Misinterpreting Luke 20:31 often involves taking it literally as a historical endorsement of polygamous or serial marriages without children, or using it to deny resurrection by fixating on the conundrum of ownership in eternity, ignoring its context as a Sadducees' trap based on Deuteronomy 25's levirate law; it neither prescribes modern marriage practices nor implies heavenly remarriage conflicts, but sets up Jesus' revelation that resurrected life elevates believers beyond such temporal obligations.
Luke 20:31
King James Version (1769)
31 And the third took her; and in like manner the seven also: and they left no children, and died.
Luke 20:31 concludes the Sadducees' hypothetical scenario posed to Jesus, illustrating a woman married successively to seven brothers under levirate marriage customs, all dying childless, to challenge the concept of resurrection by questioning whose wife she would be in the afterlife. The core truth emerges in Jesus' response, teaching that in the resurrection, people neither marry nor are given in marriage but are equal to angels and cannot die, affirming eternal life transcends earthly marital bonds and institutions.