(38) Which was the son of God.--The whole form of the genealogy leads us to apply these words to Adam. Humanity as such, as the result of an immediate creative act, was the offspring of God (Acts 17:28), and the words of the angel (Luke 1:35) imply that it was because the human nature of our Lord originated in a like creative act, that it was entitled, not less than by its union with the Sonship of the Eternal Word, to be called the Son of God. What was true of the second Adam was true also partly, though in different measure, of the first.
3:23-38 Matthew's list of the forefathers of Jesus showed that Christ was the son of Abraham, in whom all the families of the earth are blessed, and heir to the throne of David; but Luke shows that Jesus was the Seed of the woman that should break the serpent's head, and traces the line up to Adam, beginning with Eli, or Heli, the father, not of Joseph, but of Mary. The seeming differences between the two evangelists in these lists of names have been removed by learned men. But our salvation does not depend upon our being able to solve these difficulties, nor is the Divine authority of the Gospels at all weakened by them. The list of names ends thus, Who was the son of Adam, the son of God; that is, the offspring of God by creation. Christ was both the son of Adam and the Son of God, that he might be a proper Mediator between God and the sons of Adam, and might bring the sons of Adam to be, through him, the sons of God. All flesh, as descended from the first Adam, is as grass, and withers as the flower of the field; but he who partakes of the Holy Spirit of life from the Second Adam, has that eternal happiness, which by the gospel is preached unto us.
which was the son of God: not begotten, as all the rest were, by their immediate parents, but created by God, in a supernatural manner, out of the dust of the earth, and quickened with the breath of God: so Adam is, by the Jews (h) called, , "the son of God": though this may be understood of Jesus; the son of Joseph, of Heli, &c. and so on to this clause, "the son of God"; being so as a divine person, to whom the human nature was united, and on that account so called; see Luke 1:35 Thus, as Matthew gives us the regal line of Christ, showing him to be heir to the throne of his father David, Luke gives the natural line of Christ; and as Matthew traces his genealogy down from Abraham, in a descending line, to Joseph, the husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus, Luke traces it upwards, in an ascending line, from Mary by Joseph, even up to Adam; to whom the Messiah was first promised, and who was a type of the second Adam, from whom he descended, though not by ordinary generation; nay, even to God himself: Christ, according to his divine nature, was the only begotten of the Father; and as to his human nature, had a body prepared by him, and in the fulness of time was God manifest in the flesh.
which was the son of Seth, Genesis 5:6
which was the son of Adam Genesis 5:3
which was the son of God: not begotten, as all the rest were, by their immediate parents, but created by God, in a supernatural manner, out of the dust of the earth, and quickened with the breath of God: so Adam is, by the Jews (h) called, , "the son of God": though this may be understood of Jesus; the son of Joseph, of Heli, &c. and so on to this clause, "the son of God"; being so as a divine person, to whom the human nature was united, and on that account so called; see Luke 1:35 Thus, as Matthew gives us the regal line of Christ, showing him to be heir to the throne of his father David, Luke gives the natural line of Christ; and as Matthew traces his genealogy down from Abraham, in a descending line, to Joseph, the husband of Mary, the mother of Jesus, Luke traces it upwards, in an ascending line, from Mary by Joseph, even up to Adam; to whom the Messiah was first promised, and who was a type of the second Adam, from whom he descended, though not by ordinary generation; nay, even to God himself: Christ, according to his divine nature, was the only begotten of the Father; and as to his human nature, had a body prepared by him, and in the fulness of time was God manifest in the flesh.
(h) Sepher Cosri, orat. 2. Sig. 14. fol. 68. 1.