Jesus: Son of God

ALL – Psalm 62:1-12
ALL – Proverbs 11:18-19
OT – Numbers 28:16-29:40
NT – Luke 3:23-38

Jesus was about thirty years old when he began his public ministry. Jesus was known as the son of Joseph. Joseph’s father was…Adam; Adam’s father was God. – Luke 3:23, 38.

Why? Why does this genealogy include God? What does it mean? Is this intended to point out Jesus’ divinity? The fact that there are 76 MEN’s names between God and Jesus creates some difficulty for making that point, unless you want to say that each man in the genealogy had a “spark” of the divine in him, or something like that. Besides, Jesus wasn’t actually Joseph’s son. Jesus was legally Joseph’s son, but Joseph wasn’t his physical father. So divinity wouldn’t have been passed through this lineage, anyway.

Don’t get me wrong. I believe Jesus is God, the Son of God. He’s divine. What Luke said in Luke 1:35 is just a part of the Bible’s evidence of Jesus’ divinity, and there’s plenty more. Even this genealogy seems to be a reminder that Jesus is divine.

I’m just saying that, because it’s a genealogy and includes many people who were definitely not divine, tracing Jesus’ lineage back to God is probably trying to communicate something else, besides His divinity. What could it be?

I really don’t know for sure, but here are a couple of ideas I’ve come up with:

1) Jesus is King. What was Adam created to do? Genesis 1:26 – “Then God said, ‘Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.’ ” Adam was made a ruler, King and Lord of the earth. As we follow the lineage from God through Adam toward Jesus, we find that one of Jesus’ ancestors is King David, and God promised, “David will never fail to have a man to sit on the throne of the house of Israel” (Jeremiah 35:19, NIV). Jesus is that King, that ultimate man who stands as the son of God, the ruler of the world.

2) Jesus is the Righteous Man. In a sense, this is a variation of the “Jesus is King” idea. When God created Adam, Adam was righteous. He had never sinned. He was capable of representing God on earth. But with Adam’s fall into sin, his ability to represent God perfectly was damaged. God is the God of life, and Adam’s sin brought death to the world God had created. The first man, the son of God by creation, could no longer work the life that a son of God ought to work. But Jesus, the descendant of this first man, is also a man, a son of God by creation. And through His righteousness, Jesus has given mankind the opportunity to return to their righteous, life-giving rule. Jesus is the Righteous Man, the ultimate son of God. Through His righteous life, all may gain life. “For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive” (1 Cor. 15:22, NIV).

Is Jesus the divine Son of God? Yes! But Jesus is also the human son of God. He is all that man was intended and created to be. He is righteous, and He is the life-giving ruler over all God’s creation. Praise God that through Jesus Christ, we who hope in Him are being restored as sons of God, too, so that “the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God” (Romans 8:21, NIV).

Are you receiving and giving the freedom of the children of God, the freedom that comes to mankind and all creation through THE son of God, Jesus Christ?

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