Becoming Family

Romans 1:1-7 and Matthew 1:18-25

The next step in the great saving work of God begins with two unassuming young people in the little Galilean village of Bethlehem. Now, Matthew, a Jewish author addressing the gospel to Jewish people, starts out his book by telling us that Joseph is, in fact, a descendant of King David. But that’s not necessarily something to get too worked up about. If you get far enough away from any royal figure, you find out that they have a lot of descendants.

Someone did a study on the subject and found that the 13th century Mongol ruler, Genghis Khan, has more than 16 million male descendants alive in the world today, to say nothing of how many female descendants he has. If you go back further to the 8th century King of the Franks, Charlemagne, someone calculated that he might have as many as one billion living descendants today. So, since David lived almost 1000 years before Joseph, and since he had quite a few wives and children, it’s likely that there were a lot of descendants of David in the first century. It certainly meant something to the Hebrew people, but let’s not act like it was an extraordinary accomplishment.

Of the two of them, Mary and Joseph, Mary certainly gets more attention, due to the large emphasis on her piety in Roman Catholic tradition. But both of them were remarkable for their faithful response to God’s calling on their lives.

They are betrothed at this time. In first century Jewish culture, marriages were almost always arranged by the parents when the two were still children. Once they reached marriageable age, which was typically 14-16 for young women and 18-20 for young men, they would meet each other, maybe for the first time. They would have to give their consent to the marriage. And if they did, there was a betrothal. The betrothal was a legally binding arrangement. There had to be two witnesses, and once it was done, they were bound to each other for a year till the wedding ceremony happened.

One of the purposes of the betrothal was to demonstrate the self-control and purity of the bride and groom. Brides were not supposed to get pregnant during this. Typically, brides and grooms were not even allowed to be alone together during the betrothal. If a woman was found to be pregnant, it meant either that she was unfaithful or that the groom lacked self-control. Neither was a good situation in that world.

In this case, Joseph knows he is not the father, so he decides to end the betrothal quietly. Technically, he could have her stoned to death for adultery. At the least, most people would expect him to divorce her and subject her to public ridicule. But he is a just and compassionate man, and he wants to spare her from these things.

God sets him straight with an angelic vision. He is not to be afraid to marry her because this is God’s work. And he is to name the child Jesus, Yeshua, a name meaning “Yahweh saves; for he will save his people.”

Who are his people? In all likelihood, Joseph would think of his own people, the Hebrew people. It is true that the Old Testament, and especially the prophet Isaiah, foretold of a wider work of salvation, of “the nations,” Gentiles, turning back to God. But most Jewish people, while they were aware of these prophecies, really didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to them.

In his letter to the Roman church, Paul has to deal with this tension of a gospel for both Jew and Gentile. The Roman church was started by Jews and converts to Judaism who were in Jerusalem for the day of Pentecost. In time, Gentiles in Rome also received the message. But a funny thing happened in Rome: In about 49 AD, the Roman Emperor Claudius expelled all the Jews, including all the Jewish Christians, from Rome. It was as if one day all the Gentile Christians showed up for church and half the congregation was gone. So the church in Rome took on a distinctively Gentile character. And then, one day, Claudius died and his successor allowed the Jews to return, and they came home to a church that had lost its Hebrew character. And so there was a great deal of tension in Rome between the Jewish and Gentile believers, which is one of the major themes of this letter.

Paul had not been to Rome at the time he wrote this letter. He had no personal connection to that congregation. His only connection was through the gospel. He describes the gospel as the good news promised long ago through the prophets in the Holy Scriptures. A Hebrew audience would appreciate that. It is the good news about his Son, who became a human being in the line of David. And he was shown to be the Son of God through his resurrection from the dead. This would be a challenge to Caesar, who was called a “son of the gods.”

We find here a neat little summary of the gospel: Christ became a human being, in the line of David. So he is connected to the history of God’s saving work. He died and rose again, demonstrating he is the Son of God. And in so doing, he opens the way for all to receive God’s grace. “God has called you to be his very own people.” Not just for the Jew but also for the Gentile, the calling is there: Be God’s very own people.

In Romans, Paul calls Christ a “new Adam.” He shares something in common with Adam; he is a human being whose Father is God. And just as Adam was the start of the human race, so Christ is the beginning of a new humanity, a people who are restored to fellowship with God.

Paul also uses the language of adoption in his letter to the Romans, taking off from the Roman practice. In Roman society, only sons were adopted, but adoption could happen at any age. And in the eyes of the law, an adopted son was a completely new person, even to the extent that any debts he owed were wiped clean, and if he was guilty of a crime, the charges were expunged. God does this for us in Christ. We are adopted into his family. The charges against us and the debt of sin we owe are dropped, and we are a new creation in Christ. And the way is open that anyone, any person can become a child of God in him.

“Well, aren’t we all children of God?” Didn’t Paul actually say that at another point? In Acts 17, while he is in Athens, he quotes a Greek philosopher who said, “We are all his children,” referring to God. So, aren’t we all already children of God?

Yes. And no. All human beings are children of God in the sense that he created us, that he is our Father in heaven. But without Christ, we “estranged children.” Our sin separates us from fellowship with God. I think we all know that family dynamics can be complicated. We live in a society with a significant amount of divorce and remarriage. That can make things complicated. And in a similar way, apart from Christ, our relationship status with God is also “complicated.”

But the good news is that we can all be restored to a family relationship with God. Our faith in Christ is a covenant. A covenant is an agreement that brings together as family those who are not family by birth. This is why marriage is a covenant. Some people poo-poo marriage saying, “Oh, it’s just a piece of paper.” No, no it is not. Marriage makes people into family. Likewise, in our faith and through our baptism, we are adopted into the family of God.

All this is made possible because 2000 years ago, a young couple from Bethlehem were willing to take on the responsibility and the risk of welcoming the Son of God into their family. They played their part in the story of God’s work of salvation.

And now, we are called to take our part. As Paul writes here, “He has given us the privilege and authority to tell people everywhere what God has done for them, so they will believe and obey him, bringing glory to his name.”