Jesus Lost His Dad Too
We don’t know much about Joseph.
Jesus’ dad, Joseph, that is. The earthly father of the Messiah. The one whose fiancé came up to him one day and said, “Hey, by the way, I’m pregnant. But don’t worry, I’m still a virgin.”
Joseph is probably one of the most significant characters in all of Scripture—God literally chose this man of all men to be the earthly up-bringer of His one and only Son—yet the information we have about him is fairly sparse: He was a descendant of King David and the son of a man named Jacob, and according to Matthew he was “a just man” (Mt 1:19a), a statement validated by the fact that he originally planned on merely divorcing Mary quietly when she announced her pregnancy despite the fact that virgin pregnancies are, by any natural means and purposes, physically impossible. Despite believing that his betrothed was blatantly lying to him, he was “unwilling to put her to shame” (Mt 1:19b), and such a righteous and kind man was he that he was simply going to separate from her without drawing any attention to her perceived infidelity. He could have had her punished (and even killed) in the courts of law for perceived unfaithfulness, but he had no interest in doing such a thing. He was a great guy.
To shine an even greater spotlight on Joseph, after having learned that Mary’s story was true—that she, a virgin, was in fact pregnant—he remained with her! Consider this: Mary’s pregnancy would have been showing before their marriage and Jesus would have been born within nine months of their marriage; regardless of the truth of the matter, Jesus would always be perceived by their peers as an illegitimate child, tarnishing Mary, Joseph, Jesus, and their family’s reputation from here on out. (We even see traces of this in John 8:41, when the Jews, arguing with Jesus, declare, “We were not born of sexual immorality,” suggesting that the prevailing theory was that He had been born of sexual immorality.) Joseph stepped into his marriage with Mary knowing that he was committing to a life of being judged and ridiculed by those around him, those who didn’t understand. Despite knowing that his own righteous reputation would be ruined by the events that led to Jesus’ birth, Joseph remained.
Other than that, we don’t know much about Joseph. We have one account of him and his family travelling to Jerusalem for the Passover when Jesus was twelve years old (Lk 2:41-52), but after that, Joseph drops off the map. When we encounter Jesus again as an adult, Mary is treating Him (and not Joseph) as the head of the household (Jn 2:3); later on in Jesus’ ministry, we read of His mother and brothers and sisters coming to find Him, but no mention of Joseph (Mt 12:46-49; Mk 3:31-34; Lk 8:19-21); and at Jesus’ death, He turns to John and finds it necessary to place His mother under the disciples’ care (Jn 19:26-27).
What can we conclude from all of this?
Well, it would seem that, at some point between the time when Jesus was 12 and the time when Jesus was 30, He had to say goodbye to his earthly father.
Adios, Dadio
For those of y’all who know me or have read any of my past few posts, you will know that on May 8, 2020—nearly two months ago to the day—I lost my dad in a tragic bike accident while he and I were riding our bikes together out at a park. He was my best friend, but within seconds he was taken from me in one of the most unexpected of ways. I was 22 at the time (I turned 23 just a few days ago), and the entire process happened decades sooner than I could have ever expected. As a kid, you always recognize that the day is coming when you might lose your parents, but I always expected it to be years and years and years from now. One day I was reading Peter Pan in the backyard, waiting for my dad to get home from fishing so we could go ride bikes; a few hours later, he was lifeless in my arms; less than a week later, I had officiated his funeral and buried him in the ground. Less than two months later, I sit here in my office at First Baptist Church in Pasadena, thinking about Jesus and recognizing the fact that He, too, had to say goodbye to His earthly dad at a fairly young age.
The Bible tells us that “because [Jesus] himself has suffered when tempted, He is able to help those who are being tempted” (Heb 2:18), and more than this, that “we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Heb 4:15). One of the beautiful truths of the gospel is that when Jesus Christ came in the flesh, He met us in our sufferings and joined in our hardships, so that He who now mediates between God and man is not One who cannot relate to His creation, but rather One who has suffered with His creation by becoming one of them and who has endured all the same temptations that we daily endure, yet without sin. The beautiful truth and astounding mystery of the gospel is that the sovereign and transcendent God who should be entirely unrelatable to us has, defying all odds and surpassing all explanations, made Himself immanent and relatable to us in the most perplexing of ways. We do not serve a God who is unfamiliar with pain and sorrow; we serve a God who has shared with our pains, our sorrows, and our temptations in such a manner that He can sympathize with us and help us press through when we need Him most.
Saying Goodbye to a Friend
I do not know how old Jesus was when Joseph died. He could have been 13 or he could have been 29, I don’t know, I have no idea, and I have no way of knowing; I just know that at some point between 12 and 30, it would seem that Jesus had to say farewell to his earthly dad, and if I read Scripture correctly, then I can look to Jesus’ example to know how to move on—and no matter who you are or what you are going through, you can too. I don’t know how Joseph died—it could have been an illness, it could have been a crime, it could have been natural causes, or, as the case with my dad, it could have been a freak accident—and it doesn’t do any good to speculate.
