The genealogy of Jesus

The Genealogy of Jesus in Luke

Luke 3:23-38, Back to Adam and to God

Luke gives Jesus a genealogy too, but he runs it the other way, backward from Jesus through David and Abraham and Noah all the way to Adam, and then one step further, to God. Where Matthew shows Jesus as the King of Israel, Luke shows him as the Savior of the whole human race, the second Adam who belongs to every nation. Luke places his list not at the birth but at the start of Jesus' ministry, right after his baptism, as heaven declares him the Son of God.

Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.Luke 3:38 (KJV)

A genealogy that runs backward, and all the way back

Luke does not open his Gospel with a genealogy the way Matthew does. He waits. He tells the birth of John and of Jesus, the shepherds and the temple, and then the baptism of Jesus, where the Father's voice declares, Thou art my beloved Son. Only then, as Jesus begins his public work, does Luke give the family line, and he runs it in the opposite direction from Matthew.

And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age, being (as was supposed) the son of Joseph, which was the son of Heli,Luke 3:23 (KJV)

Luke starts with Jesus and moves back up the generations: Joseph, Heli, and on through the centuries, past David, past Abraham, past Noah, until he reaches the very first man and then the source of all. Where Matthew begins with Abraham, the father of Israel, and comes down to Christ, Luke begins with Christ and climbs back beyond Israel entirely, to the father of the whole human family. The direction is part of the message.

As was supposed: the careful note about Joseph

Luke, like Matthew, is careful to guard the virgin birth even while giving Jesus a human line. He has already told, in his second chapter, that Mary was a virgin and that the child was conceived by the Holy Spirit. So when he comes to the genealogy he inserts a quiet, deliberate qualifier.

Jesus, he writes, was the son of Joseph, as was supposed. Those three words hold the whole mystery. Legally, in the eyes of the world, Jesus was Joseph's son and so an heir of the line that follows. But Luke has already made clear that this was the common supposition, not the biological fact. Jesus takes his place in the human family truly and fully, yet he enters it not by ordinary generation but by the Spirit of God. Both Gospel writers, in their own way, are at pains to say the same thing: Jesus is really one of us, and yet more than any of us.

The universal scope: a Savior for every nation

Luke wrote for the wider Greek and Roman world, and his whole Gospel reaches outward, to shepherds and outsiders, to the poor, to Samaritans and Gentiles. His genealogy fits that vision. By carrying the line past Abraham all the way to Adam, Luke refuses to let Jesus belong only to one people.

Adam is the father of everyone who has ever lived, of every tribe and tongue and nation. To make Jesus the son of Adam is to say that he is kin to the whole human race, not the Savior of the Jews alone but of all people. This is the same Luke who will record Jesus welcoming the outcast and who will write the book of Acts, where the gospel runs from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth. His genealogy is the seed of that mission. The child born in David's town is the brother of every human being, and the Savior of them all.

It matters, too, where Luke has this genealogy stand. Matthew placed his at the very opening of the Gospel, a doorway into the story. Luke tucks his in at the threshold of Jesus' public ministry, between the baptism and the temptation. That placement is itself a message. Just as Jesus is about to step onto the stage of the world and begin the work of salvation, Luke pauses to remind us how far back and how wide this Savior's family reaches. Before Jesus heals a single person or speaks a single parable, we are told that he belongs to everyone. The genealogy is Luke's way of setting the whole human race in the room before the ministry begins.

The son of Adam, the son of God

Luke saves his most striking line for the very last words. Where Matthew ends his list looking forward to Christ, Luke ends his looking all the way back to the beginning, and beyond it.

Which was the son of Enos, which was the son of Seth, which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God.Luke 3:38 (KJV)

Which was the son of Adam, which was the son of God. The final rung of the ladder is not a human name at all. Adam is called the son of God because he came directly from God's hand, made in his image, with no human father. Luke ends his genealogy at the Creator himself. And by doing so he quietly frames the whole list between two sonships. It began, moments before, with the Father's voice at the baptism calling Jesus my beloved Son, and it ends with the reminder that humanity itself began as God's own offspring. The genealogy is bracketed by the words Son of God. Jesus is the true Son the first son was meant to be, come to restore the whole family of Adam to the Father.

Adam and Christ: why the line goes back to the first man

There is a deep theology in Luke's choice to reach Adam. In the letters of Paul, who was Luke's close companion, Jesus is called the last Adam and the second man. The first Adam brought sin and death into the world for all his children; the second Adam brings righteousness and life. By running the line to Adam, Luke lays the ground for exactly that comparison.

Where the first Adam failed in a garden and fell, Jesus, the true Son, is about to go straight from this genealogy into the wilderness to be tempted, and he will not fall. He stands in for the whole race Adam ruined, and where Adam said no to God, Jesus says yes. Luke's backward march to Adam is not antiquarian curiosity. It is the announcement that a new head of the human race has come, one who will undo in himself everything the first man lost.

What Luke's genealogy proves

Matthew and Luke together give a fuller portrait than either alone. Matthew proves Jesus is the King of Israel, the son of David, the heir of the promise. Luke proves Jesus is the Savior of the human race, the son of Adam, the second and greater head of our whole family, and the Son of God.

Placed where it is, right after heaven has torn open and named Jesus the beloved Son, Luke's genealogy tells us who this Son is: fully human, rooted in real history, kin to every person who has ever drawn breath, and yet the eternal Son of God stepping into Adam's ruined line to make it new. The list that ends at God began, in the fullness of time, to bring all the children of Adam home to God.

So Luke leaves us with a Savior we can each claim as our own. Whatever nation you were born into, whatever language you first learned, if you are a child of Adam then Jesus is your kinsman, and he came for you. The line that runs from Jesus back to the first man is, in the end, a line that runs forward to you, and it carries with it the invitation to become, through him, a child of God.

A note for all readers: the genealogy of Jesus has been studied lovingly across the whole church for two thousand years. Where there are real questions, such as how Matthew and Luke relate, this page presents the main faithful explanations without claiming a certainty the text does not give. What both genealogies agree on is the heart of the matter: Jesus is the promised Messiah, the son of David and son of Abraham, and the Savior of all humanity from Adam onward.

Continue: The genealogy in Matthew · Why are there two genealogies? · From Adam to Christ · The genealogy of Jesus