Our Kind Of Savior

Our Kind of Savior

Salmon the father of Boaz, whose mother was Rahab, Boaz the father of Obed, whose mother was Ruth, Obed the father of Jesse, and Jesse the father of King David.

Matthew 1:5-6

IN WORD They seem boring, these long genealogies. And even though the lineage of Jesus is extremely special, it still isn’t the highlight of our Bible reading. We know He’s traceable to Abraham, but that should matter only to a first-century Jew, not to a twenty-first-century Christian, right?

But a closer look is revealing. In Jesus’ genealogy is Rahab, a woman of questionable morals who helped the Hebrew spies as they entered the Promised Land. And a generation later, the Moabite Ruth appears. Then, within two generations, an adulterous king with a murderous bent shows up. What are a Canaanite prostitute, a Moabite outsider, and a law-breaking king doing in Jesus’ genealogy? Pointing to the hope we have in Christ, that’s what.

Think about it: Jesus—the incarnate God, the invisible Creator appearing in the flesh—is a descendant of sinners. If Jesus could come from the seed of a prostitute, a foreigner, and an adulterer, He’s just the One to represent sinners to God. While sinless Himself, the holy Son of God came in the form of fallen flesh, a descendant of sinful humanity in need of salvation. That kind of God-man could represent us well. In Him we can hope.

IN DEED We forget, with all of Jesus’ holiness and perfection, the fallenness of the world He entered. He didn’t take on Garden of Eden flesh; He took on the flesh that was forced out of the Garden to till the stubborn soil. He took on the flesh that killed prophets and seduced God’s people, the flesh of circumcised rebels, foreigners, and outcasts. He took on the flesh of all of us.

That’s why Christmas is so astounding. God didn’t just become man, He became man in the form of those who had fallen—miserably. Only that kind of Savior can give us hope. His descent to save us is greater than we thought. And our salvation is greater than we imagined.

Christ became what we are that He might make us what He is.

—ATHANASIUS OF ALEXANDRIA