THE
COMING OF THE CHRIST
Matthew
1:4-17
THE
New Testament opens appropriately with the four Gospels; for, though
in their present form they are all later in date than some of the
Epistles, their substance was the basis of all apostolic preaching
and writing. As the Pentateuch to the Old Testament, so is the
fourfold Evangel to the New.
That
there should be a manifold presentation of the great facts which lie
at the foundation of our faith and hope, was both to be expected and
desired. The Gospel of Jesus Christ, as proclaimed by the first
preachers of it, while in substance always the same, would be varied
in form, and in number and in variety of details, according to the
individuality of the speaker, the kind of audience before him, and
the special object he might have in view at the time. Before any form
of presentation had been crystallized, there would therefore be an
indefinite number of Gospels, each according to the individual
preacher of Christ and Him crucified. It is, therefore a marvellous
proof of the guidance and control of the Divine Spirit that out of
these numerous oral Gospels there should emerge four, each perfect in
itself, and together affording, as with the all-round completeness of
sculpture, a life-like representation of the Lord Jesus Christ. It is
manifestly of great advantage to have these several portraits of our
Lord, permitting us to see Him from different points of view, and
with varying arrangements of light and shade; all the more that,
while three of them set forth in abundant variety of detail that
which is more external, the face, the features, the form, all the
expression of that wondrous Life, the fourth, appropriately called on
that account the Gospel of the heart of Jesus, unveils more
especially the hidden riches of His inner Life. But, besides this, a
manifold Gospel was needed, in order to meet the wants of man in the
many-sidedness of his development. As the heavenly city lieth four
squares, with gates on the east, and the west, and the north, and the
south, to admit strangers coming from all points of the compass; so
must there be in the presentation of the Gospel an open door for all
mankind. How this great purpose is attained by the fourfold Gospel
with which the New Testament opens can be readily shown; and even a
brief statement of it may serve a useful purpose as introductory to
our study of that which is known as the First Gospel.
The
inscription over the cross was in three languages: Hebrew, Latin, and
Greek. These languages represented the three great civilizations
which were the final outcome of ancient history the Jewish, the
Roman, the Greek. These three were not like so many nations selected
at random but stood for three leading types of humanity. The Jew was
the man of the past. He could claim Moses and the prophets; he had
Abraham for his father; his records went back to the Genesis of all
things. He represented ancient prerogative and privilege, the
conservatism of the East. The Roman was the man of the present. He
was master of the world. He represented power, prowess, and. victory;
and while serving himself heir to the culture which came from the
shores of the Aegean Sea, he had combined with it the rude strength
and restless activity of the barbarian and Scythian of the North. The
Greek was the man of the future. He had lost his political empire,
but still retained an empire in the world of thought. He represented
humanity, and the ideal, and all the promise which was afterwards to
be realized in the culture of the nations of the West. The Jew was
the man of tradition, the Roman the man of energy, the Greek the man
of thought. Turning now to the Gospels, we find the wants of each of
these three types provided for in a wondrous way. St. Matthew
addresses himself especially to the Jew with his Gospel of
fulfillment, St. Mark to the Roman with his brief and terse narrative
of a three years’ campaign, St. Luke to the Greek with that
all-pervading spirit of humanity and catholicity which is so
characteristic of his Evangel; while for those who have been gathered
from among the Jews and Romans and Greeks a people who are now no
longer Jews or Greeks, but are all one in Christ Jesus, prepared to
receive and appreciate the deeper things of Christ there is a fourth
Gospel, issued at a later date, with characteristics specially
adapted to them the mature work of the then venerable John, the
apostle of the Christian.
It
is manifest that for every reason the Gospel of St. Matthew should
occupy the foremost place. To the Jew first is the natural order,
whether we consider the claims of the fathers, or the necessity of
making it clear that the new covenant was closely linked to the old.
