Human Perfection

This verse is all explanation of the deponent verb in verse 2, “he promised before”. It starts with the preposition peri (sorry, I don’t have Greek fonts), which, when used with the genitive, means "circling something". It is usually translated “concerning” or” about”. The point is that the center of the gospel is the Son! He is the core. The center point!

In case his readers are still unclear on whom the Son is, Paul further identifies Him by using two prepositional phrases.
1. “Out of the seed of David”. Ek is the preposition used with the genitive, which delineates the source of something. It is translated “from out of”. Paul is drawing our attention to His humanity, identifying Jesus as the one fulfilling the Davidic Covenant. (See 2 Sam. 7:12-13, Psalm 89:3-4, Isaiah 11:1-5, Jer. 23:5-6, Matt. 1:1, Rev. 22:16).
2. “According to the flesh”. This is the category in which all of this (the gospel) took place. The gospel was accomplished IN Christ’s humanity. 1 John 4:2-3. The good news was accomplished in the humanity of Jesus.

We had the whole history of God's chosen people, Israel, to show us that we cannot keep the law! We are forever seperated from God and slaves to sin. Yet Jesus, the Messiah, the perfect man could Himself make attonement for us. It was planned this way, by God, before the foundations of the world.

C.S. Lewis says in his book, What Christians Believe, "...Here’s the catch. Only a bad person needs to repent. Only a good person can repent perfectly. The worse you are, the more you need it, and the less you can do it. The only person who could do it perfectly, would be a perfect person, and he would not need it…But the same badness that makes us need it (repentance/restoration) makes us unable to do it. Can we do it if God helps us? Yes. But what do we mean when we talk of God helping us? We mean God putting into us a bit of Himself-so to speak. He lends us a little of His reasoning powers, and that is how we think. He puts a little of His love into us, and that is how we love one another. We love and reason because God loves and reasons and holds our hand while we do it. Now if we had not fallen that would be all plain sailing; but unfortunately, we now need God’s help in order to do something in which God, in His own nature, never does at all. To surrender. To suffer. To submit. To die. Nothing in God’s nature corresponds to this process at all. So that the one road for which we now need God’s leadership most of all, is a road God, in His own nature, has never walked. God can only share what He has. This thing in His own nature, He has not. But supposing God became a man. Suppose our human nature - which can suffer and die - was amalgamated with God’s nature, in one person. Then that person could help us. He could surrender His will and suffer and die because He was a man. And He could do it perfectly because He was God. You and I can only go through this process if God does it in us. But God can do it only if He becomes a man. Our attempts at this dying will succeed only if we men share in His dying; just as our thinking can succeed only because it is a drop out of the ocean of His intelligence. But we cannot share God’s dying unless God dies. And He cannot die except by being a man. That is the sense in which He pays our debt; and suffers for us, what he himself, need not suffer at all.”

The Messiah Jesus, the seed of David came in 100% humanity, took on our sins, died, and rose again! I LOVE Easter!!!!