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Already, the story has a distinct shape and we are beginning to see where it’s going. With the first prophetic promise of Genesis 3:15 before us, the stage is set for the grand narrative arc of Scripture to unfold. What God does next is not surprising at all, given the key features of the story’s first episode. He proceeds, of course, to take the steps necessary for the fulfillment of the promise.

And how does He do this?

Well, exactly as we would expect now that we are tuned into the story: by establishing a genealogical line through which the promised child, the new Son of God, may be born to the world.

So God calls Abraham and his wife Sarah out of Ur, their Babylonian homeland, and promises to establish a great nation within their genetic line, through which all the nations of the earth will be blessed (Genesis 12). God calls the promise His “covenant” (Genesis 15), and it is clearly an expanded version of the promise given in Genesis 3. Covenant emerges to view as the defining characteristic of the divine operation as the progeny plan moves forward, just as God vowed it would. So we are not at all surprised when Abraham and Sarah eventually give birth to Isaac and he is identified in Scripture as the “son” of “promise” (Genesis 21:1-7; Galatians 4:23).

It is crucial to notice that the story now begins to center on a succession of sons. At this point, the concept of primogeniture emerges in the narrative—the birthright of the “firstborn” son (Genesis 27:19, 32; 43:33; 48:14-18). The firstborn son is the channel through which the covenant promise is to be passed on from generation to generation. But—and this is hugely significant—in a narrative twist that emphasizes the spiritual nature of the plan, we soon see

that the genetic firstborn isn’t always the covenant firstborn.

Isaac is the second born son of Abraham, after Ishmael, but Isaac is the firstborn son of promise.

Isaac then marries Rebekah and the promise passes to their son, Jacob, who is the second born son, after Esau, and yet he occupies the covenant position of the firstborn son.

The underlying goal God is pursuing is the transmission of the covenant promise. God is not fixated on exact birth order, but rather on moving the covenant promise forward. What matters is that a line is established through which the new “Son of God” may enter the human situation and conquer the serpent from the inside, from the strategic position of human nature, thus reversing Adam’s fall in the course of the victory.

The storyline unfolds toward its grand end goal, in brief, like this:

Abraham and Sarah have a firstborn covenant son they name Isaac.

Isaac and Rebekah have a firstborn covenant son they name Jacob.

Jacob’s wives bring forth twelve sons. Jacob’s name is changed to Israel. Then, oddly—or not so oddly within the overarching narrative—Jacob’s twelve sons and all their children become known corporately by the covenant name of their father, Israel. God now has a corporate people, a nation. Israel then goes into Egypt and becomes an enslaved people. God eventually sends Moses to deliver Israel from Egyptian bondage, and—pay attention now—God instructs him to tell Pharaoh something rather specific:

Israel is My son, My firstborn. So I say to you, let My son go that he may serve Me. Exodus 4:22-23

Israel, the nation, is now designated as God’s “firstborn son,” singular. At this point in the story, the progeny language initiated in Genesis 3:15 takes on an expanded application of corporate Sonship with regards to Israel as a nation. In what sense is Israel God’s firstborn son? The answer is evident when we recall the promise to Abraham:

In you, all the families of the earth shall be blessed. Genesis 12:3

Israel is God’s firstborn nation-son with the intent that, through the witness of Israel, many other nations will become nation-sons of God, as well. Again, we see that the position or role of the “firstborn son” has nothing to do with birth order. It has to do with the conveyance of the covenant to all the nations of the earth. Israel is the spiritual channel through which God intends to incorporate all nations into the Sonship status that was lost by Adam. Isaac, Jacob, and then Israel, were all “firstborn” in a positional sense or in a functional sense, not in a chronological sense.

It is at this point in the biblical narrative—when Israel is designated as God’s firstborn son—that God assumes the role of “Father” in relation to Israel. Rebuking Israel for their unfaithfulness to God, Moses said,

Is He not your Father, who bought you?

Has He not made you and established you? . . .

They provoked Him to jealousy with foreign gods;

With abominations they provoked Him to anger.

They sacrificed to demons, not to God,

To gods they did not know,

To new gods, new arrivals,

That your fathers did not fear.

Of the Rock who begot you, you are unmindful,

And have forgotten the God who fathered you. Deuteronomy 32:6, 16-18

Moses tells Israel:

God is “your Father.”

God “begot you.”

God “fathered you.”

Now, with Israel taking on the role of God’s only begotten son among the nations, God takes on the role of Father to Israel. For the first time in the biblical narrative, God now employs the language of birthing. He “begot” Israel as His chosen people among the nations. Israel, as God’s only begotten son among the nations, is chastised because he has “forgotten the God who fathered” him, a fathering and birthing that occurred when God delivered Israel from Egyptian bondage. Israel was turning to the “gods” of the other nations and thus denying the God who fathered him. As God would later say through Jeremiah, “I am a Father to Israel, and Ephraim is My firstborn” (Jeremiah 31:9). The other nations are under the authority of their demon gods (Deuteronomy 32:17), but Israel is God’s chosen people, called out from among the nations to be God’s only begotten son, through whom all the other nations will be blessed.

As with the Sonship role, the fatherhood of God is grounded in the Old Testament narrative and is tightly connected with Israel’s calling as the people through which the Messiah will enter the world. If we want to understand what the New Testament means when it calls God “Father,” we must allow the story itself to tell us what it means. When we do that—when we think in theological obedience to the narrative of the Bible—it becomes evident that there is a sense in which God is our Father and the Father of Jesus, and there is a sense in which God cannot ultimately be confined to fatherhood, which we will explore later in this study.

A consistent picture is building as we simply follow the biblical narrative where it leads. We’re on the edge of our seats at this point as the implications of Sonship begin to form in our minds. By letting the story itself guide us, we are about to understand the Bible on a whole new level. It only gets more astounding from here, so watch, ever so carefully, what happens next.