On that day Sadducees (those who say that there is no resurrection) came to him. The narrator tells us their position before he tells us their question, which warns us about the purpose of the question. This is not a sincere seeker asking for light. It is a doctrinal test built on a deliberately constructed case. The Sadducees are not asking because they want to be persuaded; they are asking because they think the resurrection belief produces absurdity. Their riddle is designed to make the doctrine look ridiculous, not to examine whether it is true.
The case is built on the law of levirate marriage, the provision that a brother should raise up offspring for a deceased brother so that his name would not be blotted out in Israel. The Sadducees take that provision and stretch it into a corner case. Seven brothers marry the same woman in turn, each dying without children. Then, finally, the woman dies. Their question is simple: whose wife will she be in the resurrection? Behind the question is a picture of resurrection as merely this life repeated, a continuation of the present order with all its ordinary arrangements still intact. If resurrection is just life again as it is now, then this tangled case really would be a problem.
Notice what the question assumes. It assumes that marriage, family, and the present social order carry over into the resurrection unchanged. It assumes that if the dead are raised, the same relationships must be sorted out and the same legal obligations must continue. It assumes that the afterlife is simply the current world extended, and that a contradiction in the current world therefore disproves the future one. This is a common pattern in every generation: a person imagines the resurrection in purely physical, earthly terms, finds the picture incoherent, and concludes the doctrine is false. The problem is often not the doctrine but the shallow picture being rejected.
The Sadducees thought they had found a fatal flaw. Jesus had already answered their party's allies in the previous section, when the Pharisees and Herodians asked about taxes. Now he answers the Sadducees on their chosen ground. The arrangement of Matthew 22 is not random: questions about authority, taxes, resurrection, and the greatest commandment pile up as the leaders try to trap him. Each attempt fails. The resurrection question is the one that lets Jesus speak most directly about the Scriptures and about the kind of life God gives. He turns their riddle into a lesson about the living God.
You do not know the Scriptures or the power of God
Jesus' first sentence to them goes to the root. In Matthew 22:29 he tells them they are mistaken because they do not know the Scriptures or the power of God. That is a serious charge. These were men who studied and debated Scripture professionally. Yet Jesus says their error comes from a defective knowledge of Scripture combined with a defective grasp of God's power. The two failures are connected. If you underestimate God's power, you will read Scripture as if it can only describe the ordinary; if you misread Scripture, you will form a small view of what God is able to do. Sound doctrine about the resurrection requires both a text and a God who can act on it.
Knowing the power of God means taking seriously that God creates, raises, and transforms beyond our categories. The Sadducees' argument assumes that God can only continue what already exists, never create a new mode of existence. But the God of Israel is the God who made the heavens and the earth out of nothing, who parts seas and gives life to the barren. If that God promises resurrection, the promise cannot be limited by our imagination of what is possible. The Sadducees denied resurrection partly because they had a small view of God's power. Any theology that leaves God unable to do what he says he will do has already compromised at a deeper level than the specific doctrine under debate.
Jesus also says they do not know the Scriptures. This is striking because the Sadducees accepted the Torah as authoritative and considered themselves guardians of the text. Jesus does not accuse them of lacking the scrolls but of misreading them. Their error was not ignorance of the documents; it was failure to see what the documents said. Handling Scripture without understanding the God who speaks in it leads to error even among experts. This is a warning for every serious student of the Bible. Correct handling of the text is not the same as knowing the God of the text, and careful study without humility and faith can still arrive at wrong conclusions.
The pairing of Scriptures and power also gives a model for answering objections. Jesus does not merely assert that resurrection is true; he points to a text and to the character of God. He also does not treat the riddle as unanswerable. He corrects the underlying assumption about what resurrection life is like. Addressing objections to the faith well requires both knowing what God has said and knowing who God is. We should not be satisfied with quoting verses to people who do not yet see the God those verses reveal, nor with speaking warmly about God while ignoring what he has actually said. Jesus does both in one sentence.
Like angels in heaven
Jesus then addresses the specific puzzle. In Matthew 22:30 he says that in the resurrection people neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like angels in heaven. Notice what he does and does not say. He does not say the resurrected cease to be human or become angels. He says they are like angels in this respect: marriage is not part of that state. The resurrection life is neither a mere continuation of this life nor a dissolution into something less than human. It is a transformed mode of existence in which the present institution of marriage, given for this age, is no longer needed. Jesus corrects the Sadducees' assumption not by denying resurrection but by redefining it.
This answer also reframes the whole question. The Sadducees assumed that if the dead are raised, the complex web of kinship obligations must be carried over and somehow resolved. Jesus says the question does not arise because the resurrection is not simply this order continuing. The woman will not be the wife of seven men, because the marriage bond as we know it belongs to this present age. That does not diminish marriage; it locates it correctly. Marriage is a gift for this life with a purpose that includes covenant companionship and the raising of children. In the resurrection, the purposes marriage serves will have reached their fulfillment in a different way.
