Have you ever noticed that when people are introduced, they’re usually identified by what they do?
Go pick up a book off of your shelf and read the author's bio. What they do is primary, everything else is secondary. Google your favorite actor, athlete, or someone you know, it’s all the same.
As common as this is, the Bible consistently does the opposite.
Family First
When we open the pages of Scripture people are defined first by who they are in relation to others well before what they do or accomplish.
Take, for example, the opening lines of the book of Jeremiah. Here is one of the most famous prophets in Israel's history. A man personally chosen by God to speak to his people. How would you introduce such a man? How would you begin to tell the world who he is?
Here’s how the Bible does it.
"The words of Jeremiah, the son of Hilkiah, one of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin, to whom the word of the LORD came in the days of Josiah the son of Amon, the king of Judah."
Before even getting at what he does, the Bible says who is in relation to those he came from. The first thing of importance about God's prophet is his lineage. Before he is Jeremiah the prophet, he is Jeremiah, "the son of Hilkiah, one of the priests who were in Anathoth in the land of Benjamin."
And it’s not just Jeremiah.
In Genesis 11, 16 verses of Abraham’s lineage are given before he arrives on the scene. We learn all about who his family is before we learn a thing about what Abraham does. It happens again with Isaiah. He’s first introduced as “the son of Amoz” and we’re told all about Ruth’s family background before she’s introduced as one of the most incredible women in Scripture.
Oh….and let’s not forget Jesus. Matthew doesn’t start with Jesus healing the sick, raising the dead or casting out demons. He starts out with almost an entire chapter focused solely on Jesus’s genealogy.
All of this points to something the Bible innately understands yet we can easily forget.
None of us are an island.
Who We (really) Are
It’s easy to believe we’re completely free to be our own person, to live our own way, and to make our own path. But the truth is we’re bound in a web of connections.
We are who we are because of others.
Who we are is infinitely more than what we do. We are complex creatures born into a web of relationships.
For better or worse, we are born into this world with intimate connections, inheritors of a family legacy. Mysteriously and genetically bound to those who have gone before us.
To quote Pete Scazzero, “Jesus lives in your heart, but grandpa lives in your bones.”
Their past is pressing in on us today. We are linked in ways we cannot comprehend. So much of where we find ourselves is the fruit of the lives which have gone before us. We are all apart of a living history and bearers of a centuries long legacy.
What are the blessings and the curses of your inheritance? Where has there been flourishing or fragmentation? Where is there brokenness and where is there healing?
If we are to grow forward in Christ, we must go backwards in order to go forward in healing, freedom, and faith. We must face our past, acknowledge the hurt, do the hard work of healing, rejoice in the blessings, and press on in faith.
We can’t reduce our biography to the source of our paycheck. We are so much more. And by God’s grace we’re growing up to healing and wholeness in his Son, knowing that we have an eternity ahead with the family of the redeemed.