“Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Melchi, the son of Jannai, the son of Joseph, the son of Mattathias, the son of Amos, the son of Nahum, the son of Esli, the son of Naggai, the son of Maath, the son of Mattathias, the son of Semein, the son of Josech, the son of Joda, the son of Joanan, the son of Rhesa, the son of Zerubbabel, the son of Shealtiel, the son of Neri, the son of Melchi, the son of Addi, the son of Cosam, the son of Elmadam, the son of Er, the son of Joshua, the son of Eliezer, the son of Jorim, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Simeon, the son of Judah, the son of Joseph, the son of Jonam, the son of Eliakim, the son of Melea, the son of Menna, the son of Mattatha, the son of Nathan, the son of David, the son of Jesse, the son of Obed, the son of Boaz, the son of Sala, the son of Nahshon, the son of Amminadab, the son of Admin, the son of Arni, the son of Hezron, the son of Perez, the son of Judah, the son of Jacob, the son of Isaac, the son of Abraham, the son of Terah, the son of Nahor, the son of Serug, the son of Reu, the son of Peleg, the son of Eber, the son of Shelah, the son of Cainan, the son of Arphaxad, the son of Shem, the son of Noah, the son of Lamech, the son of Methuselah, the son of Enoch, the son of Jared, the son of Mahalaleel, the son of Cainan, the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.”

Of the four gospels, both Matthew and Luke feature a genealogy of Jesus. Both serve their purposes, which we’ll discuss, but both of them are, if we’re being completely honest, quite frequently skipped, or at the very least skimmed while reading. We come across them – Matthew’s at the very beginning of his gospel account, Luke’s here closing out chapter 3, and so often what we’re seeing isn’t perceived as information so much as it is a wall of random names. We read them and, whether it’s because we’re not familiar with other parts of Scripture and therefore have no recognition, or because maybe we can’t quite remember who some of them are without seeing the name in the context of their story, it all just goes over our heads. While this isn’t exactly a good thing, it’s understandable and I think we’ve all been there to some degree at one point or another. But the simple fact is, whether the genealogies look like a mass of random and difficult to pronounce names or not, they’re there for a reason. No one was trying to fluff out their writing, or get their gospel account to a certain word count or length – Matthew and Luke both included them as part of their writing intentionally, the human lineage of Jesus Christ is documented in the canon of Scripture with a purpose. Just because the information might not resonate the same as other passages doesn’t mean that we get to write off or diminish it – our relative interest doesn’t determine the value of Scripture. The problem for many of us is that if we’re going to acknowledge that the genealogies, being part of Scripture as a whole, are important and worthy of attention, we then have to actually give that attention. This is a challenge because, in case it’s not obvious, it’s generally easier to understand the relevance and applicability of the stories surrounding the life of Jesus and His teachings than it is a list of names – we have to actually delve into this, parse things apart, and understand the context that makes these names so relevant. There is no piece of Scripture that isn’t worthy of our time and attention, but some require less time and attention than others. This can take a minute to process, it can take a greater effort to take in and digest the scope and implications of what we’re reading. But what we are given by doing this is a greater understanding of the work of God throughout time, the redemption that He laid the foundation for from the beginning, and the plan that He brought to fruition in the Person of His Son – Jesus Christ, fully God, and fully Man. The genealogy of Jesus tells us things about our Savior, and it tells us things about ourselves, and it ultimately stands as yet another piece of evidence and support that God didn’t owe us, but richly provided that we might take greater assurance in Him. It is certainly worthy of our time and attention, it is living and breathing as all of the Word is, and what we will see as we delve into Luke’s record today is that it stands as a beautiful and faith affirming inclusion in the narrative of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

The Lineage of the Christ

1. Why is Luke’s Genealogy Different from Matthew’s?

Matthew 1:1–17 says,

“The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers, and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram, and Ram the father of Amminadab, and Amminadab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon, and Salmon the father of Boaz by Rahab, and Boaz the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of David the king. And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uriah, and Solomon the father of Rehoboam, and Rehoboam the father of Abijah, and Abijah the father of Asaph, and Asaph the father of Jehoshaphat, and Jehoshaphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzziah, and Uzziah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezekiah, and Hezekiah the father of Manasseh, and Manasseh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josiah, and Josiah the father of Jechoniah and his brothers, at the time of the deportation to Babylon. And after the deportation to Babylon: Jechoniah was the father of Shealtiel, and Shealtiel the father of Zerubbabel, and Zerubbabel the father of Abiud, and Abiud the father of Eliakim, and Eliakim the father of Azor, and Azor the father of Zadok, and Zadok the father of Achim, and Achim the father of Eliud, and Eliud the father of Eleazar, and Eleazar the father of Matthan, and Matthan the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ. So all the generations from Abraham to David were fourteen generations, and from David to the deportation to Babylon fourteen generations, and from the deportation to Babylon to the Christ fourteen generations.”

