For the disciples of Christ, for whom this Gospel was written, their faith and hope were bound in the closest way to the Resurrection of Jesus from the dead after His execution and burial. That is precisely why the brief account of Jesus' opponents, who tried to prove the impossibility of resurrection, was so important to them. Their argument, which at first may look like meaningless casuistry about a nonexistent situation (seven brothers for one wife), is in fact strong precisely because of its absurdity. There is so much absurdity and evil in the world that death appears more like a cure for pain and deadlock. What will happen if all people suddenly "rise," that is, return to this life, with all its imperfection and limitation? How can seven brothers share one unfortunate woman?

Christ answers from an entirely different position. Resurrection is necessary because every person is in one way or another connected with the living God. And this means that in the resurrection a person lives by the life of God Himself, free from human absurdity and pain.

The long, ornate preface poorly conceals the spite with which the Pharisees ask their provocative question. Therefore Christ's rebuke of the questioners for hypocrisy, with which He introduced His answer, looks completely natural. In answering, He did not even take the coin into His hands, but only asked them to show it to Him from a distance. Under Jewish law Jesus was not required to take into His hands a coin bearing a pagan image; afterward one was supposed to perform a washing. But it seems that here He is not only observing the law, but also demonstrating His noninvolvement with Caesar's world, while nevertheless not calling for resistance to it. In calling people to render to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, He calls them to give the state what necessarily follows from the reality of earthly life, but He rejects the deification of the state and its rulers. And here we see the basis for the principle of the separation of Church and state as different organized structures. They can cooperate successfully, but they must not replace each other.

The Pharisees were amazed when they heard His answer, but at what more? That He had reduced their provocation to nothing, or that He had opened new horizons for them? What if, at that moment, He managed to jolt at least some one of them out of the familiar rut of self-confidence?..

If only we knew how to read Scripture like the Lord does, how to see its essence... In His answers about the resurrection of the dead and about the greatest commandment, He proceeds from the Pentateuch, which His opponents knew almost by heart. He not only answers the scribes' provocative questions, but also shows us how deep the meaning of the familiar words of the Bible can be.

In the mysterious name of God, "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," revealed in the story of Moses' calling in the Book of Exodus, we suddenly discover a message about the resurrection of the dead. This will be revealed directly only in the later prophets and accomplished in the Resurrection of Christ. And the two most important commandments from Deuteronomy truly turn out to be a compressed form of the Decalogue (Ex. 20), where the first four commandments speak of love for God, and the remaining six of love for one's neighbor.