Salvation is of the Jews; the Christ of God, though the Saviour of
the world, had been in a very special sense the Hope of Israel, and
therefore it is appropriate that He should be represented first from
the standpoint of that nation. We have, accordingly, in this Gospel,
a faithful setting forth of Christ as He presented Himself to the
mind and heart of a devout Jew, an Israelite indeed, in whom was no
guile, rejoicing to find in Him One who fulfilled ancient prophecy
and promise, realized the true ideal of the kingdom of God, and
substantiated His claim to be Himself the divine Saviour King for
whom the nation and the world had waited long.
The
opening words of this Gospel suggest that we are at the genesis of
the New Testament, the genesis not of the heavens and the earth, but
of Him who was to make for us new heavens and a new earth, wherein
dwelleth righteousness. The Old Testament opens with the thought,
Behold I make all things; the New Testament with that which amounts
to the promise, Behold I make all things new. It begins with the
advent of the Second Man, the Lord from Heaven. That He was indeed a
Second Man, and not merely one of the many that have sprung from the
first man, will presently appear; but first it must be made clear
that He is man indeed, bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh; and
therefore the inspired historian begins with His historic genealogy.
True to his object, however, he does not trace back our Lord’s
descent, as does St. Luke, to the first man, but contents himself
with that which is especially interesting to the Jew, setting Him
forth as the son of David, the son of Abraham. There is another
difference between the genealogies, of a more serious kind, which has
been the occasion of much difficulty; but which also seems to find
readiest explanation in the different object each Evangelist had in
view. St. Luke, writing for the Gentile, is careful to give the
natural descent, while St. Matthew, writing for the Jew, sets forth
that line of descent diverging from the other after the time of David
which made it clear to the Jew that He was the rightful heir to the
kingdom. The object of the one is to set Him forth as the Son of Man;
of the other to proclaim Him King of Israel.
St.
Matthew gives the genealogy in three great epochs or stages, which,
veiled in the Authorized Version by the verse division, are clearly
exhibited to the eye in the paragraphs of the Revised Version, and
which are summed up and made emphatic at the close of the
genealogical tree. (Mat.
1:17) The first is from Abraham to
David; the second from David to the captivity in Babylon; the third
from the captivity to Christ. If we glance at these, we shall find
that they represent three great stages in the development of the Old
Testament promises which find their fulfillment in the Messiah.
To
Abraham and to his seed were the promises made. As given to Abraham
himself, the promise ran thus: In thy seed shall all the nations of
the earth be blessed. As made to David, it indicated that the
blessing to the nations should come through a king of his line. These
were the two great promises to Israel. There were many others; but
these stand out from the rest as constituting the mission and the
hope of Israel. Now, after long waiting, both are to be fulfilled in
Christ. He is the chosen Seed in Whom all nations shall be blessed.
He is the Son of David, who is to sit upon His throne for ever, and
reign, not over Israel alone, but over men, as Prince of Peace and
King of Glory. But what has the captivity in Babylon to do with it?
Very much, as a little reflection will show.
The
captivity in Babylon, as is well known, was followed by two great
results:
(1)
it cured the people of idolatry for ever, so that, while politically
the kingdom had passed away, in reality, and according to the spirit,
it was then for the first time constituted as a kingdom of God. Till
then, though politically separate from the Gentile nations,
spiritually Israel had become as one of them; for what else than a
heathen nation was the northern kingdom in the days of Ahab or the
southern kingdom in the time of Ahaz? But after the captivity, though
as a nation shattered into fragments, spiritually Israel became and
continued to be one.
(2)
The other great result of the captivity was the Dispersion. Only a
small remnant of the people came back to Israel. Ten of the tribes
passed out of sight, and but a fraction of the other two returned.
