This week we begin our focus on Christmas. Each week we will look at one of the main characters in the Christmas story. Today we look at Joseph, the step-father of Jesus.
Joseph was an ordinary young man, a carpenter by trade. He was not rich or famous or powerful—not even particularly interesting. If it were not for his being mentioned in the New Testament (Matthew 1:1825), we would never have heard of him. No one would have expected Joseph to be a likely candidate for God to use to change history. He was just a carpenter.
That is Joseph as the world saw him, but that is not how God saw him. God saw Joseph as a righteous man (Matthew 1:19). This didn’t mean that he was excessively religious or that he was an expert in the Bible or theology, because he wasn’t. It didn’t mean that he knew that the Jewish Messiah was about to be born or that his fiancé Mary was to be the mother—he was as clueless about that as everybody else. No, Joseph was just an ordinary guy expecting to get married soon and to set up an ordinary home with his wife and 2.5 kids. I’m sure he expected to live and die as a poor carpenter in the small town of Nazareth. But God had different plans for Joseph because God saw him as righteous.
What made Joseph righteous? Simply put, he tried to do what was right. That’s all it takes to be righteous. I see four things that made Joseph a righteous man.
First, when his fiancé Mary became pregnant, he knew that he was not the father. He knew this because he and Mary had been waiting until they got married. Today we might call them old fashioned, but God called them righteous. In Joseph and Mary’s culture her pregnancy was worse than a scandal—it was cause for a divorce. If an engaged girl became pregnant and her fiancé was not the father, she was considered an adulteress. Her fiancé would divorce her. The girl would be publically shamed and her life ruined.
But because Joseph was righteous he didn’t want to hurt Mary. When she became pregnant, I’m sure he felt hurt and betrayed, but he didn’t overreact. He decided to break off their engagement quietly. He didn’t go public. Even as they broke up, he was still trying to protect Mary.
But there was a third way that Joseph was righteous: he allowed God to correct him. He was teachable. God gave him a dream in which an angel explained what had really happened. Mary had not been unfaithful to him. Her pregnancy was due to a miracle: the child was from the Holy Spirit. Joseph should proceed with his plans to marry Mary.
The angel’s message of a virgin pregnancy was not easy to believe. When we served as missionaries in Africa, I was surprised that my high school students had a hard time believing in the virgin birth. This was not because they doubted miracles in general. They easily believed in miracles such as walking on water, or healing the sick, or raising the dead, but they doubted this one miracle. There is an African proverb: “There has to be a father.” If not Joseph, there must be someone else.
Africans are not alone in their doubting. For 2000 years skeptics have mocked this story. Perhaps Mary had a boyfriend. Or, according to a rumor circulated by the Jews, the father was a Roman soldier. There has to be a father. This miracle was unbelievable.
But Joseph believed. When the angel revealed the truth to Joseph, he was teachable. He accepted that his role in the Christmas story was to marry Mary and to raise her child as his own. Of course, by doing this he became part of the scandal. People would look at them and nod their heads knowingly. Joseph would be falsely accused. This would be hard for both of them.
Joseph was not only teachable, he was obedient. When the angel told him what he should do, he obeyed. He disrupted all of his own plans in order to protect Mary and the baby. Then when he was warned in another dream that King Herod was sending soldiers to kill the child, he took his family and fled to Egypt. He temporarily gave up his dreams of being an ordinary man: a carpenter, a husband, living a normal life. Joseph was a righteous man, so he obeyed.
It is not uncommon for God to call us to give up our dreams and replace them with his plans. His plans are always better, but they are often harder! To be righteous doesn’t mean to be overly religious, but it does mean to do what is right: to believe, to be willing to change, and to obey. That is what we learn from the example of Joseph.
Greg Giles is a published author, who, along with his wife Jean, has embraced the call to serve and teach around the globe. Their life together has included missionary work in Liberia, Bangladesh, teaching in China, and raising a family in Bemidji, Minnesota. Between global travels and local commitments, including serving as superintendent of Corn Bible Academy and their current part-time roles at Corn Heritage Village, the Gileses have found “home” in many places; yet, they now happily reside in retirement in Cordell. Please visit his website at reflections-on-wisdom.com.