MATTHEW CHAPTER ONE
Chapter one established that Jesus was King David's descendant and rightful heir to his throne. Chapter one also told us that Jesus was born from God, born of a virgin.
To us in the 20th Century we have had 2,000 years of priests, scholars and students tear apart the scripture in order to discover the nature and the person of Jesus. For us Son of God born of a virgin is something purely religious and spiritual. But for those who first read the gospel something else stood out above all else.
Caesar and Pharoah were considered and called son of God, son of Zeus, king of kings, etc. You get the picture. The point is, when the Bible established that Jesus was the Son of God or born of a virgin, people were not necessarily thinking religiously or only spiritually like we would. They were seeing Jesus as a true earthly king, chosen by God, born of God and born from David for the purpose of bringing the nations under the feet of Israel.
But in the midst of all this political expectation, Matthew began to redefine the Son of David, the king of Israel by giving us the purpose of Jesus. His job was to save his people not from their political enemies but from their own personal shortcomings, from their own sins.
No comments:
Post a Comment