Promise of Salvation
What does your family tree look like? When reading the first page of our New Testament, we come face to face with the lineage of Jesus. What may seem boring and odd to some, is actually full of power, faithfulness, sovereignty, and salvation. The lineage in Matthew 1 is a concentrated summation of God’s redemptive narrative that had been played out since his initial covenant with his people in Genesis 12. The first words of Matthew 1 read, “The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham” (vs 1). It ends with the following verses: “Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom Jesus was born, who is called Christ” (vs 16).
From beginning to end, we see God’s promise of salvation fulfilled. It didn’t always seem like it at the time, though. We mentioned it several weeks ago, but I want you to notice who this lineage is through. This lineage is through Joseph. Now, place yourself in the Christmas story and think through his eyes for a minute.
The portion about Joseph in the Christmas narrative has become so repetitive that we tend to miss it when we read the Christmas story every year. Just as you naturally tune out the sound of a fan, we have in many ways tuned out the wonder of God’s redemptive plan in the advent, or coming, of Jesus. Joseph had just found out the woman who was betrothed to be his wife was pregnant, and he knew the baby wasn’t his. You can imagine what is racing through his mind.
While all this is racing through his mind, he is visited by an angel.
While Joseph was sleeping, an angel comes to him in his dream, tells him to take Mary as his wife, that the baby is conceived from the Holy Spirit, and that he should name him Jesus because he will save his people from their sins. You’ve heard it all before, right? But what the angel says and who he says it to is the fulfillment of every victory of salvation and promise made in the Old Testament, flowing all the way back from the Garden of Eden. The angel confirms to Joseph in his dream that this is the long-awaited Messiah, the fulfillment of the prophecies from long ago, the promise that God would dwell with his people, as we learned last week. It was all part of God’s great plan of salvation, and it was unfolding before Joseph’s very eyes.
The name of Jesus conveys the promise of salvation. (21) The angel says, “He will save His people from their sins.” The name of Jesus literally means “The Lord Saves.” As we learned last week, the name of Jesus was a form of the name of Joshua. Think through some of the salvation that Joshua experienced. Just as Joshua had participated in the Passover meal that the Israelites celebrated every year, Jesus was coming to be the Passover lamb for us. When the Lord spared all of the firstborn males of his people who had slaughtered a lamb in Egypt and spread the blood over the door post of their homes, God was pointing to the day that he would come as a firstborn male, to be slaughtered as a lamb, so his blood could be spread over the door post of the lives of all who would put their faith in him—a once-for-all sacrifice to cover the sins of the world.
The name of Jesus conveys the history of salvation. (22-23; 1, 16-17)
Son of David (2 Samuel 7:16) “And your house and your kingdom shall be made sure forever before me. Your throne shall be established forever.’”
Son of Abraham (Genesis 12:2-3) “I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing. 3 I will bless those who bless you, and him who dishonors you I will curse, and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.”
God had promised Abraham that his offspring would outnumber the stars in the sky, even though he was old and could not have any children. And God was faithful to his covenant. In Matthew 1 we see a lineage that starts with the old barren couple at the head and goes on and on and on.
But not everyone in Jesus’ lineage lined up with the godly character of Abraham or David. When tracing the narrative throughout the genealogy of Jesus, we see people either fighting for God or fighting against him. Some of them passed down faith and courage, while others passed down idolatry and fear. Many more kings did what was evil in the sight of the Lord than did what was good and right and true in the eyes of the Lord. Joseph came from this line. An impure lineage. A lineage that neither trusted God nor lived for his glory. But God’s salvation is greater than any sin of man. When the angel is talking to Joseph, telling him that the Messiah has come and that Joseph should give him the name Jesus, he is saying that God is going to fulfill his every promise even though his people haven’t measured up.
You may have a tainted lineage, too. Oftentimes some of our deepest struggles and sufferings in life come from the family line we are born into. Our genetic disposition sometimes imposes certain habits, temptations, and sins that we feel like we cannot shake. Often we tend to follow in the footsteps of our family members, sometimes spanning generations, just like several of the kings in Jesus’ lineage did. But it only takes one to break the sinful pattern. Because when we are reborn into Christ’s family, we become a new creation. We take on a new identity and a new family name. And even though we are still sinners, we are no longer under the bondage of our family’s tainted legacy, which we’ll see later.
