“Paul, a bond servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated to the gospel of God…concerning His Son, Jesus Christ our Lord, who was born of the seed of David according to the flesh” (Rom. 1:1,3)

In noticing how Christ became one of us, we found that it was by birth from the flesh. He is “the seed of David according to the flesh.” His genealogy goes to Adam.

Everyone is tempted, “when he is drawn away by his own desires and enticed” (James 1:14). That is the definition of “temptation.” There is not a single drawing toward sin, there is not a single tendency to sin in you and me that was not in Adam when he stepped out of the Garden of Eden. All the iniquity and all the sin that have come into the world came from him as he was there. It did not all appear in him in open action; but it has manifested itself in open action in those who have come from him.

But Jesus Christ felt all these temptations. He was tempted upon all these points in the flesh which He derived from David, from Abraham, and from Adam. In His genealogy is Manasseh, who did worse than any other king in Judah; Solomon is there; Rehab, Judah, Jacob- all are there just as they were. Jesus came “according to the flesh” at the end of that line of mankind.

There is such a thing as heredity. You and I have traits of character that have come to us from away back-perhaps from great-great grandfather.

The new birth completely supersedes the old. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). He who takes God for the portion of his inheritance has a power working in him for righteousness as much stronger than the power of inherited tendencies to evil, as our heavenly Father is greater than our earthly parents.

Jones, General Conference Bulletin, 1895, pp. 232, 233