If you skip over the list of names in either gospel account, or even if you’re giving them a skim, it may not occur to you at first just how different they are, but seeing them back to back it’s obvious. Some of the differences have a simple, logical explanation behind them, while others take a little more careful thought to understand. To make sure we’re understanding this from the proper angles, let’s look at the individual differences, and the explanations for each. Firstly, we can see that while Luke tracks Jesus’ lineage all the way from Adam, Matthew begins with Abraham. We’ll talk more about Luke and the overarching purpose in tying things back to Adam, but for now let’s look at why Matthew opted to start with Abraham and go from there. The reasoning for this actually goes back to something we discussed as we began our study of Luke’s gospel account, in that while each of the four accounts is preaching the same good news, they are all approaching from a different perspective, and have a target audience foremost among their readers. To be clear, this isn’t a distinction of one gospel being written for one group of people and another being written for a different group. Anyone can read Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John and receive the good news of Jesus Christ. But they each had their own appeal, certainly within their time, and that colored the way they were written and the way in which some information was provided. Mark, the first written of the four, is also the shortest. It’s punchy in its delivery, and it’s commonly thought that based on its language and writing style, it was intended to convey the gospel as simply as possible, so that even the parts of the population who were uneducated could grasp the Truth. We’ve talked before about how Luke, being a gentile, wrote with a particular appeal to the gentiles in his written record, compiled to disciple Theophilus. John, being written last, and having years of perspective to see how people were twisting and misusing the earlier writings makes a clear and entirely unambiguous appeal to the deity of Christ. Matthew meanwhile is the one of the four that makes the greatest appeal to the Jewish population. Again, the gospel is for everyone, but there are key traits, especially in how Matthew begins his account that lay out the case for Jesus being the fulfilment of multiple prophecies, the Messiah they’ve been waiting for. Bearing this in mind, Matthew doesn’t trace Jesus’ lineage back from Adam, but begins with Abraham, the one with whom God made His covenant and claimed the Jewish people as His own, promising that they would be before they ever were. Abraham is who the Jews looked to as their father, waiting to be the inheritors of what had been promised through him. So as Matthew begins his account of the gospel he starts off with Jesus’ genealogy, showing a direct progression from Abraham to Jesus and using this as the first piece laid in building the case for affirming Jesus as the Christ. Luke on the other hand isn’t writing to meet this particular criteria, but rather to communicate who Jesus is broadly to all people and not necessarily to the Jews specifically. This is important for us to understand because grasping the purpose and content of the two genealogies serves to shore up our faith. Critics and non-believers love to cite so-called “Biblical contradictions,” and claim that they refute the legitimacy of Scripture as a whole. The problem with their critiques is that there are no Biblical contradictions when we actually take things in context. It’s easy to isolate almost anything, whether it’s a literary work, or even just a few sentences from a conversation and twist them out of context. This isn’t just something that the open opponents of Christianity do, it’s a favorite tactic of false teachers as well. Take a verse with no context, present it however they want it to sound, and use that as the basis for the teaching of deifying themselves. But from what we’ve already compared around these two genealogies, you can know that if someone claims that you can’t trust Scripture and their argument is just that Matthew and Luke’s genealogies aren’t even the same length, they’re completely straw-manning the argument. Of course they’re different lengths, they start at entirely different points. However, to assume that your own desire to understand goes a bit deeper than this, and maybe you’ll face questions one day from someone who’s doing more than just skimming the surface, let’s look at the other differences that exist between the two records. What poses the largest potential problem between Matthew and Luke (and I mean that literally, as this takes up the most space), is everyone listed after David. Matthew continues on with Solomon, while Luke names Nathan, another son of David and Bathsheba. Other than Shealtiel and Zerubbabel (who we’ll discuss later), there is literally no overlap between the two, with even the man listed as Joseph’s father being different between the two accounts. This can lead people to think that there must be some mistake in the record, or, if they’re trying to strike down the legitimacy of Scripture as a whole, claim that this incongruency proves the entire narrative as untrue. The thing is, there’s not a singular explanation, like the two authors having two different starting points, that provides an answer for why the genealogies look so different from David on. This isn’t necessarily a problem, there are at least a few highly probable theories around the differences – one of the biggest problems is that people so often want to be right, and there ends up being a difference between presenting something as a likely possibility, versus presenting it as solid fact. Because there are multiple interpretations this can get very messy, so without getting too deep in the weeds, let’s walk through what these explanations are and how they account for Matthew and Luke’s genealogies looking so different after David.

