Jesus didn't have children - does that mean something?

Last night there were questions stirring in my mind about covenants, families and children…God works through families…at least, He did…does He still? …What is the significance of the New Testament biological family? It’s quite important, but is it the same as it was in the Old Testament? Maybe it is not…

This morning, I had one helpful thought: Jesus did not have children. So I stirred that in and dished out a few paragraphs of thoughts:

A promise of blessing was made to Abraham and his “offspring” (which Paul says refers to Christ, Gal. 3:16). During the Old Testament the blessing was transferred through the physical offspring - a physical offspring through which ultimately Christ would come. But after Jesus Christ was born of the Virgin Mary, in the line of Abraham and of David, he himself had no children. Instead, “to all who received Him, to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God - who were born not of the will of man, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God.” (John 1) After Jesus completed His earthly work and inaugurated His kingdom with the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the promise of blessing was announced both to the Jews and to those who were far off “whom the Lord our God will call” (Acts 2).

In Christ and the New Testament, those things which were physically foreshadowed in the Old Testament were spiritually fulfilled - the spiritual reality being more real than the physical reality had been. For example, the physical sacrifices of the Old Testament were fulfilled with the final sacrifice of Christ, which was both physical and spiritual, and through which now believers “offer spiritual sacrifices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ.”

Is it not the same with the idea of offspring? The physical generations of the Jews, to whom the law and the promises came, reached the fruition of its purpose in the generation of Jesus Christ, which was both physical and spiritual, and through whom all believers in Christ are now the spiritual children of God.