---
title: Luke 20:38
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/luke-20-38/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/luke-20-38.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Luke 20:38
testament: NT
section: Gospels
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Luke 20:38

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> He is not the God of the dead, but of the living, for to Him all are alive.”

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (2013 revision): "He is a God, not of the dead, but of the living, for they are all living to him."

## JW Usage

The Watchtower reads Luke 20:38 as forward-looking — God will be the God of the patriarchs again at the resurrection, when he raises them from non-existence. The phrase "they are all living to him" is read as describing God's certain memory and intention to resurrect, not as describing any current consciousness of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Soul sleep requires this reading; without it, Jesus's argument against the Sadducees presupposes the very intermediate state JW theology denies.

## Protestant Usage

Read the verse with the Sadducees' question (Luke 20:27-33) as the setup. Jesus's argument is logically tight: God says (present tense in Exodus 3:6) "I AM the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob"; God is "not the God of the dead but of the living"; therefore Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are alive. Step three is the bridge — the Sadducees were arguing that there is no resurrection because the patriarchs are dead and gone, and Jesus refutes them by establishing that the patriarchs are currently alive to God. If death meant non-existence, God would currently be the God of non-existent men, which is exactly what Jesus denies. The phrase "all live to him" is present tense — not "all will live again to him." The verse is a direct refutation of soul sleep.

## NWT Issue

The NWT renders the opening clause "He is a God, not of the dead, but of the living." The Greek theos is an anarthrous predicate noun, and the NWT chooses an indefinite article ("a God") here consistent with its translation philosophy that produces "the Word was a god" at John 1:1. Standard English translations render "He is not the God of the dead but of the living" — definite, treating theos as a qualitative or definite noun rather than indefinite. The rendering matters less for soul-sleep apologetics than for Christology, but the consistency of the NWT's anarthrous-theos pattern across the Gospels is worth flagging on each occurrence.

## Arguments Using This Verse

- [He Is Not the God of the Dead but of the Living](https://jw-apologetics.app/arguments/god-of-the-living.md) — Matthew 22:31–32, Mark 12:26–27 [Soul & Hell]