Consider the example of the slave, who served his master with love. Only a sense of the love of Christ could produce such a love for one another. Our love is often cold, and unfortunately the world sees that. But here is an example of love that leaves the world stunned. Beloved in Christ, let us love like this—a genuine love that flows from the love of Christ.
Jesus is not just one prophet among many. Jesus is The Great Prophet who can reveal God perfectly to us, because he is God and near to God.
Jesus may not look like the king we’d expect to see, or seem like the king we would ask for. And yet, Jesus is precisely the king we need.
Jesus Christ needs to remain at the center of our faith, because it’s all too easy for us to come up with a distorted version of Christianity that fixates on something else.
This genealogy declares that joy has come to the world, in the coming of the Christ. And it sends a message to all people, “Let earth receive her King.”
When we trust in our great King – when we believe in Jesus – he saves us, not because of any virtue or strength in us, but because of the virtue and strength that’s in him.