The first explanation is the idea that from David on, Matthew is tracking the royal line through Solomon’s succession, while Luke shows us what is essentially the non-royal descendants through Nathan. On the surface this sounds amazingly simple – the two genealogies look different because they’re tracking two different things, that’s easy enough if you don’t think about it. But then, how do they end up at the same place in Jesus through Joseph? To be perfectly honest, this took me a really long time to wrap my head around as it can become extremely convoluted. Before explaining, I need to go over one term from the Old Testament, and that’s a “levirate marriage.” Deuteronomy 25:5–6 tells us,

“If brothers dwell together, and one of them dies and has no son, the wife of the dead man shall not be married outside the family to a stranger. Her husband’s brother shall go in to her and take her as his wife and perform the duty of a husband’s brother to her. And the first son whom she bears shall succeed to the name of his dead brother, that his name may not be blotted out of Israel.”

Now, bearing in mind that we know what a levirate marriage is, what I’ll call the royal line theory hinges on this – Matthan was married to a woman and had Jacob, as listed in Matthew’s genealogy, then Matthan dies. His widow gets remarried to Melchi and has Heli, listed in Luke’s genealogy, who would be the half-brother of Jacob, tying the two lines together. Heli gets married and dies without having any children. His half-brother Jacob marries his widow in a levirate marriage and then has Joseph, the biological son of Jacob, and the legal son of the deceased Heli. When Matthew writes his genealogy he works backward from Jacob, the biological father of Joseph and illustrates the royal line back to David. When Luke writes he works backward from Heli through the non-royal line back to David. It’s not that it doesn’t make sense, it’s that it’s complicated and there is literally nothing in Scripture to support it. There are several steps needed for this to fall in place, and it’s not as if a multi-step plan is somehow beyond God, it’s that we’re assuming literally all the steps. On top of the level of assumption required there’s one other large issue I take. As we’ve discussed, Matthew’s gospel makes a certain appeal to the Jewish people, and his beginning his genealogy with Abraham emphasizes that. The entire point of the law given concerning a levirate marriage in Deuteronomy 25 is that the deceased brother’s name not be forgotten or blotted out. Why then would Matthew, the one writing a gospel that’s speaking particularly to the Jews, write a genealogy that ignores the legal father and lists the biological one instead? It doesn’t fit. This would mean that Matthew ignored the teaching of the Law concerning a levirate marriage purely to emphasize Jesus’ lineage through the royal line. True, this emphasizes Jesus as the King that He is, but it undercuts the purpose of the levirate marriage that God had instituted, and either line would have led back to David and shown prophecy fulfilled. It’s an interesting theory, and there are many people throughout church history who have held to this, the problem is that it lacks even a shred of evidence, the entire thing is assumed, and it contradicts the position that Matthew takes in his approach to conveying the gospel. The second possible explanation for the difference between Matthew and Luke’s genealogies after David, and the one that I personally have always favored, is that Matthew is showing us Joseph’s genealogy, while Luke is showing us Mary’s. Now, the most obvious pushback is that Luke writes in the opening of today’s passage,

“Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age, being the son (as was supposed) of Joseph, the son of Heli…”

The way this is written lists Joseph as the son of Heli, not the son-in-law, with no mention of Mary, which you might think derails this whole theory right away, but it’s important to understand the context and use of “father” or “son” in certain settings. I’ve found at least one commentary that stated that father is used here because there is no Koine Greek word for “father-in-law,” but this simply isn’t true. We see this word, “pentheros,” used in John 18:13,

“First they led him to Annas, for he was the father-in-law of Caiaphas, who was high priest that year.”

