We're Important!

Hello everyone.

With today's post, I am wrapping up my study of Luke 3.  It mostly consists of a list of geneologies going backward from Jesus to Adam. In doing my own translation, I will confess that I found the spelling of the names in English to be difficult.  Obviously, some like Abraham and David were pretty easy, but others like Mahalaelell and Arphaxad.  So I did my best, and then checked every spelling against the King Jesus Translation.  Where they were different, I went with the KJT spelling. 

Any way, Luke starts this section by telling that Jesus is starting his ministry and then breaks into Jesus' lineage. Luke does not give the age of thirty as definitive, but says that Jesus is about thirty when he begins his ministry.  So it has been about eighteen years since we have seen Jesus and he has grown up and spent about a decade working as a carpenter, a trade he learned from his father Joseph. 

It was assumed that Jesus was the son of Joseph, and Luke gives a genealogy for Joseph goes all the way back to Adam.  In Luke’s narrative, it has been well established that Jesus was the son of God, but now, using the genealogies, Luke traces Jesus’s bloodline through all of Israel’s history and through the primeval history to Adam, and then concludes with “the son of God.”  Luke shores up his claim that Jesus is indeed the son of God. 

Personally, I have wondered at times the significance of these lists of geneologies.  Luke and Matthew have them and the Old Testament is filled with them.  These lists of names take up a lot of space.  Paul Copan helped me out in understanding something about these genealogies.  He says, “The Old Testament reveals a God who has a global (cosmic) plan, and who involves humans as history-shaping participants in that plan. Yes, humans matter.  The Old Testament’s genealogies reflect the important role that humans play in the unfolding of God’s purposes. (Copan, 217) People matter to God, and He uses human beings to accomplish His purposes.  It seems that God uses a lot of space in the Bible to make this point, but perhaps that is how important this point is. We, humans, are important. You're important.  Isn't that great?

Tom

     Paul Copan, Is God a Moral Monster, Grand Rapids, Michigan, Baker Books, 2011.