They Only Saw Jesus

The Gospel of Matthew begins with the genealogy of Jesus Christ. The phrase, “the book of the genealogy” in the Greek language is “biblos geneseos” and it literally means “book of the beginning” or “book of genesis.” Matthew is writing a new genesis or a book of the new creation, and it begins with Jesus, the “firstborn” of this new creation. One particular aspect of the Jesus story that Matthew wants to share is that Jesus is King of a heavenly kingdom realm. The word kingdom appears 50 times, the phrase Kingdom of heaven appears 32 times in Matthew and nowhere else in the New Testament. Matthew’s Gospel is summarized in on the Mount of Transfiguration, it says, “They only saw Jesus.”