The name of Jesus conveys the evidence of salvation. (Acts 4:12; Phil 2:5-11) Jesus did what He came to do. He holds up to the weight of His name. The name of Jesus is synonymous with salvation. In that name is power to save.
If Jesus came to save and fulfills the promise of salvation, we need to ask the question: Why do we need to be saved? And how has Jesus done it? I think it also partly answers why Jesus came as, of all things, a baby.
Jesus was born to be under the law. (4) What does it mean to be under the law? First, it reveals to us the mess we are in. It reveals to us our family heritage, tracing all the way back to Adam and Eve, as we saw last week.
I love seeing pictures of myself when I was my children’s age. My mom sent me a picture just this week of me holding my brother when he was one years old. That means I was eight…the same age my son is now. And you know what? He looks exactly like me! Genes and heritage are an incredible things!
Sin is as much a part of our heritage as the eye color, nose shape, or blood type we have. We are all born as sinners. And the one grand purpose of the law is to reveal our sin.
It’s not so with Jesus, though. This is part of the reason he was born of a virgin and why the reality of the virgin birth should be defended. Jesus wasn’t born with the same sin gene that flows from Adam. But He entered into our sinful world to live the perfect life you and I could never live. And that’s why Jesus came…to save us, to defeat our sin. Hear what theologian Thomas R. Schreiner says about this Galatians passage and what it means for us.
“Those who live under the law…live under the dominion of sin. Jesus, however, is the exception that proves the rule. He is the true offspring of Abraham (3:16), the true Israel (Ex 4:22), the true Son of God. He lived obediently to God’s law, whereas all others violated God’s will. As the one who lived under the law, he took the curse of the law on himself (3:13) so that he could liberate and free those who were captivated by the power of sin.”[1]
Jesus was born to redeem those who are under the law. (5) The term "redeem"[2] means to set free by paying a price, specifically buying someone out. In the Greco-Roman context, it referred to the legal purchase of a slave's freedom from their owner. Consequently, the redemptive act of Christ can be understood as a divine purchase, bringing about true freedom. That’s what the book of Galatians is about.
In Galatians, Paul consistently admonishes the Galatian Christians for reverting to the idea that adherence to the Law and rules could save them or at least aid in salvation. Under the Law, Paul notes, they lived in fear, akin to slavery. However, he emphasizes the liberating grace of Christ, asserting that salvation is solely by grace, and Jesus has accomplished it all. We are slaves to sin, but we have redemption through Christ!
Ephesians 1:7 – In him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of his grace.
And because we have redemption, we also have something else.
Jesus was born to adopt us into His family. (5)
One of the greatest joys of my life was when we adopted our little girl. You heard me share a few weeks ago about the devastation my wife and I felt when the door closed on our plan to adopt from Ethiopia. But we kept pursuing the calling we felt God had placed on our hearts and prayed for the child we believed God had for our family. And after nearly ten years of waiting (off and on through different organizations), we finally got the call one morning that we had been chosen for a little girl in our state who was two weeks old and getting discharged that day. We drove four hours, met our new daughter, drove back four hours, and by midnight had our new daughter in our home. She was our family from that moment on, just as if she was our own flesh and blood.
You know what? I don’t think Jesus looked like Joseph. He wasn’t his son. But you know what Jesus was? He was Joseph’s son. Later on, when Jesus is rejected in His hometown of Nazareth, they say, “Is not this the carpenter's son?”[3] Though Jesus didn’t have the same genes, He was Joseph’s son. He was born under the law, to redeem us, who are slaves under the law, so that we might be adopted into His family, just like He was to Joseph’s. And all those promises of salvation from the Old Testament…that lineage of salvation…you know who it flowed through? From Abraham, to David, to Joseph, to Jesus…and now to you and me who have received redemption and adoption through Him.
[1] Schreiner, Galatians, 270.
[2] https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/essay/redemption
[3] Matthew 13:55
