Matthew 22:29 means that the Sadducees were wrong about the resurrection for two reasons: they did not know the Scriptures, and they did not understand the power of God. Jesus is correcting a trick question about marriage after death, and he points to a deeper error underneath it. The words are spoken by Jesus to a group of Sadducees, a Jewish party that denied the resurrection of the dead, after they brought him a question meant to make the idea look absurd.
But Jesus answered them, “You are mistaken, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God.
Matthew 22:29 (WEB)
What Matthew 22:29 Means
Jesus begins with a direct charge: “You are mistaken.” The Sadducees thought they had caught him in a contradiction, but Jesus says the mistake is theirs, not his. The problem is not that they lacked information. They had the Scriptures in front of them but were not reading them rightly.
He names two causes. The first is “not knowing the Scriptures,” meaning they had not grasped what the text actually teaches about God and the dead. The second is “nor the power of God,” meaning they had left God’s ability to raise the dead out of their picture of what is possible. Jesus treats these as one problem seen from two angles: a small view of God’s word leads to a small view of God’s power.
The verse does not spell out the details of the resurrection, and it does not promise that every question about life after death will be answered here. What it does say is that a right reading of Scripture will make room for God’s power to do what the Sadducees thought could not happen.
The Context of Matthew 22:29
Matthew’s Gospel was written for a community that knew the Jewish Scriptures well and needed to see Jesus as their fulfillment. In this chapter, Jesus is in Jerusalem during the final week before his death, facing a series of hostile questions from religious leaders. The Sadducees, who accepted only the five books of Moses as authoritative, come with a hypothetical case about a woman who married seven brothers in turn, asking whose wife she will be after the resurrection.
The verses just after Matthew 22:29 are important. Jesus says that in the resurrection people neither marry nor are given in marriage, and then he quotes Exodus, where God says he is the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. From that, Jesus argues that God is “not the God of the dead, but of the living.” Read this way, the rebuke in verse 29 is the opening move of an argument from Scripture itself, showing that the Sadducees’ own Bible points toward resurrection.
Key Phrases in Matthew 22:29
Luke 20:38
Now he is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for all are alive to him.”
(WEB)
Luke records the same encounter and includes Jesus’ summary that God is the God of the living, not the dead, because all live to him. Reading it alongside Matthew 22:29 helps you see the same argument from a second Gospel and strengthens the point that the resurrection rests on God’s own character.
1 Corinthians 15:20
But now Christ has been raised from the dead. He became the first fruits of those who are asleep.
(WEB)
Paul writes that Christ has been raised from the dead as the first fruits of those who sleep. This verse connects the hope Jesus defends in Matthew 22:29 to the risen Christ, showing that God’s power over death has been demonstrated in the resurrection of Jesus himself.
A Short Prayer From Matthew 22:29
Lord, you have said that I can go wrong by not knowing your word and not trusting your power. Open my eyes to read Scripture with care, and enlarge my view of what you are able to do. When I am tempted to believe that a situation is hopeless, remind me that you are the God of the living and that nothing is too hard for your hand. Help me to rest in your power and to speak of your faithfulness with honesty and hope. Amen.
