This is how Jesus the Messiah was born. His mother, Mary, was engaged to be married to Joseph. But before the marriage took place, while she was still a virgin, she became pregnant through the power of the Holy Spirit. Joseph, to whom she was engaged, was a righteous man and did not want to disgrace her publicly, so he decided to break the engagement quietly.As he considered this, an angel of the Lord appeared to him in a dream. “Joseph, son of David,” the angel said, “do not be afraid to take Mary as your wife. For the child within her was conceived by the Holy Spirit. And she will have a son, and you are to name him Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins.”All of this occurred to fulfill the Lord’s message through his prophet:“Look! The virgin will conceive a child!She will give birth to a son,and they will call him Immanuel,which means ‘God is with us.’”When Joseph woke up, he did as the angel of the Lord commanded and took Mary as his wife. But he did not have sexual relations with her until her son was born. And Joseph named him Jesus. (Matthew 1:18–25 NLT)
Joseph was engaged to be married to Mary, and by all indications, he was happy to be her husband and have her as his wife. The only thing that put a hiccup in his plans was Mary’s unexpected – and, unknown to him, miraculous – pregnancy. To save face, for himself and for her, Joseph planned to cancel the engagement. This couldn’t have been an easy decision to make. He was likely hurt by what he perceived to be Mary’s betrayal, and he would also have been mourning the loss of what could have been, the life he had planned for himself and Mary after their wedding.
In the midst of making this life-altering decision, Joseph sleeps, and in his sleep he dreams. And as a result of this dream, Joseph does make a life-altering decision, but rather than choosing to break off the engagement and walk away from Mary, he chooses to continue with his plans to take Mary as his wife, but with the addition of adopting her child as his own.
Adoption was not unheard of in first-century Jewish culture. We see it a handful of times throughout Scripture: Moses is adopted by Pharaoh’s daughter; Samuel is adopted into the priesthood as a young boy; Esther is looked after by her uncle Mordecai; even the children of Gomer conceived in prostitution are taken by the prophet Hosea as his own. Even so, it is not a common occurrence. That Joseph would take on Jesus as his own child would effectively make him the firstborn son in the eyes of the law – especially given no one knew the paternal lineage of Jesus and therefore he would likely be assumed to have been Joseph’s natural son, particularly since Joseph took Jesus as his own.
Those of us with no Jewish ancestry who have chosen to follow Jesus – what the Bible refers to as Gentiles – have likewise been chosen by God as his children, adopted as his own. We are, as Paul writes in Romans 11, branches that have been grafted into the family of God and given new life.
Because of Jesus, we are now part of God’s family. We can call him Abba and refer to ourselves as his children.
Take a few minutes to praise the name of our Father in Heaven, who accepted us into his family, adopted us, and grafted us in so we might receive new life and flourish as his children.