There is also a Greek word for “son-in-law,” which would be “gambrós,” however it appears nowhere in the New Testament. We also have to consider that just because a word existed doesn’t mean that Luke had to use it here, especially in the context of a formal genealogy. The Jews consistently referred to Abraham as their father. In the Old Testament, kings who died were said to be laid to rest with their fathers. Jesus as the Messiah was regularly called Son of David – it’s unreasonable to think that every relation has to be described in full detail when we see consistent examples of “father” and “son” sometimes used broadly in a genealogical sense. This doesn’t mean that Luke has to be speaking generally about Joseph’s father-in-law, but it does create a very real possibility. Another theory that is tied into the idea that this is Mary’s genealogy (and one which in my opinion needlessly complicates the matter), is that if Mary had no brothers then her father might have adopted Joseph as his heir once the two were married, and so him being called Joseph’s father would have been a legitimate claim. It’s not that this is necessarily impossible, it’s just that as with the royal line theory, there’s just no basis for it. Adding in this idea of Joseph as adopted heir just further complicates things, and the Old Testament passage that people will cite as creating a precedent for this to take place doesn’t really do what they claim. 1 Chronicles 2:34–35 says,

“Now Sheshan had no sons, only daughters, but Sheshan had an Egyptian slave whose name was Jarha. So Sheshan gave his daughter in marriage to Jarha his slave, and she bore him Attai.”

