Bible Discussion Thread

(Part 2)

Is Jesus Christ God?

In Verse 2, it says Abraham begat Isaac. The word 'begat' means to generate or to produce. Abraham begat Isaac, and Isaac begat Jacob, and that's the cadence that goes through a Jewish genealogy. It's always through the man, not through the woman. So the men don't give birth to other people, they produce. Abraham produced Isaac, Isaac produced Jacob, and so on.

But down in Verse 16, it says, "And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus who is called the Christ." Do you see the term "of whom", and "of whom was born?" The Greek text says "Out of whom," and the word whom is feminine, not masculine. So the Jewish person is probably going to say okay, we're going Jacob begot Joseph the husband of Mary, okay we got that, and then you see "of whom" and you would think it was Joseph right?

No, because the Messiah is not from Joseph. The Messiah is from Mary. So that opens up a question for the Jews which requires an explanation, and we have the explanation in Verses 18 through 25 which is the ancestry of the Christ explained. Notice in Verse 18 it says, now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise, or more literally "in this way," because he is explaining that little presentation in Verse 16 "from whom" or "of whom" and it is feminine.

So the birth of Jesus Christ was in this way, and by the way, the word birth in Verse 18 is the same Greek word genesis which means origin. The origin of Jesus Christ was in this way. Matthew is still not calling it a birth. He is calling it an origin.

And then we have Matthew 1:21. This is something that the Jews expected the Messiah to do. They expected Him to be the Savior-Messiah. This is the same thing they expected God to be, the Savior-Messiah. And this is who Jesus was.