They ask a question, which doesn’t so much seem to be a plot to trap Christ, to have him prosecuted, as something intended to catch him out. They come with a quite different type of question.
The spirit of the Sadducees shows itself today whenever the focus of religion moves to this life. ‘What is the good of being a Christian?’, some ask. ‘Ah, I've got it. The purpose of being a Christian is, we are here to reform the world. It is to make the world a better place, and we should be expending our energies, on reforming the world: getting involved in politics, the arts, culture.’ Well it is a good thing if you can reform terrible injustices and oppressive things. It is a very good thing if you can be like some of the great social reformers of the past, who took the boys away from sweeping the chimneys, who stopped child employment in that way, and the abuse of people. Yes, that is all a very good thing, but is it our primary role to reform the world? ‘I can't think’, some people say, ‘it's worth being a Christian, if there isn’t a benefit in this life. I'm embarrassed’, they say, ‘if people say, “You Christians, you are only concerned with the salvation of your soul. Why aren’t you concerned about reforming the world?”’ And some people say, ‘I can't bear that question. Yes, I must be involved in a social gospel.’ It's a similar thing, really. The Sadducees said, ‘Isn't it best to focus on this life? Besides which some of the provisions of Moses don't work if we transfer them into heaven.’ ‘No,’ says God, ‘this world is doomed world. We do what good in it that we can, while we can, but we can't reform it totally.’ ‘Ye have the poor with you always’, says the Lord. Do what you can, but it will always be a doomed world in which there is violence and meanness and cruelty and oppression. It will always be there, because it's a world of sin and alienation from God. Your first task – while you do good wherever you can – is to win souls, to bring people to salvation, to bring them into union with God, to bring them on the road to heaven and to glory. We are looking there; that is our objective.
The Scripture cannot be broken, and the purposes of God are fully consistent with themselves. For that reason, there are no difficulties of the sort that the Sadducees were asking. All such questions can be answered, and there was never any apparent problem that Christ could not resolve. We may not know the answer, but there is one. If we find ourselves faced with something that is difficult, we must pray and search the Scriptures.