Read Matthew 1:18-25

God’s Family

A man who will raise someone else’s child as his own is a special kind of man. Even though he is not biologically related to the child, he still cares for him and wants the very best for him. Not every man is wired to fill that role. Joseph the carpenter, however, was one such man.

He was likely ridiculed about his situation. He claimed that he and Mary were innocent, and perhaps his friends and family believed that he never touched her, but what does that say about her morals? If she had never been with Joseph, then she must have been with someone else. That’s how a woman gets pregnant. The whispers. The stares. The rumors. Joseph put up with it all. Why?

He believed what the angel of the Lord said to him in his dream. “Joseph, son of David, do not be afraid to take to you Mary your wife, for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Spirit. And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name Jesus, for He will save His people from their sins” (Matthew 1:21).

Joseph believed, and when he woke up, he “did as the angel fo the Lord commanded him and took to him his wife, and did not know her till she had brought forth her firstborn Son. And he called His name Jesus” (Mathew 1:24-25).

Like the confidence shown by Mary, Joseph had faith in God’s plan. He protected the young Jesus by fleeing from his home and hiding in Egypt until the death of Herod, who was paranoid that Jesus would take his place on earth as the King of the Jews. When Jesus was twelve years old and left behind in the temple, Joseph searched for him anxiously. He did everything a biological father would have done for his own child.

In the church of our Lord, we are brothers and sisters in Christ. We are family, even if there is no blood relation. We should care for one another as a spiritual family. “Do not rebuke an older man, but exhort him as a father, younger men as brothers, older women as mothers, younger women as sisters, with all purity” (1 Timothy 5:1-2).