The rest remained in Babylon or were scattered abroad among the
nations of the earth. Thus the Jews in their dispersion formed, as it
were, a Church throughout the ancient world, their eyes ever turned
in love and longing to the Temple at Jerusalem, while their homes and
their business were among the Gentiles in the world, but not of it;
the prototype of the future Church of Christ, and the soil out of
which it should afterwards spring. Thus out of the captivity in
Babylon sprang, first, the spiritual as distinguished from the
political kingdom, and, next, the world-wide as distinguished from
the merely national Church. Clearly, then, the Babylonish captivity
was not only a most important historical event, but also a stage in
the grand preparation for the Advent of the Messiah. The original
promise made to Abraham, that in his seed should all the nations of
the earth be blessed, was shown in the time of David to be a promise
which should find its fulfillment in the coming of a king; and as the
king after God’s heart was foreshadowed in David, so the kingdom
after the Divine purpose was foreshadowed in the condition of the
people of God after the captivity in Babylon, purified from idolatry,
scattered abroad among the nations, with their innumerable synagogues
prototypes of our churches
and their peculiarities of faith and life and worship. Abraham was
called out of Babylon to be a witness for God and the coming Christ;
and, after the long training of centuries, his descendants were taken
back to Babylon, to scatter from that world-centre the seed of the
coming kingdom of God. Thus it comes to pass that in Christ and His
kingdom we see the culmination of that wonderful history which has
for its great stages of progress Abraham, David, the Captivity,
Christ.
So
much for the earthly origin of the Man Christ Jesus; but His heavenly
descent must also be told; and with what exquisite simplicity and
delicacy is this done. There is no attempt to make the words
correspond with the greatness of the facts. As simple and transparent
as clear glass, they allow the facts to speak for themselves. So, it
is all the way through this Evangel. What a contrast here to the
spurious Gospels afterwards produced, when men had nothing to tell,
and so must put in their own poor fictions, piously intending
sometimes to add luster to the too simple story of the Infancy, but
only with the effect of degrading it in the eyes of all men of taste
and judgment. But here there is no need of fiction, no need even of
rhetoric or sentiment. The fact itself is so great that the more
simply it is told the better. The Holy One of Israel came into the
world with no tinsel of earthly pomp; and in strict harmony with His
mode of entrance, the story of His birth is told with like
simplicity. The Sun of Righteousness rises like the natural sun, in
silence; and in this Gospel, as in all the others, passes on to its
setting through the heaven of the Evangelist’s thought, which
stands, like that other heaven, majestic in its own simplicity.
The
story of the Incarnation is often represented as incredible; but if
those who so regard it would only reflect on that doctrine of
heredity which the science of recent years has brought into such
prominence, if they would only consider what is involved in the
obvious truth that, that which is born of the flesh is flesh, they
would see that it was not only natural but necessary that the birth
of Jesus Christ should be on this wise. Inasmuch as the first man is
of the earth, earthy, the Second Man must be of heaven, or He will be
no Second Man at all; He will be sinful and earthy like all the
others. But all that is needful is met in the manner so chastely and
beautifully set forth by our Evangelist, in words which, angelic in
their tone and like the blue of heaven in their purity, so well
become the angel of the Lord.
Some
wonder that nothing is said here of Nazareth and what took place
there, and of the journey to Bethlehem; and there are those who are
fain even to find some inconsistency, with the third Gospel in this
omission, as if there were any need to wonder at omissions in a story
which tells of the first year on one page and the thirtieth on the
next! These Gospels are not biographies. They are memorials, put
together for a special purpose, to set forth this Jesus as the Son of
God and Saviour of the world. And the special object, as we have
seen, of St. Matthew is to set Him forth as the Messiah of Israel. In
accordance with this object, we have His birth told in such a way as
to bring into prominence those facts only in which the Evangelist
specially recognized a fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy. Here
again the names give us the main thoughts. Just as Abraham, David,
Babylon, suggest the main object of the genealogy, so the names
Emmanuel, Jesus, suggest the main object of the record of His birth.
All this was done that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the
prophet.