This is certainly an interesting inclusion in the genealogy of 1 Chronicles, but it doesn’t set up the precedent that if Mary had no brothers then her father might have adopted Joseph as his heir. Sheshan gave his daughter to Jarha to marry, but there’s no mention of him being made Sheshan’s heir, or Jarha being called his son. The theory that Luke is writing of Mary’s genealogy is a beautiful idea, it ties Jesus to the Davidic line through both His adoptive father and His biological mother, and it honestly offers the simplest explanation as to why the genealogies are different. Trying to include this heir theory in on top of it is baseless and needlessly complicated. If Luke is writing of Mary’s lineage, which again, is the interpretation I favor, then the cleanest explanation is that Heli is Joseph’s father-in-law, and in the formal setting of the genealogy, Luke addresses him as Joseph’s father. I also think it lends favorability that Luke would include Mary’s genealogy as He’s the gospel writer who by far includes the most information about the mother of Jesus, and again, this ties Jesus to the Davidic line both formally through the heritage of His legal, earthly father, as well as biologically through His mother. There are other theories, but these two, the royal line and the Mary genealogy theory, are the most widely accepted – and while I think there’s sufficient reason to favor the idea that Luke is writing of Mary’s lineage, it’s important to remember that the Bible explicitly states neither of these explanations. Many of the other theories are sensational, take even more liberties with the text, or are outright heretical. Part of what makes the royal line and Mary genealogy approaches so reasonable is that they assume the least upon Scripture, again, with Luke writing out a detailed account of Mary’s lineage being the simplest. One thing we can be absolutely certain of, however, is that the explanation for the differences isn’t error. This isn’t a situation of me being a biased Christian who’s facing a legitimate challenge on the inerrancy of Scripture and rather than contend with it I’m sticking my head in the sand, I mean that it legitimately doesn’t make sense that, as some people will claim, Matthew and Luke came up with different genealogies because they were just making the whole thing up, because it’s all fake anyway. That is weak, lazy, biased thinking. We have to think about who these two men were and what we can know about them from their writings – Matthew was a Jew, he was a disciple of Jesus who became one of the twelve Apostles. His writing is detailed and thorough, especially as it pertains to the ways in which the good news of the gospel interacted with the teachings of the Jewish people. There is no reasonable way that he took a genealogy, most of which is tracked through the Old Testament, and just botched the whole thing. We have every reason in the world to trust that based on his writings and credentials that his genealogical record would be accurate. Then, we have Luke, who was almost certainly a gentile (though you’ll sometimes find the occasional theory that suggests that he was Jewish), writing foremost to the gentiles and discipling to Theophilus. A doctor, shown to also be remarkably thorough and detailed in his historical recording, and the friend and companion of Paul. That means that not only do we have sufficient evidence that Luke’s own investigative and reasoning skills were finely tuned, but that any questions regarding Jewish customs, traditions, or their histories could have been asked to Paul. Luke wasn’t getting information from a random guy on the street, but would have learned from the man who was raised as “a Pharisee of Pharisees,” according to his own words. Bearing all this in mind, it would be illogical to the point of blind idiocy to strawman this and suggest that the two men just made up different bloodlines, or were somehow going off bad information. We also have to remember that, regardless of the documented differences between Matthew and Luke’s genealogies, they both completely harmonize around the same thing – that Jesus was the Christ, the prophesied Son of God. There are a few other smaller things, and we’ll be done with analyzing and explaining differences, so let’s return, as I said we would earlier, to the Abraham to David section of the Genealogies. Here Matthew and Luke match almost perfectly – yes Ram is written as “Arni” and Salmon written as “Sala” in some translations of Luke. Lets not forget that people having more than one name in Scripture is far from uncommon. Just off the top of my head we have Jacob who was renamed Israel, we have Gideon who came to be known as Jerubbaal, the Apostle Peter’s name was Simon before Jesus renamed him, and we sometimes see him called Cephas, the Aramaic equivalent of Peter, and Paul, the Apostle who wrote much of the New Testament was originally Saul of Tarsus… The same person having two acceptable names is not a new or novel idea. The stickiest part of dealing with Matthew and Luke from Abraham to David isn’t the same people with different names, it’s the one additional name in Luke. Matthew tracks Hezron, Ram, Amminadab, while Luke tracks Hezron, Arni (Ram), Admin, Amminadab – the figure of Admin doesn’t appear in Matthew’s account. To be perfectly transparent, there’s not a certain explanation as to why this is, which can be frustrating. It’s frustrating because there are people who will take this one name, discount, not just everything around it, but everything in Scripture as a whole. They will cite this one difference as destabilizing the entire thing, and stand upon this as they malign and nitpick the rest of Scripture. The truth is, we don’t know exactly why Admin is there in Luke and not elsewhere in the Bible, but we do have a very simple, plausible explanation, that’s very convenient to ignore if your aim is to tear the whole thing down. When we think of a genealogy, a lineage, a family tree, we think of something as exhaustive. This is reasonable because it’s largely how we operate today – if you’re tracing your ancestry back to the Mayflower then you’re going to identify and list off every relative that links the chain along the way. But this wasn’t always the purpose of a genealogy throughout history – there were cases where they were being used to document the significant figures along a bloodline, a sort of highlight reel, not record every relative along the way. We also have to remember, not as a copout, but as a real possibility that things like levirate marriages, kinsman redeemers, and adoptions were all a thing. If, hypothetically, Matthew is tracking the core, official line, while Luke is occupied with recording every historical detail, it’s not unreasonable at all to think that we could end up with one additional name. We don’t know exactly where Admin came from, we do know that his presence doesn’t derail or discredit the entire genealogy, Luke’s gospel, or Scripture as a whole. The last thing with the differences and we’ll be done (I promise), is actually a strange similarity. From David to Joseph the two genealogies don’t match, except for two names, Shealtiel and Zerubbabel, but if they’re the same men, then they have a different father for Shealtiel and a different son listed for Zerubbabel. Before we get too deep into cracking the code through an application of levirate marriage, the simplest explanation is that they’re two different father/ son pairs. As we can see from both lists, naming a son after an ancestor wasn’t uncommon, and the idea of naming a child after a historically significant figure is something we still do today. It’s not unreasonable at all to think that a man who was also named Shealtiel might name his son after Zerubbabel, the man who was governor over the people of Israel and was an integral part of Nehemiah’s rebuilding of the wall after the Babylonian exile. The genealogies are things that can be glossed over entirely, or can be nitpicked to death. In this we should remember that no part of God’s Word is intended to harm or compromise our faith, but to foster and build it up as it reveals the Truth of God and glorifies His name. God does not owe us every answer – truthfully He doesn’t owe us any answers, but graciously gives understanding concerning many things. Places where we may not understand or become confused don’t give us license to doubt all of Scripture, nor is that the logical response. The genealogies deserve to be considered, and appreciated for the information they provide, the ways in which they reveal and support the intricate workings of God over thousands of years, and the flesh and blood reality of our living savior Jesus Christ.

