the gospel of God… concerning His Son Jesus Christ our Lord, Which was made of the seed of David according to the flesh. Romans 1:1,3
A pleasant-faced older gentleman struggled with his cane as he made his way across the pool deck during a major competition event. He greeted me warmly, although we were barely acquainted, and we enjoyed a nice chat as we watched the children involved in the competition scurring about. Then he noticed the coach of the local team on the other side of the pool, and his eyes lit up with delight. The coach was his son, and for the next several minutes, he told me about that son and how proud he was of him. And he had a right to be! That young man had done well academically and was about to join a highly successful company with a good position. He was also very well liked by all his peers, his professors, and the young people he was coaching. A son to speak well of, for sure! Just as our text today reminds us of a Son of Whom God is delighted to speak well of.
The term ‘gospel of God’ is interesting, in that the word ‘gospel’ means good news, or more emphatically it means glorious glad tidings. So, when God will declare glorious glad tidings, He will point us to His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord. Specifically, the reference here is to what His Son accomplished in His taking on humanity. The Father’s delight in His Son is eternal, because the Son has ever fulfilled all that the Father desired. But just as an earthly father might well point with delight at an accomplishment by his child, so the Father draws our attention today to the good news of the great position that His Son has achieved.
The first reference in our Bibles to this great achievement is in Genesis 3:15, in which the Lord Jesus is prophetically referred to as the Seed of the woman, the One Who will bruise the serpent’s head. On the very day that the first Adam falls victim to the devil’s wiles, the promise is made of the last Adam, Who will restore all that the first Adam has lost, and more. On that day, Adam and his wife could not grasp the depths to which humanity would plunge because of their disobedience. Nor could they grasp the heights to which humanity would soar because of the obedience of the last Adam. The great distance that the disobedience had created would be bridged by the obedience of the One Who is described in the Gospel of God.
But our text does not refer to the seed of the woman, but to the seed of David. The seed of the woman is the Saviour. But the seed of David is the King and Lord. Just as David rose from the sheepcote and the battles with the lion, the bear, and Goliath, so the Lord Jesus has risen from the carpenter shop of Nazareth, the dusty trails of Galilee, the grief of Gethsemane, the shame of Gabbatha, and the infinite battle of Golgotha to the exhaltation by the Father to Heaven’s highest title and seat.
Note the use of the term ‘according to the flesh’. What Christ is as the Son of God we can grasp but little; the finite struggles to comprehend the infinite. But we can understand something of what Christ is as seed of David, because of what the writers of the four Gospels tell us of Him, of His words and His deeds. ‘And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth’ – John 1:14.
The Gospel of God is about His Son. What glorious glad tidings for us to consider today! -Jim MacIntosh