The lineage of Jesus seems to emphasize certain aspects of the nature of the newborn Jesus. Matthew accounts for the earthly “fathers” of Jesus ranging from Abraham to Joseph. Abraham, as you recall, is the father of the son of promise, Isaac. At an impossible age, Abraham and Sarah are told they will bring forth a son in whom will be the Seed through whom all nations will be blessed. In complete faith and obedience, Abraham offers Isaac on an altar of sacrifice, all the while knowing with full certainty by faith that God will honor His promise to bless all nations through Isaac. Even if his son dies, Abraham reasons by faith that God can and will bring Isaac back from the dead. Christ Jesus comes from Abraham’s seed, the seed of Isaac, and is born as the Son of Promise through whom all nations of earth may be blessed because this babe is the Son of God, the only begotten of the Father Jehovah. As Son of God, with no earthly biological father, Jesus is fully divine. He is born with the attributes of His Father. He will have power over creation at His disposal to bring glory to His Father. Water will be turned to wine by His presence, windstorms on the sea will cease at His voice, bread and fish will be multiplied to feed thousands at His prayer, blind men will receive sight at His touch, women will cease their bleeding with a touch of His garment. Word spread through all of Judea—the Son of God is among us—the Messiah, the Son of Promise has come through Abraham’s seed.
Luke accounts for the earthly fathers of Jesus ranging from Heli, Mary’s father, to King David, to Abraham, and all the way back to Adam. Adam, Eve, and Satan were all reprimanded for their disobedient sin in the garden: “I [God] will put enmity [hostility] between thee [Satan] and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it [the seed] shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his [Jesus’s] heel” (Gen. 3:15, KJV-BRG). Mary, at least seventy-four generations later, will be that woman: “The Lord himself will give you a sign: The virgin [Mary] will conceive and give birth to a son, and will call him Immanuel [God with us—the Son of the Promise]” (Isa. 7:14, NIV).
As Son of Man, born from the womb of a woman, Jesus is fully human. His lineage dates all the way back to the first man, Adam. He, Jesus, is born with all human traits. Jesus will cry and weep, He will feel pain and heartache, He will hunger and thirst, He will work by the sweat of His brow, He will endure every temptation known to man during His life of thirty-three years; yet, as Son of Man, He will never fail to uphold His Father’s will. He will never sin. Jesus will have brothers and sisters and will endure sibling rivalry. Jesus, as Son of Man, will endure scorn, ridicule, false accusations, a rigged trial, and death on a Roman cross. He will be sentenced by the very law he fulfilled to perfection.
As Son of God, Jesus could have changed the course of His life at any time. As the Son of Man, He fully understood His Father’s plan of redemption for a fallen world; He fully understood the bruising of His heel which must take place. He Himself, the Seed from Adam, must answer the power of Satan with enmity and hostility and must defeat death, which was authored by the enemy. As Son of Man, Jesus completed His divine mission. On day three, Jesus rose from the dead, and on that day the convergence of Jesus—Son of God, Son of Man—was displayed for a dying world to forever see: “Paul, a servant of Christ Jesus, called to be an apostle and set apart for the gospel of God—the gospel he promised beforehand through his prophets in the Holy Scriptures regarding his Son, who as to his earthly life was a descendant of David, and who through the Spirit of holiness was appointed the Son of God in power by his resurrection from the dead: Jesus Christ our Lord. Through him we received grace and apostleship to call all the Gentiles to the obedience that comes from faith for his name’s sake. And you also are among those Gentiles who are called to belong to Jesus Christ” (Rom. 1:1–6, NIV).
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