---
title: Mark 12:27
url: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/mark-12-27/
markdown: https://jw-apologetics.app/verses/mark-12-27.md
type: verse
perspective: Protestant (historic Nicene) response to Jehovah's Witness teaching
reference: Mark 12:27
testament: NT
section: Gospels
index: https://jw-apologetics.app/llms.txt
---

# Mark 12:27

## Text (Berean Standard Bible)

> He is not the God of the dead, but of the living. You are badly mistaken!”

## NWT Wording of the Key Phrase

- NWT (2013 revision): "He is a God, not of the dead, but of the living. You are very much mistaken."

## JW Usage

Mark's parallel to Luke 20:38 carries the same Watchtower reading: the verse is forward-looking, describing God's certainty to raise the patriarchs at the future resurrection. Because soul-sleep doctrine cannot accept that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are currently conscious, Jesus's argument is reframed as a promise about the future rather than a deduction from present reality.

## Protestant Usage

Mark's phrasing is sharper than Luke's: "He is not the God of the dead but of the living. You are very much mistaken." Jesus tells the Sadducees flatly that they are wrong precisely about the intermediate state — they thought God could be the God of dead patriarchs (because they denied resurrection); Jesus replies that God is not the God of the dead at all, which means the patriarchs are not dead in the sense the Sadducees imagine. Take the rebuke at face value: if soul sleep were true, the Sadducees were right and Jesus's correction misfires. Pair with Hebrews 11:13-16 (the patriarchs "having seen [the promises] from afar… now desire a better country, that is, a heavenly one") for the patriarchs as currently conscious witnesses awaiting resurrection.

## NWT Issue

As at Luke 20:38, the NWT renders the opening clause "He is a God, not of the dead, but of the living" — the same anarthrous-theos indefinite construction, contrary to the consensus of standard English translations ("He is not the God of the dead but of the living"). The pattern is the same one that produces "a god" at John 1:1. Here the rendering is less doctrinally weighted than at John 1:1 but the consistency of the practice is worth noting.

## 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]