Truly God and Truly Man

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, [38] the son of Enos, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God (Luke 3:23–38).[1]

If you’re interested in your ancestry, there are a number of resources that will help you build your family tree. I still have a lot of work to do on mine, but technology is making it easier to trace my roots, even through my DNA. For example, through one site, you can take a swab of the inside of your mouth, send it to them in a packaged tube, and they can extract your DNA and compare it to others and other regions within their database. So, I did it. And as it turns out, I’m human (45% Scottish, 29% English, 21% Irish, and 5% Germanic). What good this does me, other than the novelty, I don’t know, but it did encourage me to continue to work a little more on my family tree. There’s no great significance; it’s just fun.

The genealogies of Jesus are different. They’re more than fun but included in Scripture with purpose, not for novelty but identity. For example, the Apostle Paul says in 2 Corinthians that “all the promises of God find their Yes in [Christ]” (1 Cor. 1:20a). It’s a comprehensive statement, sounding like exaggeration, but it’s not. Paul can make such a bold statement, because Jesus is who he is. God promised Adam that he would crush his enemy, and so Satan was conquered upon the cross of Christ. God promised Abraham that through him the nations would be blessed, and people from every tribe, tongue, and nation are saved through the gospel of Jesus Christ. God promised David an heir upon the throne forever, and the resurrected Christ reigns in glory forever. And of course, there are many more examples, but my point is that it is imperative that Jesus’ identity be rightly revealed in Scripture, such as in his genealogies, since the fulfillment of God’s promises are in him.

Matthew begins his Gospel with Jesus’ genealogy, tracing a summary line from Abraham to Jesus. Luke’s Gospel, in contrast, waits until after Jesus’ baptism and the commencement of his earthly ministry, tracing in detail from Jesus back to Adam. There are actually only a few similarities between the two genealogies, such as Abraham and David, but overall they are more different than they are similar. One of the theories for these differences is that Matthew’s genealogy is the legal line of succession from Abraham to David and from David to Joseph, while Luke’s genealogy is the biological line from Jesus to Joseph and onward to Adam. There is good reason to believe this theory, but I find another theory more compelling.

Rather than a genealogy of Joseph’s biological lineage, it is possible that Luke’s genealogy of Jesus follow’s Mary’s line. After all, Luke makes it clear that Jesus was the “supposed” son of Joseph but the true son of Mary. Furthermore, in the original Greek, “the son of Heli” could be referencing not Joseph but Jesus. Since Jesus was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the virgin Mary, Heli, presumably Mary’s father, would have been his closest male ancestor. But, in my opinion, the most compelling argument that this is Mary’s ancestry rather than Joseph’s is that it fits the context. Luke has just recorded God the Father’s heavenly declaration of Jesus’ divine identity, and now Luke records his genealogy to confirm his humanity, because our Lord Jesus Christ is truly God and truly man.

From Jesus to Adam

The placement of Jesus’ genealogy in Luke’s Gospel is not at the beginning but immediately after Jesus’ baptism and at the beginning of his earthly ministry. And it was at Jesus’ baptism that the voice of God the Father was heard from heaven saying to God the Son, “You are my beloved Son; with you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22). Jesus was unlike any man born of woman; he who was conceived by the Holy Spirt in the virgin’s womb is the eternal Son of the Father. As we confess in the Chalcedonian Definition,

[Jesus Christ is] “the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and a body … acknowledged in two natures which undergo no confusion, no change, no division, no separation … he is not parted or divided into two persons, but is one and the same only-begotten Son, God, Word, Lord Jesus Christ…[2]

And because he is truly God and truly man, Luke provides the heavenly declaration of Jesus’ divinity followed by evidence of his humanity.

As a man, “Jesus, when he began his ministry, was about thirty years of age” (23). Why is this important? One reason is, scholars tell us that thirty was the age on which a Jewish man entered public life, an age when what he said and did would be respected by the people. But more importantly, his age tells us about his humanity. God has no birthdate, but God incarnate did, and thirty years from that date he began his earthly ministry. God, who is eternal, was never born, but God incarnate was, not as the natural son of Joseph, “as was supposed” by some, but supernaturally as the eternal Son of God, conceived by the Holy Spirit in the womb of the virgin Mary, the daughter of Heli.

