It may have been to us a matter of wonder, perhaps, in early childhood, at our first reading of the New Testament—and perhaps in later years also—that the Gospel of divine grace and human salvation should begin with a genealogical table. Of all places in the word of God, this may have seemed to be the last in which one would expect to find such a long list of hard Jewish names. And we may have turned from the passage as being altogether unprofitable; marveling that the commencement of the Gospel was not more spiritual in its character, and that, instead of detaining us from its glories with the names of men of a former dispensation, concerning many of whom we know nothing, it did not enter at once upon its revelations of divine mercy and the loveliness of the character of Christ.
This wonder is but one of many instances in which men have undertaken to be more spiritual than the word of God. It is nearly related to the practice of what is called "spiritualizing the Bible"—that is, giving to passages of Scripture a meaning which is not properly in them, but which seems to be more spiritual and more edifying than the sense which they were designed to convey. This practice may be in some cases harmless, possibly even profitable; but, it also betrays an uneasiness, a dissatisfaction with the plain teachings of Scripture, which is not a profitable state of mind. Does it not really amount to this, that we are not contented to receive God's word just as he has given it; that in its true signification we do not find enough that is spiritual; and that we can sometimes give to it a better meaning than that which God himself intended to impart? Would it not be wiser, as well as more modest, to let God teach us in his own way and when he has given to us a simple historical fact, to believe that it is more profitable for us to know that fact than to torture his words in which it is stated into some meaning that seems to us more spiritual, but which God never designed to teach in those words? Even when we find such a passage as the genealogy of Christ—a mere roll of hard and mostly unfamiliar names—instead of putting upon it some fanciful meaning of our own, or wondering that something relating more directly to spiritual religion is not there in its place, is it not better to find out, if we can, why this passage was actually put there, and what its real meaning and value to us may be?
We may observe, then, that this table of Christ's genealogy, standing at the beginning of Matthew's Gospel, gives the book an air of reality which perhaps nothing else could have done so well. No one who was writing a fiction would have dared to give it a beginning seemingly so dry and repulsive as this list of names. He would rather have taken pains to make it as attractive as possible, hoping to enlist the sympathies of his readers in his favor at the outset, and thus induce them to receive without question what he wished them to believe. But the writer of Matthew's Gospel is too much in earnest and too simple-hearted to do this. It is not a cunningly devised fable that he has to tell, but a simple narrative of the facts in the history of Jesus Christ, and so he begins in the most quiet and businesslike way—as if it were a real person whose life he is writing, and as if he were only telling facts which he personally knows. He does not with great parade call men to listen to the wonders he has to tell, but calmly writes, "The book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham. Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob;" and so he proceeds, closing the long line with "Mary, the mother of Jesus, who is called Christ." Then he sums up the generations from Abraham to David, and from David to the captivity in Babylon, and from the captivity to Christ. Perhaps the strongest impression which the reading of the narrative makes upon us is this: "How perfectly real it is." We could not imagine it to be a fable. And it is easy to see what an advantage the Gospel has in179this appearance of reality, this air of businesslike honesty, which it wears at the beginning; and how it fixes in our minds the impression that we are reading the history of a real person, who actually lived here in this world of ours.
There is another reason why the genealogy of Christ opens the Gospel. It serves to connect Jesus and his teachings with all God's revelations and promises that had been given before. It binds all generations together in one moral system, showing us that there is for all generations one God and one religion whose principles do not change. It proclaims that it has come, not to tell men of an unknown God, but of him "who made a covenant with Abraham, and an oath unto Isaac, and confirmed the same unto Jacob for a law, and unto Israel for an everlasting covenant"—the same God to whom David poured out his psalms of praise—the same God whose will, whose principles of government, all the prophets had made known. It introduces not a new religious system, but only clearer and completed revelations of that by which all good men in former ages had lived and died—demanding the same kind of faith which was imparted to Abraham for righteousness, so that all believers in Christ are called the children of Abraham—requiring the same kind of penitence as that which David uttered in the 51st psalm, and the same kind of obedience which God demanded of Israel, saying to them by the prophet, "What doth the Lord require of thee but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" The prediction that the seed of David should reign over all the earth, and that in the seed of Abraham all the families of the earth should be blessed, had waited long for its fulfillment; and at last we have "the book of the generation of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham;" and every one of those strange Jewish names is a link in the chain of evidence which demonstrates the truth of God's promises, and gives the world assurance that he will be faithful to his word.
The genealogy of Christ serves also to bring him into closer connection and sympathy with the human race. It gives meaning and force to those passages of Scripture which call him a brother of mankind. If God had merely created for himself a human body, and dwelt among us in it, this would of course have been a marvelous condescension and mercy on his part; but it would have left him still remote from our sympathies, and we could not have regarded him as a brother to our race. We should have said, "This is not a man who has come to us; it is God dwelling in a human body, but there is nothing to bring him into any close relationship with us. What can such a being know from experience, of our temptations and wants? or how can we trust in him as one who has felt the workings and the sorrows of a human soul?" But this genealogical table, with its long list of the human ancestors of Jesus, proves to us that the Son of God did something more than to take upon him the mere form of humanity; that he really became a member of our suffering, sinning, ruined race—like to us in sorrows, in temptations, in everything but transgression. And now we can be sure of his sympathy, for he is "a High Priest who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmity;" now we know that God means to provide for every want of ours, for he has given us a Redeemer whose own experience acquaints him with all our needs; and we can go to him with all confidence as being not only God manifest in the flesh but a brother to ourselves; a descendant of the same first parents; having for his ancestors men and women of the same race; sanctifying all natural ties and relationships by taking part of the same; making all human troubles easier to be borne, since he has borne them, and all human duties easier to be done, since he has fulfilled them; brightening for us even the great mystery of the grave, since he, the man Christ Jesus—the book of whose generation is in our hands—has been partaker in this sad inheritance of mankind, and taken part of flesh and blood in order that he might die.
And thus, from this table of genealogy, which we perhaps have wondered at—considering it hardly spiritual enough to open the Gospel of our salvation—we may have impressed upon us this most precious lesson as we study the life of Jesus, that it is not a being altogether apart from us who brings us those glad tidings of heaven's mercy; that it is one of our own human family who bears this life and death of sorrow for us; and that if, as God, he is able to save unto the uttermost, as man, he knows exactly what is the salvation we need.