37 “But even Moses showed in the burning bush passage that the dead are raised, when he called the Lord ‘the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’ 38 For He is not the God of the dead but of the living, for all live to Him (Luke 20:37–38, NKJV).”
The apostles and prophets teach us to be careful how we handle the word of God. We are to rightly divide [“to make a straight cut, to dissect (expound) correctly” (G3718)]. Jesus showed that one way to do this is to use necessary inferences (conclusions) drawn from the Scriptures. The passage He referred to in refutation of the Sadducean error of no resurrection of the dead was Exodus 3:6: “Moreover He said, ‘I am the God of your father—the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.’” Jesus drew a necessary conclusion that since God used the present tense (“I am the God…of Abraham…Isaac…Jacob”), their fathers were still alive (Matt. 22:31-32). He rebuked the Sadducees for failing to draw the conclusion demanded by the text. Many balk at the binding authority of necessary inferences, yet Jesus used one to prove there is a resurrection of the dead. We are in the company of Jesus when we carefully handle God’s word to draw their binding conclusions. Like the Sadducees, failure to do so results in being deceived by error for “not knowing the Scriptures” (Matt. 22:29).