Sunday School Lesson 3: The Family of Faith, Matthew 1:1-17, December 17, 2023.
Key Text: The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son Abraham (Matthew 1:1).
The Gospel of St. Matthew and St. John will develop the thesis: “he hath declared him.” The life of Christ did not begin, as that of other men, when he was born. Christ came into the world from a preexistent state on a special mission and the incarnation of Christ (God took human form in the body of Christ and was both human and fully God at the same time) looks at the mystery of God in the eternal Logos Word incarnated in Christ. The roots of the life of Jesus reach back into eternity which begins at creation (Genesis 1:1), revealing continuously, and redeeming his own, a Divine Logos. John the Baptist testified to the preexistence of Christ, “After me cometh a man which is preferred before me.” Jesus himself said: “Before Abraham was I am,” a person of the Godhead. Finally, on the subject of Logos, John declared the pre-incarnate Word the source of moral and light of life that keeps on shining in the midst of the darkness.
God always prepared for the coming of the Divine Son and Messiah into the world. So, the Logos decided to come into this world in the flesh as a man, full of grace, truth, and love. All of the attributes of God are summed up in the incarnate Logos, which John declares that the Logos is the fullness of God. By the incarnation, Jesus made God comprehensible to man.
The Apostle Matthew, writing for the Jews, was interested in pointing out the fact that Jesus was of royal line. He traces the family tree down through David to Joseph from Abraham the father of the Hebrew race. Matthew’s genealogy of Christ is one of the “kingly.” The names are divided into three groups of fourteen each which makes fourteen generations (Matthew 1:17). This corresponds to the three periods of the national history: from Abraham to David the theocracy, from David to the Babylionian exile the monarchy, and from exile to the time of Christ the hierarchy. By the way, the number fourteen seems to come from the numerical values of the Hebrews consonants in the name David which add up to that number. Although Matthew omits several names in the line, he was only seeking to show the direct descent. He also gives the names of women in the list, Thama, Rachab, Ruth, Bathsheba, and Rahab, contrary to Jewish custom. Three of these were also guilty of gross sin and two were foreigners. The names of these women identified Christ with the sex and national divisions of the race and with sinful humanity. Even though some of the men of the line were also notorious sinners, the heredity of Jesus is a bond of hope for the sinners because He was genetically the son of God, begotten of the Holy Ghost. Jesus lived without sin in spite of His hereditary handicaps. Matthew also punctures the pride of his Jewish brethren by inserting the names which repudiates apostasy (abandonment of religious belief) and covenant-breaking: The Messiah must be of royal descent. The messianic promise and the covenant promises to Abraham, the forefather of the Jews, was fulfilled in Jesus. The promise of Jacob was that the leadership of the twelve tribes would come through Judas (the tribe of Judah), the Greek form of Judah (Matthew 1:3). Every emphasis to the Coming of the Messiah and the Book of the Generation shows the unity of the Scriptures. AMEN!
Leave a Reply