<p>20:38 <i>Now He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. For all live to Him</i>- This Greek construction could mean &lsquo;Not only the God of the dead, but also of the living&rsquo;. But the context is the Lord demonstrating that the understanding of the Sadducees was very much a dead religion and their God was effectively dead. They denied the resurrection and considered that we have reward only in this life. In this case, God was the God of Abraham only in the past. The Greek phrase could literally mean &lsquo;Not the God the dead, but the living God&rsquo;, alluding to the well known phrase &ldquo;the living God&rdquo;. If God only acted for Abraham etc. in the past, then the God Abraham knew effectively died when Abraham died. But the living God seeks to impart life to the faithful.</p><p>&quot;All live to Him&rdquo; is the Lord is critiquing their division between this life and the life to come- by saying that the faithful live on now in God&rsquo;s memory as they will eternally; He speaks of things which are not as though they are (Rom.&nbsp;4:17), and in this sense whether we live or die we are the Lord&rsquo;s (Rom. 14:8). Although the soul is mortal, the spirit returns to God and will be eternally &ldquo;saved&rdquo; at the last day. And the spirit refers to who a man essentially is, his thinking and character. This is preserved by God in His memory, and in that sense the faithful dead &ldquo;live&rdquo; before Him now. John&rsquo;s Gospel puts this in so many words by saying that we can live the eternal life right now. Whilst bodily resurrection is so significant from our point of view, the God who is outside of our kind of time sees the dead as effectively living as He extends forwards into eternity from the present- in a way we cannot now do. I made the point above that recently the Lord had resurrected Lazarus, with the result that He appeared to have won over many who had previously supported the Jewish leadership. They were now trying to prove that resurrection doesn&rsquo;t happen. The Lord at that time had emphasized that the resurrection of Lazarus was a visual reminder of the new life which those who believed in Him could experience right now: &ldquo;Whoever lives and believes in Me shall never die&rdquo; (Jn. 11:26). Luke&rsquo;s comment that &ldquo;all live unto Him&rdquo; is saying roughly the same thing. If our spirit is focused upon living and thinking the Kingdom life now, then this spirit is preserved by God upon death. And it is this which God sees after our death, and the sense in which we live unto Him. See on Rom. 14:8,9.</p><p>&quot;All live to him&quot; is a phrase used by the Rabbis concerning the existence of the faithful Jews as immortal souls in Heaven; Adam Clarke quotes several examples from Jewish writings. It seems the Lord uses their phrase in order to deconstruct it. Salvation is through being 'counted worthy' by grace (:35), the same idea as being counted as live &quot;to Him&quot;, and depends upon the resurrection of the body (:35). It is not at all automatic, as would be required by the idea of immortal souls.</p>