Where the Story of Jesus Begins

The Beginning We might think that the story of Jesus begins when we get to the Gospels. But the Gospel writers work from Genesis to introduce us to Jesus, the Christ. Matthew 1 begins with the “genealogy” [Gk. “generations” or “genesis”] of Jesus Christ. Luke traces Jesus’s ancestry all the way back to Adam (Luke 3:23–38). John begins his Gospel with “In the beginning,” mirroring Genesis 1:1, telling us that Jesus, the Word made flesh (John 1:14), was there in the beginning and that all things were made through him (John 1:3). John tells us that “in him was life” and that that life “was the light of men” (John 1:4), revealing that to eat of the tree of life is to feed on Christ and that to bask in the light that radiated through creation is to see “the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Cor. 4:6). In Genesis 1–2 we read about the triune God’s creation of a realm in which he intends to dwell with humanity made in his image, reflecting his own glory. We get a sense of his original purpose when we hear the instructions given to the man and the woman. They are to work and keep the garden, evidently reflecting God’s ordering and filling work in th...