Connecting Point: The Family Tree

Ancestral genealogies are often searched today. Our youngest son has been looking into our family’s history recently. I just knew it, there is a “Thor” dating back to our Scandinavian side! In the age of the Internet, a person has multiple resources when it comes to a detailed family tree, all at a click and most likely at a cost.

Luke, one of the disciples of Jesus, was meticulous as a personal physician. He also sought to investigate the claims and teachings of Jesus Christ thoroughly. In chapter 3 of his account, he includes a comprehensive genealogy of Jesus dating back to Adam. Both Matthew and Luke provide a family tree in their writing, however, there are some differences. Some historians will make a “stink” about these differences, but I view this more as a matter of perspective. Matthew follows more a legal line as Joseph was Jesus’s adoptive father, while Luke follows an actual line tracing history through Mary, the birth mother. Although Luke begins, “Now Jesus himself was about thirty years old when he began his ministry. He was the son, so it was thought, of Joseph, the son of Heli,” (Luke 3:23), stressing proper cultural form on genealogies.

In the 1st century Jewish culture genealogies were very important for inheritance purposes, career responsibilities, and more. The following examples give us some reasoning as to why Biblical genealogies are significant even today:

One; an actual genealogy establishes that Jesus Christ was a real person. Luke understood this concept well, seeing this as a credibility issue. Certainly, times have changed since the first century, but people are still the same; critics and onlookers want evidence. The late Madalyn Murray O’Hair, a staunch atheist said, “I’m saying that there’s absolutely no conclusive evidence that Jesus ever really existed, even as a mortal. I don’t believe he was a historical figure at all.” I disagree with her and appreciate Ray Comfort’s rebuttal, “Those who say there is no evidence that Jesus ever existed mustn’t know what year it is.” The ability to point to generational family lines solidify that so and so existed, this includes Jesus Christ.

Two; genealogies help us to understand that God’s sovereignty is at work in our lives. You may have noticed that Luke states that Jesus was 30 years old when his public ministry began. Why? Again, Jewish customs dictated many aspects of these people’s lives from ordinary daily tasks to complicated religious rituals. A long-held tradition in Judaism included that rabbis were not accepted until they reached 30 years old, understood as “full maturity.” Such timing is important because Jesus’s teachings would have never been received by his culture, the common folk, and certainly the stuffy religious elites. Here lies another valuable principle: God’s sovereignty at times works within the constraints of humanity’s narrow boundaries. Some received the words of Christ, while others rejected them. However, any negative response by critics or doubters did not thwart God’s plan to bring salvation into this lost world through Jesus Christ. The truth is, God is always at work in the affairs of mankind.

The fact that there exists a family tree for Jesus Christ is ample evidence to look even further at his teachings and claims. In doing so, we discover that he is the Messiah and Savior of the world.