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THE LINEAGE OF JESUS

Luke 3:23–38

When Jesus began his ministry he was about thirty years of age. He was the son (as it 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 Jesus, the son of Eliezer, the son of Jorim, the son of Matthat, the son of Levi, the son of Symeon, the son of Judas, 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 Salmon, the son of Nashon, the son of Amminadab, the son of Ami, 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 Pelag, 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.

THIS passage begins with the most suggestive statement. It tells us that when Jesus began his ministry he was no less than about thirty years of age. Why did he spend thirty years in Nazareth when he had come to be the Saviour of the world? It is commonly said that Joseph died fairly young and that Jesus had to take upon himself the support of Mary and of his younger brothers and sisters, and that not until they were old enough to take the business on their own shoulders did he feel free to leave Nazareth and go into the wider world. Whether that is so or not, three things are true.

(1) It was essential that Jesus should carry out with the utmost fidelity the more limited tasks of family duty before he could take up the universal task of saving the world. It was by his conscientiousness in the performance of the narrow duties of home that Jesus fitted himself for the great task he had to do. When he told the parable of the talents, the word to the faithful servants was, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant; you have been faithful in a few things, I will put you in charge of many things’ (cf. Matthew 25:21, 23). Beyond a doubt he was putting his own experience into words when he said that. When the writer J. M. Barrie’s mother died, he said, ‘I can look back and I cannot see the smallest thing undone.’ It was because Jesus faithfully performed the smallest duties that the greatest task in all the world was given him.

(2) It gave him the opportunity to live out his own teaching. Had he always been a homeless, wandering teacher with no human ties or obligations, people might have said to him, ‘What right have you to talk about human duties and human relationships, you, who never fulfilled them?’ But Jesus was able to say, not, ‘Do as I say,’ but, ‘Do as I have done.’ Leo Tolstoy was the man who always talked about living the way of love; but his wife wrote poignantly of him, ‘There is so little genuine warmth about him; his kindness does not come from the heart, but merely from his principles. His biographies will tell of how he helped the labourers to carry buckets of water, but no one will ever know that he never gave his wife a rest and never – in all these thirty-two years – gave his child a drink of water or spent five minutes by his bedside to give me a chance to rest a little from all my labours.’ No one could ever speak like that of Jesus. He lived at home what he preached abroad.

(3) If Jesus was to help people he had to know how they lived. And because he spent these thirty years in Nazareth, he knew the problems of making a living, the haunting insecurity of the life of the working man, the ill-natured customer, those who would not pay their debts. It is the glory of the incarnation that we face no problem of life and living which Jesus did not also face.

Here we have Luke’s genealogy of Jesus. The Jews were interested in genealogies. Genealogies, especially of the priests, who had to prove unbroken descent from Aaron, were kept among the public records. In the time of Ezra and Nehemiah we read of priests who lost their office because they could not produce their genealogy (Ezra 2:61–3; Nehemiah 7:63–5).

But the problem of this genealogy is its relationship with that in Matthew 1:1–17. The facts are these – only Luke gives the section from Adam to Abraham; the section from Abraham to David is the same in both; but the section from David to Joseph is almost completely different. From the early days of New Testament study, an explanation has been sought for the differences.

(1) It is said that both genealogies are symbolic and that Matthew gives the royal descent of Jesus and Luke the priestly descent.

(2) One of the earliest suggestions was that Matthew in fact gives the genealogy of Joseph and Luke of Mary.

(3) The most ingenious explanation is as follows. In Matthew 1:16 Joseph’s father is Jacob; in Luke 3:23 it is Heli. According to the Jewish law of levirate marriage (Deuteronomy 25:5f.) if a man died childless his brother must, if free to do so, marry the widow and ensure the continuance of the line. When that happened a son of such a marriage could be called the son either of the first or of the second husband. It is suggested that Joseph’s mother married twice. Joseph was in actual fact the son of Heli, the second husband, but he was in the eyes of the law the son of Jacob, the first husband who had died. It is then suggested that while Heli and Jacob had the same mother they had different fathers and that Jacob’s father was descended from David through Solomon and Heli’s father was descended from David through Nathan. This ingenious theory would mean that both genealogies are correct. In fact, all we can say is that we do not know.

Two things, however, are to be noted about the genealogy of Jesus which Luke gives.

(1) It stresses the real humanity of Jesus. It stresses the fact that he was truly one of us. He was no phantom or demigod. To save humanity he became in the most real sense a human.

(2) Matthew stops at Abraham; Luke goes right back to Adam. To Matthew, Jesus was the possession of the Jews; to Luke, he was the possession of all peoples, because his line is traced back not to the founder of the Jewish nation but to the founder of the human race. Luke removes the national and racial boundaries even from the ancestry of Jesus.