The
first name mentioned is Jesus. To understand it as St. Matthew did,
we must bear in mind that it is the old historic name Joshua, and
that the first thought of the Hebrew mind would be, here is One who
shall fulfil all that was typified in the life and work of the two
Old Testament heroes who bore that name, so full of hopeful
significance. The first Joshua was Israel’s captain on the occasion
of their first settlement in the Land of Promise after the bondage in
Egypt; the second Joshua was Israel’s high priest at their second
settlement in the land after the bondage in Babylon. Both were thus
associated with great deliverances; but neither the one nor the other
had given the rest of full salvation to the people of God; (see Heb.
4:8) what they had done had only
been to procure for them political freedom and a land they could call
their own, a picture in the earthly sphere of what the Coming One was
to accomplish in the spiritual sphere. The salvation from Egypt and
from Babylon were both but types of the great salvation from sin
which was to come through the Christ of God. These or such as these
must have been the thoughts in the mind of Joseph when he heard the
angel’s words: Thou shalt call His name Joshua; for it is He that
shall save His people from their sins.
Joseph,
though a poor carpenter of Nazareth, was a true son of David, one of
those who waited for the salvation of Israel, who had welcomed the
truth set forth by Daniel, that the coming kingdom was to be a
kingdom of the saints of the Most High, not of political adventurers,
as was the idea of the corrupt Judaism of the time; so he was
prepared to welcome the truth that the coming Saviour was One who
should deliver, not from the rule of Rome, but from the guilt and
power and death of Sin.
As
the name Joshua, or Jesus, came from the earliest times of Israel’s
national history, the name Emmanuel came from its latest, even out of
the dark days of King Ahaz, when the hope of the people was directed
to the birth of a Child who should bear this name. Some have thought
it enough to show that there was a fulfillment of this hope in the
time of Ahaz, to make it evident that St. Matthew was mistaken in
finding its fulfillment in Christ; but this idea, like so many others
of the same kind, is founded on ignorance of the relation of the Old
Testament history to the New Testament times. We have seen that
though Joshua of the early times and his successor of the same name
did each a work of his own, yet both of them were in relation to the
future but prototypes of the Great Joshua who was to come. In the
same way exactly, if there was, as we believe, a deliverance in the
time of Ahaz, to which the prophet primarily referred, it was, as in
so many other cases, but a picture of the greater one in which the
gracious purpose of God, manifested in all these partial
deliverances, was to be fulfilled, i.e., filled to the full. The idea
in the name Emmanuel was not a new one even in the time of King Ahaz.
I will be with you; Certainly I will be with you; Fear not, for I am
with you, such words of gracious promise had been echoed and
re-echoed all down the course of the history of the people of God,
before they were enshrined in the name prophetically used by Isaiah
in the days of King Ahaz; and they were finally embodied, incarnated,
in the Child born at Bethlehem in the fulness of the time, to Whom
especially belongs that name of highest hope, Emmanuel, God with us.
If
now, we look at these two names, we shall see that they not only
point to a fulfillment, in the largest sense, of Old Testament
prophecy, but to the fulfillment of that which we all need most the
satisfaction of our deepest wants and longings. God is light; sin is
darkness. With God is the fountain of life; sin when it is finished
bringeth forth death. Here shines the star of hope; there lies the
abyss of despair. Now, without Christ we are tied to sin, separated
from God. Sin is near; God is far. That is our curse. Therefore what
we need is God brought near and sin taken away the very blessings
guaranteed in these two precious names of our Lord. As Emmanuel, He
brings God near to us, near in His own incarnate person, near in His
loving life, near in His perfect sympathy, near in His perpetual
presence, according to the promise, Lo, I am with you alway, even
unto the end of the world. As Jesus, He saves us from our sins. How
he does it is set forth in the sequel of the Gospel, culminating in
the sacrifice of the cross, to finish the transgression, and to make
an end of sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, and to bring
in everlasting righteousness. For He has not only to bring God down
to us, but also to lift us up to God; and while the incarnation
effects the one, the atonement, followed by the work of the Holy
Spirit, is necessary to secure the other. He touches man, the
creature, at his cradle; He reaches down to man, the sinner, at His
cross the end of His descent to us, the beginning of our ascent with
Him to God. There we meet Him and, saved from sin, we know Him as our
Jesus; and reconciled to God, we have Him with us as Emmanuel, God
with us, always with us, with us throughout all life’s changes,
with us in death’s agony, with us in the life to come, to guide us
into all its wisdom and honour and riches and glory and blessing.
