Like Father, Like Son: Luke 3:23-38

Of all the boring places to be included in the gospels, Luke’s record of Jesus’ genealogy probably tops most people’s list. While Matthew’s genealogy includes women, and a number pattern, Luke simply spends fifteen verses listing name after name, stepping all the way back from Jesus to the very beginning.

But even in Luke’s genealogy, I noticed something amazing. This amazing insight comes with how Luke ends the genealogy: “the son of Enosh, the son of Seth, the son of Adam, the son of God.” (v. 38)

While Matthew’s genealogy steps us forward from Abraham to help us see how Jesus is a fulfillment of God’s promise to Abraham, and how the Messiah is Abraham’s descendant, Luke takes the opposite approach. Luke draws our attention to how Jesus is really God’s own Son.

Luke begins Jesus’ genealogy by saying, “When He began His ministry, Jesus Himself was about thirty years of age, being, as was supposed, the son of Joseph, the son of Eli, …” (v. 23)

Luke tells us that people believed Jesus to be Joseph’s son, even though Luke believes differently. Luke believed in the virgin birth of Jesus. But Luke has an answer to this problem – he steps Jesus’ ancestors all the way back to God.

While it would make sense for Luke to stop with Adam at the end of his genealogy, Luke goes one step further and draws our attention to how Adam, the first human, was God’s son as well. In this way, Jesus also becomes like a “Second Adam” who succeeded where the first Adam had failed, and that regardless of what we think of Jesus’ birth, we can be assured that He really was God’s descendant.

But in Luke’s genealogy, we also have another insight. If Adam was God’s son as Luke describes, that makes each of us God’s children as we have descended from Adam and Eve. This makes us all children of God. And the big challenge I am left with after this realization is that if God is truly my Father, then what sort of reputation is He receiving from the way I act?

As children of God, we are all representatives of Him and His character. As God’s children, He loves each of us enough to have sent Jesus to pay for our sins. As children of the King of the Universe, we have an amazing opportunity when we choose to focus on the only relationship that matters in this life – our relationship with God, who we can best know and understand through Jesus and how He showed us God’s love for us.