From the opening chapters of Scripture, the narrative of humanity is marked by the presence of a tree. At the heart of Eden stood two trees: the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. The tree of life offered the promise of ongoing life, while the other was strictly off limits, carrying the warning that eating its fruit would bring death. When the first humans chose to take what God had forbidden, they inherited not blessing but a curse—banishment from paradise and the inheritance of death. Since that fateful day in Eden, we have lived beneath the shadow of that curse outside of Eden, our lives marked by its consequences.
Throughout this series, The Tree, we have traced God’s answer to the problem introduced in Eden. We have seen a promised Seed spoken of in the garden (Gen. 3:15), a promise preserved through judgment in the days of Noah (Gen. 6–9), narrowed through Abraham’s only son (Gen. 22), carried forward through broken families and deeply flawed people, guarded through exile and deliverance, and entrusted to kings who both reflected God’s purposes and failed to live up to them. Again and again, the message has been unmistakable: God’s promise advances not because His people are faithful, but because He is.
And then, in the fullness of time, the promise took on flesh (Gal. 4:4-7). The Word became flesh and dwelt among us (John 1:14). God did not merely speak again—He stepped into the story Himself (Heb. 1:1-2). Yet Luke 4 marks a decisive moment. Jesus is no longer simply the child of promise or the quiet presence of Immanuel. In Luke 4, Jesus stands up, opens the Scriptures, and for the first time publicly declares who He is and why He has come.
It is no mystery that we humans are a mess. Scripture does not flatter us, and history confirms the diagnosis. We are fallen creatures living under the curse of sin. We are born spiritually dead (Eph. 2:1), enslaved to desires we cannot master (Rom. 6:16), inclined to distort what God has called good (Rom. 1:21–25), and we live beneath the shadow of death—both physical and spiritual (Rom. 5:12). Though humanity still bears the image of God (Gen. 1:26–27), that image is no longer reflected as it once was. Our thinking is darkened, our lives disordered, and our relationships fractured. We were made for communion with God, yet we live far from Him.
This brokenness did not occur in a vacuum. Scripture is equally clear that there is an enemy in the story—real, personal, and malicious. Satan is the great antagonist of redemptive history, a murderer from the beginning who traffics in lies and delights in death. Jesus said of him, “He was a murderer from the beginning, and does not stand in the truth, because there is no truth in him… for he is a liar and the father of lies” (John 8:44). Yet even in judgment, God spoke hope. To the serpent and the woman He declared that a descendant would come—One who would be wounded, yet in being wounded would crush the serpent’s head (Gen. 3:15). Death would strike, but it would not have the final word.
From that moment forward, the Scriptures move with expectation. God promised His people a Deliverer—someone greater than Moses (Deut. 18:15; Heb. 3:1–6), someone greater than David who would reign with justice and peace forever (2 Sam. 7:12–16; Ezek. 37:24–28), someone who would not merely rule but redeem. Through the prophets, God revealed that peace would come through suffering, that the One who would heal the world would first bear the curse Himself. Isaiah saw it clearly: “But He was pierced for our offenses, He was crushed for our wrongdoings… and by His wounds we are healed” (Isa. 53:5).
This is why the announcement of Jesus’ birth was not sentimental but staggering. When angels appeared to shepherds living in darkness, they did not proclaim a teacher or a moral example, but a Savior: “For today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord” (Luke 2:11). As the apo
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