Misinterpretations often include viewing the verse as endorsing the inherent immortality of all human souls without need for resurrection or judgment, detached from its context of proving bodily resurrection for the righteous; others wrongly universalize it to mean everyone lives unto God regardless of faith, or take it literally as denying any reality of death, overlooking the Sadducees' challenge and the patriarchs' covenantal status.
Luke 20:38
King James Version (1769)
38 For he is not a God of the dead, but of the living: for all live unto him.
Jesus counters the Sadducees' rejection of resurrection by declaring that God is not a God of the dead but of the living, citing God's present-tense identification in Exodus as the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, who had long died; this proves the patriarchs live unto God, affirming the reality of resurrection and eternal life for those in covenant relationship with Him.