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The Line of the Seed

        In the process of redemptive history, the seed is narrowed down from all of humanity to a single man. This is demonstrated with Noah when God found him righteous and commanded Noah to build the ark for the saving[1] of his family. But when the obedient Noah climbed aboard the Ark, so did his three sons and their wives, who were not of Noah’s lineage.

Thus the seed of the serpent continued, as well as the war between the two seeds. The world established after the flood would once again be overrun by wickedness and disobedience, despite the God who determined to fill the earth with His glory.[2] It would take the long road of redemptive history, and once again the destruction of the ungodly, reserved unto fire at the end of the age,[3] to bring the reality of God’s desire to fruition—that of filling the earth with His Glory.

After Noah, the seed line would once again narrow down to a single man. Abraham is considered by the adherents of Judaism and Christianity to be the great Patriarch of the Hebrew people. Abraham was the first or the beginning of a people Yahweh claimed His own.[4]

Having already been introduced to Abraham, we need only to revisit the promise God gave to him. In the three visits[5] Abraham received from God, the first when he was seventy-five and the last when he was ninety-nine, he was promised that from his seed the nations would be blessed.

Whether we agree or not, whether we like it or not, whether we fully understand it or not, the promise of God came through the seed of Abraham, his heir. “And, behold, the word of the LORD came to him, saying…he that shall come forth out of your own bowels shall be your heir.”[6]

Nearly four thousand years ago, from out of Abraham the Hebrew, when he was a hundred years old, the promised seed emerged when Sarah conceived and gave birth to Isaac.[7] Since both Abraham and Sarah were well beyond their child-bearing years, Isaac became the miracle child, the child of promise.[8]

Abraham never wavered in his faith that Yahweh would perform as He had promised. “Abraham believed God, and it was accounted to him for righteousness.”[9]

Two thousand years later, the Apostle Paul, in his letter to the Galatians, explained the blessing of Yahweh upon Abraham, and how his faith in God had affected the believers in Galatia—not only the Galatians, but all true believers throughout the ages.

With apostolic authority, Paul clarified that Jesus of Nazareth was the Seed (singular) who fulfilled the promise to Abraham. The promise of the seed was essential to Paul’s theology of the Christ. “Now to Abraham and his Seed were the promises made. He does not say, "And to seeds, as of many, but as of one, and to your Seed, who is Christ.”[10]

By connecting the dots, you can see that the promised seed coming through the woman, the one who was to bruise (keep[11]) the serpent's head, was revealed and confirmed through God’s apostle as coming through Abraham. From the seed of Abraham the seed line found its way through David.[12]

This unbroken connection of the seed line was not just Paul’s view. The doctrine of the Christ which Paul taught and preached in the synagogues he visited[13] was defended by the Apostle John.[14] The disciples who later became the apostles also believed and taught that Jesus was the fulfillment of the Old Testament scriptures. As far as they were concerned, Jesus was the fulfillment of the promises made to the fathers.[15]

 

As we have already seen, the genealogies in Matthew and Luke show the many seeds from which Jesus was to originate, every one of the seeds an important link to the next. Many of the seeds were without a direct promise from God, as the silence from the heavens spanned the generations until “the fullness of time had come.”[16]

Long before that time came, God visited Abraham, the great patriarch of the Hebrew people, and promised him not only a land inheritance, but the profound blessing coming through his heir that would affect all of mankind. But the most discussed seed from which the Christ came was that of David.[17] It was David’s seed that the faithful among God's people looked forward to in high expectation.

David the shepherd boy became the King of Israel, and rose to sit upon the throne of Israel. David is known to us as the man whose heart was loyal to the Lord, as well as what can be said of few men: “David did that which was right in the eyes of the Lord.”[18] Those apostles who contributed to the New Testament writings emphasized the importance of David, because it was prophesied and promised that the promised one, the expected one, was to come through David’s seed. This is exactly how the New Testament scriptures begin: “The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham.”[19]

Throughout the gospel accounts, the lame, the lepers, the people on the streets of Jerusalem, and even the blind, recognized and believed Jesus of Nazareth was the son of David.[20] They saw Jesus as the prophet sent from God, who had come preaching God’s kingdom on earth. But it was also the part of Jesus’ identity which the religious elite first doubted and then rejected.[21]

To the Pharisees, the Scribes, the Lawyers of the law, despite the signs and miracles and the good works that this Nazarene demonstrated, Jesus was nothing more than the son of a lowly carpenter from the obscure backwater village of Nazareth. Jesus countered the religious elite with the parable of “A certain man of birth who went to receive a kingdom.”[22] In the parable, Jesus explained what would happen to those who would not accept this one[23] to reign over His subjects.[24] The Pharisees, even though they did not believe in Jesus as the promised one, often felt the prick of His words.[25]

If any doubt remains from the gospel accounts concerning Jesus’ descent from the line of David, Paul stepped forward and removed them when he wrote the epistles to the Churches about what it means that “Jesus is the ‘Son of David.” To the Church in Rome, Paul began with his explanation of the Gospel of God, “Concerning his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, which was made of the seed [26] of David according to the flesh.”[27]

 

 

In conclusion, genealogies settle the question of Jesus’ origin. The Apostle Paul, the great theologian of the New Testament scriptures, confirmed that Jesus of Nazareth was, indeed, the fulfillment[28] of the seed promise that was to come through Abraham and David. This by no means discounts all those not mentioned by Paul who are listed in Matthew's and Luke’s genealogies. All the apostles believed and concurred with one another that God had risen up from the dead, “the man approved by God”[29]—Jesus, the one who came through David’s seed, as the fulfillment of the seed originally promised to the woman in the Genesis story.

Ultimately, the history of the seed line, beginning with God’s promise to the woman in the garden, and followed through Matthew’s and Luke’s genealogies, shows that it is critical to understand where Jesus originated.

If it wasn’t of paramount importance, why did the apostles devote so much time and effort to it? The more prudent and logical question would be, why is the genealogy of Jesus absent from the creeds of the Church?

The seed line and the genealogy of Jesus of Nazareth cannot be separated from the gospel the apostles taught and left for the Church. To do so would discount their emphasis on the importance of understanding the origin of the man approved of God,[30] the man known to us as Jesus of Nazareth.

Jesus is the fulfillment of the seed promise, the man whom God appointed and anointed as His chosen One. [31] As the chosen One of God, He came to us in time and space, and became the sacrificial Lamb who willingly laid down his life for the sin of world.[32]

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