2. Why is it Important that Jesus is of the Line of David?

Okay, so, I promise, I’m not oblivious to the fact that that was long and probably more than a little tedious – but the differences are where non-believers will try to cause believers to stumble, or may even be a point of confusion and buried doubt for a believer, and they should never be that. Also, by appreciating and understanding the differences we’re able to see the purposes and strengths behind both genealogies. As to the people actually listed, there is an almost endless amount to say. Among those listed in the royal line of Matthew’s genealogy are some of the greatest, alongside some of the most terrible kings that the world has ever seen. Among them are other rulers and prophets. Then, if we look to Luke and the pre-Abraham list, we see that Jesus was of the line of Seth, we see mention of Enoch, who walked with God and was taken up into heaven, Methuselah who was the oldest man to ever live on record, and of course Noah, through whom God continued the life of man on the earth. We could literally spend years working through both genealogies person by person, and so rather than try to run in every direction at once, we’re just going to focus on two figures, though there will presumably be some overlap with the others – We’re going to talk about David, and we’re going to talk about Adam. Because while the purposes and implications of both genealogies are many and nuanced, the broadest overview of Matthew’s is that Jesus is the King descended from David, while Luke is showing us quite clearly that Jesus’ lineage goes all the way back to Adam, the first son of God. So, while it may seem like an obvious question to some, why does it matter that Jesus is shown to be a descendant of David? The simplest answer is that this shows Jesus to be the fulfilment of the promise that God made to David, 2 Samuel 7:12–17 saying,

“When your days are fulfilled and you lie down with your fathers, I will raise up your offspring after you, who shall come from your body, and I will establish his kingdom. He shall build a house for my name, and I will establish the throne of his kingdom forever. I will be to him a father, and he shall be to me a son. When he commits iniquity, I will discipline him with the rod of men, with the stripes of the sons of men, but my steadfast love will not depart from him, as I took it from Saul, whom I put away from before you. And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever…”

Now, in some ways this was fulfilled through Solomon – he was the one whom God blessed to build the temple, and for His love for David, God’s love did not depart from Solomon when he transgressed as it did with Saul. But Solomon was not the complete fruition of this promise because Solomon fell drastically short in his later years and, rather than continue the path that led the kingdom in the service of the Lord, he laid the stumbling blocks of idol worship that would lead to their destruction. Because of the work that Solomon started, the kingdom was split and Jerusalem eventually destroyed. Jesus is the perfect King of peace, it is by and through Him that the throne of David is eternally established. Jesus being of the Davidic line also fulfils the prophecy of Isaiah that I mentioned earlier, from Isaiah 11:1–5,

“There shall come forth a shoot from the stump of Jesse, and a branch from his roots shall bear fruit. And the Spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the LORD. And his delight shall be in the fear of the LORD. He shall not judge by what his eyes see, or decide disputes by what his ears hear, but with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; and he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall kill the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of his waist, and faithfulness the belt of his loins.”

This describes the work of no ordinary man, but of Jesus Christ, the One whose work was always the work of the Father, because He and the Father are One. It is also through David’s line, which runs from Judah that we see Jacob’s blessing realized in Jesus, Genesis 49:10 promising,

“The scepter shall not depart from Judah, nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, until tribute comes to him; and to him shall be the obedience of the peoples.”

And this ties us into a deeper understanding of Jesus being of the line of, and so frequently called, “Son of David.” Because this was about more than just promises kept, it was about seeing all that was right in David magnified, and all that was wrong in him set right and perfected in the person of Jesus. After his unlawful sacrifice, Saul is told in 1 Samuel 13:14,

“But now your kingdom shall not continue. The LORD has sought out a man after his own heart, and the LORD has commanded him to be prince over his people, because you have not kept what the LORD commanded you.”

And 1 Samuel 16:1 says,

“The LORD said to Samuel, ‘How long will you grieve over Saul, since I have rejected him from being king over Israel? Fill your horn with oil, and go. I will send you to Jesse the Bethlehemite, for I have provided for myself a king among his sons.’”

