What is the meaning of Mathew 22:32. “I am the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, not the God of the dead but of the living”. Why are they considered alive?

This verse is the culmination of a little debate that Jesus had with the Sadducees  and is mentioned in all the three Synoptic Gospels. The main difference between the Pharisees and Sadducees was that the latter did not believe in the resurrection from the dead (see Mt 22:23). They only considered the Torah or the first five books of OT as the revealed ones. By bringing up a hypothetical question of a woman who lost all her seven husbands, in all probability, they were trying to figure out in whose camp this new Rabbi’s loyalties laid. Before we come to verse 32, we will focus a bit on verse 29. “You are in error because you neither know the Scripture nor the power of God”. Even a person who has devoted himself to the Scripture can be in error, like the Sadducees were, unless he KNOWs the Scripture. We need to encounter the One in our hearts whom the Scripture talks about. Only then will we be able to enter more truly into the light that the Scripture reveals to us. So, this passage warns us not to fall into the same trap as the Sadducees. As CCC teaches us ‘If the Scriptures are not to remain a dead letter, Christ, the eternal Word of the living God, must, through the Holy Spirit, “open [our] minds to understand the Scriptures” (#108). So let that be our earnest desire and prayer.

Refuting the belief system of the Sadducees, Jesus brings up an excellent argument from the Torah itself when he speaks about God as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob (Ex 3:15). Why does the Scripture refer to God not simply as the God of Abraham but as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob? It is a way of emphasizing the covenantal nature of God’s relationship with His people. The covenant that God made with Abraham (Gen 12;1-3) was renewed with Abraham’s son Isaac (Gen 26:3-4) and Isaac’s son Jacob (Gen 28:13-15). When God asks Moses to refer to Him as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, he was trying to carve in the hearts of the Israelites the steadfastness of His love towards them through the generations. This image of God is rooted in the heart of every Sadducee. Here, Jesus starts on a common ground with the Sadducees but goes one step further when he says “He is not the God of the dead, but of the living”. Jesus is boldly declaring that even though Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob had died a long time back, they still live in the presence of God! 

Here is a beautiful revelation of the Catholic understanding of death. The soul never dies. It is immortal. It just gets separated from the body at death. The soul, in whom the presence of God delved, while a person lived in grace on the earth continues to be in God’s sight – whether in heaven or in purgatory. The beautiful truths like the communion of saints (in heaven, purgatory, and earth) and the exchange of spiritual goods between them expounds this truth. When Jesus speaks of the patriarchs of the Bible as living, he is stating that their just souls are alive before God; and through death God was only calling the soul back to itself after its heavenly pilgrimage. “Death was contrary to the plans of God the creator and it entered only as a result of sin” (CCC 1008).However, since Jesus destroyed death by paying the wages of sin on the Cross, for those who die in Christ’s grace, death is actually a participation in the death of the Lord so that it can share in His resurrection. 

So we are encouraged even while on earth, to focus more on the soul than on the body. “Since, then, you have been raised with Christ (in baptism), set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things. For you died, and your life is now hidden with Christ in God ” (Col 3:1-3). Our God is a God of the living and those who died in grace live in His presence. That is why we pray to them and their prayers for us are so powerful. It is even more powerful now since they are no longer confined in their mortal bodies but sees God face to face. That is what St Therese of Lisieux meant when she said: “I will spend my heaven by doing good on earth”. Therefore, even when you pray for your dear departed ones, let us remember that their souls are in God’s presence. We can indeed help them and be helped by them. 

(Souls in hell are not considered among the communion of saints as through their mortal sins, they chose to separate themselves from the true life offered by Jesus. And the wages of sin is death).