Genealogies

The long genealogies in the Bible are often belittled because of the seemingly endless lists of ancient, difficult to pronounce names, often separated only by one or two other words. One of these words is begat in the King James Version. The term begat can mean “was the father of,” but it can also be translated as “was the ancestor of,” the difference being that one’s father directly passes his characteristics and ideas to his children whereas an ancestor passes the same things on indirectly. Thus, when the Bible presents us with these long genealogies, it is presenting us with not just a list of who fathered whom, but an account of the type of family the people in question came from. We are given a glimpse into the way God has worked through a person’s family history.

In the case of the genealogy of Jesus, recorded for us in Matthew 1:1-17, we are witness to his ancestry for at least three different reasons. First, it proves beyond any doubt that Jesus is descended from Abraham and from David, of whom God promised to make a great nation. Secondly, it shows that Jesus was pleased to become one of us, being born of sinful man in order to do God’s work of redemption on earth. Lastly, it reveals to us how God has worked and, perhaps more importantly, through whom God has worked in order to save mankind.

Not all of the people in Jesus ancestry through whom God worked were “heroes of faith,” as my Life Application Study Bible puts it. There were plenty of heroes, but there were also plenty of individuals of questionable nature as well as many individuals of a very ordinary nature. The message we should receive from this list of individuals who begat our precious Lord Jesus—indeed which we should get from every genealogical list in the Bible—is that God works through all kinds of people to bring about His purpose of salvation. He will use anyone, regardless of their spiritual condition, to work His good work. He wants to use us, too, regardless of the fame or infamy of our ancestors, regardless of the united or broken families we come from, regardless of the pride or shame of our own actions and how they reflect on our ancestors and how they affect those that will come after us. He has chosen to save us and there is no reason for us not to receive Jesus Christ, descended from Heaven, born of sinful man, obedient to the point of death, resurrected and ascended into Heaven, seated at the right hand of the Father, as our savior.