Advent | A Family ReflectionSample

A Righteous Struggle
by John Ortberg

Joseph son of David, do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife, because what is conceived in her is from the Holy Spirit.

Matthew 1:20

Joseph was a righteous man (Matt. 1:19). The girl he has promised to marry is going to have a baby, and whoever the father is, Joseph knows it’s not him. Joseph must have agonized over this day after day. 

When the angel comes to Joseph, Joseph of course already knows Mary is pregnant. How did he find out? Mary would have told him. Imagine how she must have protested to him about her innocence. Imagine Joseph’s struggle. An angel? A virgin birth? No way. So he decides to divorce her quietly.

Because we live on the other side of Christmas, we want to rush to the end of the story where everything turns out okay. You might even be tempted to think Joseph was slow spiritually and should have figured out what was going on a lot sooner. But if you do that, you miss the whole point of what Joseph is learning, and of what we can learn from him.

God sends a message to Joseph: “After he had considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream.” Why did God make Joseph wait until after he had to think and struggle with all this stuff? Why couldn’t an angel come to him ahead of time and explain everything and remove that anxiety?

Is it possible that anxiety removal is not God’s number one goal for Joseph—or maybe for you and me? Is it possible that in getting his world turned upside down, in having to struggle between what he thought a righteous man ought to do and his longing to show compassion to this young girl, maybe Joseph was being prepared by God to come to a new understanding of what righteousness is? 

The angel says, “Do not be afraid to take Mary home as your wife.” Why would Joseph be afraid to wed Mary? If he married her, his friends would never accept his account of what happened. If he committed himself to this baby, he would do so at enormous sacrifice. His whole reputation, the work of a lifetime, would be trashed.

When Joseph made the decision to wed Mary, he thought it was the end of his being known as a righteous man. He did not know fully that the child he would adopt would bring to the human race a new kind of righteousness. 

Reflect on Matthew 1:18–25. How might you have felt in Joseph’s situation? How do you imagine he was changed by this experience?

John Ortberg is the senior pastor at Menlo Church and the author of several books, including I’d Like You More If You Were More Like Me.