There is tenderness in this answer for those who have lost spouses or who never married. The riddle treats the woman as a problem to be solved, but the answer implies that the resurrection is not about sorting out earthly ties as property. Jesus insists that the patriarchs are alive to God, which means the resurrection is about being in relation to God, not merely about resuming social arrangements. The deepest good of the age to come is not the continuation of our present structures but the presence of God. That hope is large enough to comfort those whose earthly family circumstances were painful or incomplete.
Some Christians have read more into this verse than it can carry, either by treating heaven as a place where relationships are dissolved or by treating marriage as ultimately unimportant. Both go too far. Jesus addresses a narrow point: the resurrection is not the same as this life. He does not tell us everything about the age to come. What he does tell us is that the living God has a future for his people that is real, embodied, and not reducible to the present. The angels in heaven worship and serve God; the redeemed in resurrection life will do the same, freely and fully, without the conditions that mark this present age.
The God of the living: the argument from Exodus
Then Jesus makes his decisive move. In Matthew 22:31-32 he asks whether they have not read what was spoken by God, who said, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He then draws the conclusion: God is not the God of the dead, but of the living. This is a remarkable argument because the text he cites is not obviously about resurrection at all. Exodus 3:6 records God speaking to Moses at the burning bush, identifying himself as the God of the patriarchs. The Sadducees accepted Exodus. Jesus shows that even this foundational text, read rightly, assumes that the patriarchs are alive to God.
Notice the tense of the statement. God does not say, I was the God of Abraham, as if the relationship ended at Abraham's death. He says, I am. The covenant relation is present tense. If Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were simply dead and gone, and if death ended the relationship permanently, then God would be the God of the dead in the most literal sense. But the living God cannot have a permanent relationship with those who have ceased to exist. The tense carries the argument. God's covenant commitment to the patriarchs, made and sealed in their lifetime, obligates him to be their God forever. Therefore, they live.
This is a beautiful argument because it grounds resurrection not in a proof text about rising bodies but in the character of God as covenant-keeping. The hope of resurrection is not a speculative add-on to faith in God. It is implied by who God is. If God binds himself to people in covenant love, he cannot finally abandon them to death. His faithfulness to his own promises requires that those who are his continue to be his. The Sadducees wanted to dismiss resurrection as a later innovation, but Jesus shows it is woven into the earliest revelation of God's name and covenant. The doctrine is not a fringe idea; it is a consequence of knowing God as he reveals himself.
Matthew 22:33 records the crowd's reaction: they were astonished at his teaching. Jesus did not win by shouting down the Sadducees or by appealing to tradition. He won by opening the Scriptures and revealing the living God within them. That is the model for all teaching. The goal is not to defeat opponents but to show what God has actually said and who he actually is. When Jesus finishes, the Sadducees have no answer, and the crowds are amazed. The question that was meant to expose resurrection as absurd has instead exposed a God whose covenant love outlasts the grave.
Why the Sadducees denied resurrection
The Sadducees' denial was not a random position. It grew from their understanding of Scripture and their place in the religious structure of the day. They gave special weight to the Pentateuch, the five books of Moses, and they did not find there what they considered a clear, developed doctrine of resurrection. They also rejected the oral traditions and interpretive expansions that the Pharisees treasured. So their canon within the canon, so to speak, was narrower, and their expectations were correspondingly smaller. Jesus meets them on their own ground by arguing from Exodus, the very book they most honored. This is an important detail: he does not dismiss their concern for the Torah; he shows that the Torah itself, rightly read, assumes resurrection.
Their theology also fit their social position. As temple aristocrats, they had a stake in the present order. The temple, the priesthood, and the sacrificial system were their sphere of influence. A doctrine that relativized this present life and pointed to a future judgment could unsettle the arrangements they benefited from. Doctrinal positions are sometimes held for reasons other than pure exegesis. That does not mean every Sadducee was cynical, but it helps explain why the group resisted resurrection so firmly and why they felt threatened by the apostolic preaching in Acts. Beliefs about the future have consequences for how we live in the present, and those with power often resist doctrines that expose the limits of that power.
Their approach to Scripture also shows a danger that can appear in any tradition. When we decide in advance which parts of God's word are central and which can be set aside, we may end up with a canon that excludes what God has clearly said. The Sadducees were not alone in this. The Pharisees could also bind heavy burdens and neglect weightier matters. Every interpreter faces the temptation to shape the Bible according to prior commitments. Jesus' charge that they do not know the Scriptures reaches beyond the Sadducees to anyone who handles the text with a settled conclusion already in place. Honest reading requires that we let the whole counsel of God correct our frameworks.
It is worth noting that the Sadducees' position did not survive. The temple was destroyed, the priesthood lost its function, and the movement faded. But the questions they raised about resurrection, marriage, and the afterlife remain. Many today deny any life after death or reduce it to a vague spiritual survival. Jesus' answer still speaks: the resurrection is real because God is the living God, and his covenant with his people is not dissolved by death. The Sadducees were wrong, and the reason they were wrong was not that they lacked intelligence but that they did not know the Scriptures or the power of God.