After years of temporary good, followed by ever increasing evil under the judges, followed by the flawed and rebellious kingship of Saul, David was the good king, the one whose heart was turned toward the Lord. And yet David too stumbled – he behaved rashly and showed his temper at times, he was overcome with lust and committed adultery with Bathsheba, upon finding that she was pregnant he had her husband killed, and he performed an unlawful census on the nation that resulted in the deaths of 70,000 men. David was truly in many respects a very good king, and 1 Kings 11:4 affirms that even through his failings his heart was for the Lord,

“For when Solomon was old his wives turned away his heart after other gods, and his heart was not wholly true to the LORD his God, as was the heart of David his father.”

Yet despite his devotion to God even when he stumbled, he did stumble – David was good, better than many who came before and after him, but he was still an eternal distance from perfect. In Jesus we see the fulfilment of many promises, we see the eternal King from the Davidic line, and we see the perfect, righteous, holy ruler who is the King of kings, the Lord of lords, and our Hope forever.

3. Why is it Important that Jesus is of the Line of Adam?

Matthew’s genealogy shows us an ancestry that is tied back to Abraham, and through his descendants, to David. In this there is a special emphasis placed on the prophetic fulfilment and Kingship of Jesus. What then is the significance of Luke tying Jesus’ lineage all the way back to Adam? Again, to look at the most obvious answer first, this affirms Jesus’ humanity. This is something we’ve talked about previously, it’s something that is vividly displayed in the gospels and has been greatly emphasized in Luke – Jesus was born into the world as a human baby. He grew and lived as a Man – He was not, as the Gnostics teach, a spiritual illusion or imitation, but was an actual, flesh and blood human who walked the earth. He was also fully God, the perfect image of the Father incarnate among us. This is so significant because by showing that Jesus had Adam as an ancestor it shows us that He was of his line, yet Jesus was also born without the seed of Adam, lacking the stain of original sin. You may question exactly how this is possible, since Jesus was born of Mary’s flesh, and she, as all humans are, is a descendant of Adam. In this we have to consider how Jesus came to be in the world, and grasp the significance of His being virgin born. In Genesis 1:28 God blesses man and woman and says to them,

“… Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

Later, after the fall, God says to Adam in Genesis 3:17–19,

“… Because you have listened to the voice of your wife and have eaten of the tree of which I commanded you, ‘You shall not eat of it,’ cursed is the ground because of you; in pain you shall eat of it all the days of your life; thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you; and you shall eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return to the ground, for out of it you were taken; for you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

The command of all mankind was that we be fruitful and multiply, which can only happen in the union between man and woman, but because of our transgression and the fall, this union carries a curse. Jesus was not born of the union between a man and a woman, but from the Holy Spirit’s work within a virgin, so in this He is affirmed as truly human and of the lineage of Adam, yet fully God and without the seed of Adam that is sin. In fact, not only is Jesus free from the stain that was brought into the world through Adam, He redeems and repairs what the first man – the first son of God – broke in his failure. Paul writes in Romans 5:12–19,

“Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned—for sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law. Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come. But the free gift is not like the trespass. For if many died through one man’s trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many. And the free gift is not like the result of that one man’s sin. For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification. For if, because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man Jesus Christ. Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all men. For as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man’s obedience the many will be made righteous.”

When Luke writes out the genealogy of Jesus, the fact that he takes things all the way back to Adam isn’t just him being thorough, and it’s doing more than illustrating Jesus’ humanity, which we could already understand from the fact that He was born of a human woman. What Luke is drawing out is the connection that the death that entered into the world with the first man, that has loomed over and left its stain upon every person that he lists throughout the entire genealogy, comes to an end in Jesus. As Paul writes in 1 Corinthians 15:54–57,

“When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written: ‘Death is swallowed up in victory.’ ‘O death, where is your victory? O death, where is your sting?’ The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

The genealogies are more than just a collection of names on a page, they’re more than just historical evidence, and recorded bloodlines. These records point to who Jesus is, they underscore and emphasize the work that God has done, the ways in which man tried and fell short, and how Jesus is both the Founder and Perfecter of our faith. They can be a lot to take in and as we’ve discussed, there can be a lot of speculation surrounding them – but through all these things don’t bypass the genealogies without thought, and don’t become so lost in the weeds of nitpicking that you miss the point of them. Because they stand as beacons that point to Christ, that remind us who we are, who He is, and the Truth of our desperate need for Him, and the great joy given through His salvation.

Pastor Chris’ sermon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aupf-HZZS8I