Again,
Matthew gave Jesus’ lineage through His legal father, Joseph
(Mat. 1:16). Thus this genealogy traced Jesus’ right to the throne
of David,
which must come through Solomon
and his descendants (Mat. 1:6). Of particular interest is the
inclusion of Jeconiah
(Mat. 1:11) of whom Jeremiah said, “Record this man as if
childless” (Jer. 22:30). Jeremiah’s prophecy related to the
actual occupation of the throne and the reception of blessing while
on the throne. Though Jeconiah’s sons never occupied the throne,
the line of rulership did pass through them. If Jesus had been a
physical
descendant of Jeconiah, He would not have been able to occupy David’s
throne. Luke’s genealogy made it clear that Jesus was a physical
descendant of David through another son named Nathan (Luke 3:31). But
Joseph, a descendant of Solomon, was Jesus’ legal
father, so Jesus’ right to the throne was traced through Joseph.
Matthew
traced Joseph’s line from Jeconiah through the latter’s son
Shealtiel
and grandson Zerubbabel
(Mat. 1:12). Luke (Luke 3:27) also refers to Shealtiel, the father of
Zerubbabel, in Mary’s line. Does Luke’s account, then, mean that
Jesus was a physical descendant of Jeconiah, after all? No, because
Luke’s Shealtiel and Zerubbabel were probably different persons
from those two in Matthew. In Luke Shealtiel was the son of Neri, but
Matthew’s Shealtiel was the son of Jeconiah.
Another
interesting fact about Matthew’s genealogy is the inclusion of four
Old Testament women: Tamar
(Mat. 1:3), Rahab
(Mat. 1:5), Ruth
(Mat. 1:5), and Solomon’s mother
(Mat. 1:6), Bathsheba. All of these women as well as most of the men
were questionable in some way. Tamar and Rahab were prostitutes (Gen.
38:24; Jos. 2:1), Ruth was a foreigner, a Moabitess (Ruth 1:4), and
Bathsheba committed adultery (2Sam. 11:2-5). Matthew may have
included these women in order to emphasize that God’s choices in
dealing with people are all of His grace. Perhaps also he included
these women in order to put Jewish pride in its place.
When
the fifth woman, Mary
(Mat. 1:16), was mentioned in the genealogy, an important change
occurred. The genealogy consistently repeated, the
father of,
until it came to Mary. At that point Matthew changed and said of
whom was born Jesus.
The of whom is a feminine relative pronoun ex
hēs,
clearly indicating that Jesus was the physical Child of Mary, but that
Joseph was not His physical father. This miraculous conception and
birth are explained in Mat. 1:18-25.
Matthew
obviously did not list every individual in the genealogy between
Abraham
and David
(Mat. 1:2-6), between David
and the
Exile
(Mat. 1:6-11), and between the
Exile
and Jesus (Mat. 1:12-16). Instead he listed only 14
generations
in each of these time periods (Mat. 1:17). Jewish reckoning did not
require every name in order to satisfy a genealogy. But why did
Matthew select 14 names in each period? Perhaps the best solution is
that the name David in Hebrew numerology added up to 14. It should be
noted that in the period from the Exile to the birth of Jesus (Mat.
1:12-16) 13 new names appeared. Many scholars feel that Jeconiah
(Mat. 1:12), though repeated from Mat. 1:11, provides the 14th name
in this final period.
Matthew’s
genealogy answered the important question a Jew would rightfully ask
about anyone who claimed to be King of the Jews. Is He a descendant
of David through the rightful line of succession? Matthew answered
yes!
