Lineage

Family

Most of us would say that family is central to our celebration and experience of the holiday season. For some of us, our family may also be key to the strain and the stress of the holidays. Whatever your relationship looks like, my point is that most of our traditions and experiences, especially regarding Christmas, deal with our families. 

While most of us as Christians are probably quick to remind everyone that the Christmas celebration is about Jesus and the importance of the gospel, it is important to note that family ties are an important part of the Christmas story. So let us reflect on a couple of the key familial factors in the Christmas narrative.

The Priestly Line

It is fairly common knowledge that Jesus is descended from David so that he can fulfill the promises made to the Davidic line of the true King who would reign forever. But Jesus is also the great High Priest who came to make the necessary atonement for us before the throne of God (Hebrews 4:14-16). So how can Jesus be both King and Priest. The tribe of Judah is the royal line and the Messiah was promised to be from David’s line. In both of the genealogies in Matthew and Luke the lineage goes back through David. But, the priestly lineage was from the tribe of Levi and through Aaron’s descendants. So again we must ask how Jesus is descended from Aaron?

In Luke 1, we are told that John the Baptist’s parents are a priest named Zechariah and Elizabeth, who was from the daughters of Aaron. This means that both Zechariah and Elizabeth are of the priestly lineage. Luke also tells us later in verse 36 that Elizabeth is Mary’s relative, so Mary must have been related to Elizabeth on her maternal side making Jesus a descendant of Aaron and still descended from David on Mary’s paternal side.

The Royal Line

It seems that the genealogical information given in Luke is about Mary’s family. The first reason to think this is that it says that Jesus was the son of Joseph so it is supposed. Joseph was not really in that lineage mentioned in Luke 3. The second reason is that Luke records a lot of information about Jesus' birth that is from Mary’s point of view. It is possible, even probable, that Luke got this information by interviewing Mary herself and so it would be likely that his genealogy would be of her side of the family. 

Also, Matthew records the account from Joseph’s perspective so it would make sense that Matthew’s genealogy would be from Joseph’s line. Finally, regardless of which genealogy we align with Joseph or Mary, both records record that Jesus is the descendant of David either through Nathan in Luke’s gospel or Solomon in Matthew’s. So Jesus qualified to fulfill the prophecy of Isaiah 9:6-7.

The Divine Line

But most important of all was that the One who would be the champion to defeat sin, throw off the curse, and destroy the power of the ancient serpent (Hebrews 2:14-15), would not be Adam’s son, but rather God’s son. Back in Genesis 3:15 the promise was that the singular seed of the woman would crush the head of the serpent. The seed of the woman is also the heir promised to Abraham. But Paul explains to us that the heir promised to Abraham was the singular Christ (Galatians 3:16-18). 

Even when the angel came to tell Mary that she would be the mother of the Lord Jesus, she asked how because she was a virgin (Luke 1:34-35). But it was essential that Christ was not going to be the son of a natural union, but rather the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit brought about the conception of the holy child. And this One who is truly the Son of God is able to live for us, die for us, and rise for us so that we can have life only by trusting fully in Him!

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