The lineage of Jesus is carefully recorded in the Old Testament, tracing back to Adam. As we saw in the previous answer, all of mankind inherits, through their biological father, the proclivity to disobey God. This is commonly referred to as the original sin. God had to break this pattern so that Jesus could enter the world without being tainted by original sin. This meant that Jesus could not have an earthly father to inherit it from.

Roughly seven hundred years before Jesus, the Lord revealed to the prophet Isaiah that the Messiah would be born of a virgin (Is 7:14). God also revealed to Samuel that an heir of David would eternally sit on the throne of Israel (2 Sam 7:8-16) These prophecies were fulfilled when the Angel Gabriel appeared to a virgin girl named Mary and informed her that the power of the Holy Spirit would come upon her. She would conceive a son whom she would name Jesus (Lk 1:26-35). The Gospels of Matthew and Luke are careful to maintain the virginity story to clarify that Jesus was not begotten by his earthly father, Joseph. But the story is more profound than just original sin.

Joseph and Mary were both descendants of David, so it is reasonable to think that either could be Jesus’s connection to David’s throne. However, Joseph’s connection to the throne was interrupted. His ancestor Jechonia was the grandson of David through Solomon. He was an evil man, and God placed a curse on him and his offspring, preventing them from ever sitting on the throne of David (Jer 22:30). Mary, however, was a descendant of David’s other son, Nathan. Matthew records Jesus’s legal ancestry; Luke records Mary’s biological ancestry, and thus Jesus’s connection to David’s throne. Like Adam, Jesus came into the world without sin. Unlike Adam, Jesus proved that a man could obey God and live a sin-free life. Jesus did not miss the mark.