But from Heli a litany of names follows, most of whom we do not know, ending in one common name we do know, Adam. And it is in this that we find that Jesus’ family tree is remarkably similar to our own, because we all share a common humanity back to the first man, Adam. Turns out: we’re all human! And while we might like to view the names we know in Jesus’ genealogy as heroes, when we study their histories, they seem hardly the sort we would associate with the sinless Son of God. As one commentator points out, “Terah was an idolater. Abraham was a liar. Jacob was a cheater and a thief. Judah traded slaves and consorted with prostitutes. David was a murderer and adulterer.” Luke’s genealogy is a list of nobodies and no-goods but for one, and he makes all the difference. And so, we’re not meant to trace our way from Heli to Adam looking for virtue; we’re meant to look to Christ, the only virtuous One, the eternal Son of God, who became “the son of the son of the sons of sinners.”[3]

What Adam Lost

What we share with Adam is not only our human nature but also our sin nature. Adam, as the first human created, served as the patriarch, so to speak, of the human race. When he sinned by eating the forbidden fruit, he fell from a state of innocence to guilt, from perfect righteousness to sin, corrupting his whole nature, and resulting in lost communion with God, falling under God’s wrath and curse, and due the pains of hell forever. As a result, from that moment on, he would not know life apart from sin and misery, and as “the wages of sin is death” (Rom. 3:23), Adam died. Adam’s story is a tragedy, but his loss was not limited to himself alone. As the Westminster Shorter Catechism explains, “all mankind – descending from [Adam] by ordinary generation – sinned in him, and fell with him, in his first transgression.”[4] All that Adam lost, as descendants of Adam, we lost too.

In writing to the church at Rome, the Apostle Paul says, “just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned” (Rom. 5:12). This, he explains, continued from Adam onward, “even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam” (Rom. 5:14). Therefore, “as one trespass led to condemnation for all men” (Rom. 5:18), “as by the one man’s disobedience the many were made sinners” (Rom. 5:19), “because of one man’s trespass, death reigned through that one man” (Rom. 5:17). But, as death reigned beginning with Adam, he was also “a type of the one who was to come” (Rom. 5:14).

What Christ Gained

Though Adam fell in sin and his posterity with him, in God’s pronounced curse upon Satan in the form of a serpent, he promised,

“I will put enmity between you and the woman,

                        and between your offspring and her offspring;

            he shall bruise your head,

                        and you shall bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15).

In the most unlikely of pronouncements, God promised hope. Though Satan would venomously strike, he would be defeated by the offspring of a woman, not the son of Joseph, as was supposed, but the offspring of a virgin. And so, Luke goes to great lengths to build a family tree of nobodies and no-goods, knowing that Jesus is the only sinless one among them all, because what Adam lost, Christ gained.

He came from a long line of sinners, like you and me, and yet was the sinless Son of God. Why? Because, as the writer of Hebrews explains, “he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins  of the people” (Heb. 2:17). There are times when we may be tempted to think that even God doesn’t understand what we are going through, but that’s our flesh talking not the Spirit. He who is truly God and truly man was made like us in every respect, even “tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb. 4:15). He who is truly God, became truly man that he might live the life we could not live, that he might receive the wrath we could not bear, that he might die the death we could not die, that he might resurrect to the life that we were created to live, forever. Jesus Christ then as the son of man and the Son of God, became the new Adam, the progenitor of a new humanity, through his live, death, and resurrection.

Contrasting Adam and Christ, as the new Adam, the Apostle Paul explains,

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. … so that, as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord (Rom. 5:18-19, 21).

From Jesus to Adam, and everyone in between, all who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ are justified as righteous, not in Adam but in the new Adam, Jesus Christ. And it is in Christ’s righteousness that we stand righteous in God’s sight, not only today but forever.

And that forever started the day you believed, because Christ is not only the new Adam for a new humanity for eternity but also for our sins today. The writer of Hebrews explains the significance this way: “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Heb. 4:15-16). We can read through Jesus’ genealogy and find encouragement and inspiration from some of the names on the list, but there is only one who saves, only one who lives in us, only one to whom we may draw near, and he is at the top of the list. In Christ we do not receive what we deserve but are given what we do not deserve, nobodies and no-goods made children of God, sinners made saints through the life, death, and resurrection of the God-man, Jesus Christ. If you are in Christ, you are not condemned for your past, for there is “no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). If you are in Christ, you stand before God today as perfectly righteous, because you stand only in the righteousness of Christ. If you are in Christ, who you were before apart from Christ does not define you. So, look not to your past, or your family tree, or yourself for hope, but look to Christ alone, because “if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. The old has passed away; behold, the new has come” (2 Cor. 5:17).

[1] Unless referenced otherwise, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version (Wheaton: Crossway Bibles, 2001).

[2] Chad Van Dixhorn, Ed., Creeds, Confessions, & Catechisms (Wheaton: Crossway, 2022), 27.

[3] Philip Graham Ryken, Luke, Vol. 1 (Phillipsburg: P&R Publishing, 2009), 149.

[4] “The Shorter Catechism” Q. 16, The Westminster Confession of Faith and Catechisms (Lawrenceville: PCA Christian Education and Publications, 2007), 364.