All embracing love of Jesus.

All embracing love of Jesus.
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Let us first remember :

1.God cannot change.

2.The same Holy Spirit inspired both the Old and New Testaments.

3.God is love.

So the messages of both the Testaments must be interpreted only  on the basis of love.

As love inspired the messages, they are messages of love,

not of anything that does not go with love.

4.God is the primary cause of whatever happens in the universe.

Created beings are the secondary cause.

Sometimes the Bible writers present the primary cause as the secondary cause.

We must be careful not to misunderstand it.

"But. I will harden his heart."
(Exodus 7:3-4)

It looks like saying that God would harden Pharaoh's heart.

But it is not so.

It is the Pharaoh who would  harden his own heart.

God is the primary cause of  every event,

including our commiting sin,

of which we are the secondary cause,

as such,

we are responsible for the event;

but as the Primary cause, God,

created the secondary cause, man,

we wrongly  transfer the responsibility to  the Primary cause.

It is like a son saying to his father,

"True, I have done the mistake, but, I would not have done the mistake if you had not given  birth to me. You are responsible for my birth, so, for my actions also."

But this argument is a logical fallacy.

5. God permits evil, but He can draw out a greater good from the evil.

Now coming to the point,

the family line of Jesus,

according to Matthew,

starting from Abraham down to St. Joseph, Jesus' foster father,

would disturb us a bit,

unless correctly understood.

There are four women in the  genealogy. Tamar,  Rahab. Ruth.  Bathsheba.

Of these, Tamar,  Rahab.  Bathsheba are not up to the mark judged by the 
required standard in sexual ethics.

Tamar was Judah's widowed daughter -in-law.

She feigned as a prostitute, had illegal sexual intercourse with her father -in-law and bore for him two sons, one of whom is in the genealogy of Jesus.

Rahab  was a Jericho
prostitute.

Some people  praise her for having helped the Israelites to capture Jericho by helping the Israelite spies to stay hidden in her house.

But, she being a 
Jericho harlot, is her betraying her city to the Israelites praiseworthy?

Jericho people also were children of God.

Ruth is sometimes seen as seducing Boaz.

King David committed adultory with Bathsheba and married her.

Matthew does not forget to note that  king David conceived Solomon by the wife of Uriah.

Why didn't Matthew simply say that David gave birth to Solomon?

Why did he drag 'Uriah's wife' into the family line of Jesus,  though she was David's wife too?

It is to stress the sinfulness of the four women in Jesus' geneaology.

Matthew wants to  emphasize God's grace in response to sin.

When our child  does something that we don't like, how would we react?

Our first reaction would be anger.

Our anger would give  birth to shouting at the child and punishing him.

But, how did God react when our first parents sinned against Him?

God's  first reaction was mercy, not anger.

On the very day when He enquired them about what had happened in the garden of Eden,

God promised to send  them a Saviour.

Whenever the chosen people disobeyed His words He reacted with mercy and helped them to return to the right path.

The words of anger that  the Bible writers had noted as words of God are not words of God.

Only to stress the  seriousness of the evil deeds of the people

the writers had written the words as coming from God.

By nature God is loving and
merciful.

He cannot be otherwise.

All His attributes are eternal.

Can two traits contrary to each other be in the nature of God from all eternity?

By nature God cannot  get angry.

Anger cannot go with perfect love.

Now coming to the genealogy of Christ,

1. God  loves all His children, both  righteous and sinful.

2.Just as  we jump into the gutter  to save a person fallen in it,

as we love the person, not the gutter,

He was born in a genealogy with people with sins,

to show that 

He loves all the sinners,

how heinous their sins may be,

as they too are His children.

3.He is the Son of God,

but, He wants to be called 'Son of David' too

as He wants to be one  amongst us, sinners.

4.  When we read the genealogy of Jesus, we would expect it to end with Jesus through Mary, daughter of Joekim.

Then only it would be blood line.

Why did Matthew end with Joseph, who has no blood relationship with Jesus?

Joseph was only the Foster father, not father.

In a genealogy there must as many women as there are men,

because two produce one.

But, Matthew mentions four not-up-to-the mark women

to strss the sinful character of the line,

so that Jesus,

innocent and holy,

can be presented

as coming through it

to destroy the sins of the world.

But the fifth woman, Mary was conceived without original sin

and lived throughout her life
without sin.

She was the woman, predicted by God

as the one who would crush Satan's head.

Matthew did not want to  include her in the 'sin-stained' line.

So he stopped the line with Joseph who is  mentioned only  as the husband of  Mary,

not the father  of Jesus.

Mary too is the daughter of David through Joekim.

In a way,

though the genealogical river,

which flowed along dirty area,

got fully purified

when it flowed through Mary,

in whose innocent womb was conceived Jesus,

the Purifier and Saviour  of whole sinful world. 

Jesus' love is all embracing.

He loves all the sinners with the same love,

with which He loves His heavenly Father and His Mother.

Happy must be the sinners

as the most holy Jesus is with them

to redeem them from their sins.

Lourdu Selvam.