What the Pharisees got right and where they went wrong
The Pharisees are the other half of the picture. They affirmed resurrection, angels, and spirits, and Acts 23:6-10 shows how central that was to their identity. When Paul stood before the council and declared that he was a Pharisee and was being judged concerning the hope and resurrection of the dead, he deliberately set the two parties against each other. The Pharisees sided with Paul on that point. So on the doctrine of resurrection, the Pharisees were closer to Jesus than the Sadducees. Jesus does not rebuke them for believing in resurrection. He rebukes them for how they lived and taught in light of what they believed.
Matthew 23 collects a long series of warnings from Jesus to the Pharisees and scribes. He acknowledges that they sit in Moses' seat and tells the crowds to do what they say, but not what they do. The charge is not that they taught false doctrine about the law but that they did not practice what they taught. They bound heavy burdens on others and would not lift a finger to help. They loved the best seats and respectful greetings. They tithed mint and dill and cumin but neglected justice, mercy, and faith. Their orthodoxy did not produce humility, and their learning did not produce love.
So the two parties fail in opposite directions. The Sadducees denied too little and believed too little; the Pharisees believed much and lived inconsistently with it. Both are warnings. One warning is against a skepticism that trims Scripture down to what fits our rational comfort. The other is against a religion that is doctrinally correct but morally hollow. Jesus wants neither. He calls his followers to know the Scriptures and the power of God, and to let that knowledge produce lives of justice, mercy, and faithfulness. The resurrection hope is not a doctrine to be filed away; it is a hope that should purify how we live now.
When we read about these groups, we should resist the easy habit of identifying ourselves with the good characters and the groups with the villains. Every reader has some Sadducee and some Pharisee in them. We may be tempted to cut out parts of the Bible that do not fit our world, or we may hold correct beliefs while our daily conduct contradicts them. The point of reading Matthew 22 and 23 together is not to feel superior to first-century leaders but to hear Jesus' corrections as addressed to us. The living God still speaks, and his word still exposes both our unbelief and our hypocrisy.
Biblical fidelity check
Matthew 22:23-33 establishes several things plainly. It establishes that the Sadducees denied resurrection, that this denial was a settled party position, and that Jesus directly contradicted it. It establishes that Jesus grounded resurrection in the character of God as the God of the living, using Exodus 3:6, and that he rejected the Sadducees' assumption that resurrection life is simply this life continued. It also establishes that in the resurrection people do not marry. What the passage does not establish is a full doctrine of the intermediate state, a detailed description of resurrection bodies, or a complete account of relationships in the age to come. Jesus answers a specific challenge, and we should not press the text to answer every question we might bring to it.
A common misreading takes Jesus to be saying that the saints become angels. That is not what the text says. Jesus says they are like angels in heaven in the specific respect that they do not marry. Angels are not the destination of the redeemed; the redeemed are raised as human beings in a transformed state. Another misreading treats marriage as abolished because it is unimportant, but Jesus simply locates marriage in this present age. Faithful Christians have differed about details of the millennium, the timing of resurrection, and the nature of the intermediate state, and those differences should be acknowledged with charity. What is not open to doubt is the central claim: God is not the God of the dead, but of the living.
Other passages that speak to Matthew 22:23-33
Several related passages help fill out the background and aftermath of this exchange. For a broader survey of how the first-century Jewish parties differed, see Pharisees Sadducees Essenes and Zealots compared: A Biblical Guide. The Book of Acts shows the same fault line running through the early church's conflicts, as What Does Acts 1:6–11 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application explains in its treatment of the risen Lord's teaching. The commission to bear witness to the resurrection is treated in What Does Acts 1:8 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application. And the promise that the risen Jesus will return is unfolded in Acts 1:9-11 Prophecy: Jesus’s Promised Return from Heaven. Together these passages show that the resurrection hope Jesus defended before the Sadducees became the engine of the church's witness.
Frequently asked questions
Who were the Sadducees and what did they believe?
The Sadducees were a first-century Jewish party tied to the temple priesthood and the Jerusalem aristocracy. They gave special weight to the books of Moses, rejected the oral traditions the Pharisees prized, and denied the resurrection of the dead, along with angels and spirits. Acts 4:1-12 shows them opposing the apostles for preaching resurrection in Jesus. Their influence was concentrated in the temple establishment, and after the temple's destruction their movement faded. They were not skeptics without religion; they were religious leaders with a narrowed canon and a small view of God's power.
How did Jesus prove resurrection from the Old Testament?
Jesus cited Exodus 3:6, where God says to Moses, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. He argued that God is not the God of the dead but of the living. Since God spoke of the patriarchs in the present tense long after their deaths, they must be alive to him. The argument rests on God's covenant faithfulness: he cannot bind himself to people and then abandon them forever to death. Resurrection is therefore implied by the very character of the living God, which is why Jesus tells the Sadducees they do not know the Scriptures or the power of God.
Does Matthew 22:30 mean we become angels?
No. Jesus says that in the resurrection people neither marry nor are given in marriage but are like angels in heaven. The comparison is limited to the point at issue: marriage does not continue into the resurrection age, just as it is not part of angelic existence. The redeemed are not transformed into angels; they are raised as whole human beings in a glorified state. Angels and resurrected saints are alike in not marrying, but they remain distinct kinds of creatures. The verse corrects the Sadducees' assumption that the resurrection is simply this present life continued without change.