All I know is that this last Wednesday as I was leading my Bible study group through John 2 and the story of Jesus turning water to wine, I saw how Mary went to Jesus for help and recognized that Jesus was now the man of the house: Where she used to would have gone to her husband, now she goes to her eldest son. It made me think of my own mom, and I had this sudden moment where I began to wonder, “What must Jesus have gone through during his time on earth?” Jesus lived somewhere between 33 to 36 years on earth, yet some scholars have said that the Gospels only account for roughly 52 days (equivalent to approximately .4% of his life, less than 4/1,000ths). That means that there is roughly 99.6% of Jesus’ earthly life that we don’t know anything about! Yet just this one detail—the loss of a father—speaks towards so much pain and hurt and grief that he must have faced.
We know that Jesus and his dad must have been close. When people encounter Jesus, they describe him as “the carpenter’s son” (Mt 13:55) but also as “the carpenter” (Mk 6:3). This means that Jesus’ dad was a carpenter (from the Greek tekton, meaning ‘craftsman’), and, prior to going about his public ministry, so was Jesus. Jesus was a carpenter and the son of a carpenter: He had grown up alongside his father, learning his father’s trade! How many countless hours must he have spent at Joseph’s side, learning to shape wood and stone and craft different sorts of items to be sold at the local markets? How many hours did he spend by Joseph’s side walking back and forth from Nazareth to Tiberius, undertaking all the projects commissioned specifically for him and his father and brothers? People might have thought he was an illegitimate child, but they still described him as the carpenter’s son: he might not have been Joseph’s by blood, but Joseph treated him as his own. He was raised alongside his father and followed in his father’s footsteps, yet at a young age, something happened so that he and his father had to part ways. By the time Jesus reached 30, he had no earthly father.
Principles from Christ:
How to Deal with Losing a Loved One
Like I said, we don’t specifically hear about the death of Joseph in Scripture, but nevertheless we can learn about how Jesus likely coped with his Father’s death by looking at the example he set in the rest of his life.
1. SALVATION: Recognize that death is not the end.
First and foremost, we can look to how Jesus related to death in general. When he is brought before Jairus’ daughter (who has recently died), Jesus turns to the crowds and says, “Do not weep, for she is not dead but sleeping” (Lk 8:52). Similarly, after the death of his beloved friend Lazarus, Jesus tells his disciples, “Our friend Lazarus has fallen asleep, but I go to awaken him” (Jn 11:11). When they misunderstand what he means, Jesus clarifies: “Lazarus had died” (v.14). In the same account, however, Jesus, speaking of himself, specifies that “I am the resurrection and the life. Whoever believes in me, though he die, yet shall he live, and everyone who lives and believes in me shall never die” (v.25-26). When Jesus thought of death, he saw it merely as a detrimental side effect of sin, but never divorced it from the reality of the resurrection found in him. From the perspective of Jesus, death is nothing more than falling asleep, for He has the power to raise people from the dead, and thus He shall do for all who believe in Him.
2. SECURITY: Know who your true Father is.
Even at the age of 12, Jesus had a full understanding of who He was and what He had come to do. Three days after having lost Jesus during the Passover festivities, Mary and Joseph finally found the young Son of God in the temple talking with the teachers of the Law. Mary says to him, “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress” (Lk 2:48). Jesus’ reply is simple and respectful, yet mature and confident: “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father's house?” (v.49) Though Joseph was His earthly father, Jesus never lost sight of the fact that His time on earth was dedicated to a greater purpose: Serving His Father in heaven. While the Father-son relationship between God and Christians is not precisely the same as that between the Father and Christ (who was His Son in a unique manner), the principle still remains: We must remember that our family’s, while significant, do not define us. In fact, Jesus goes so far as to say that “Whoever loves father or mother more than me is not worthy of me, and whoever loves son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me” (Mt 10:37). We must not define ourselves by those things that can pass away, but must be rooted in who we are in God, who will never pass away.
3. SELFLESSNESS: Care for those around you who are also grieving or in need.
From the beginning of His ministry (Jn 2) to the very end (Jn 19), Jesus is seen caring for His mother. When she comes to Him to inform Him that the wedding has run out of wine, His response is candid and perhaps a bit playful: “Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come” (Jn 2:4). Nevertheless, He goes about the necessary steps to fix the problem and tend to His mother’s need. Even in the moment when He is hanging from the cross dying from blood loss and suffocation, Jesus is so selfless that, rather than thinking about Himself, He considers the needs of His mother, whose pain is like that of “a sword will pierce through your own soul” (Lk 2:35). He directs His mother to John and says, “Woman, behold, your son!” and then to John, “Behold, your mother!” and we read that “from that hour the disciple took her to his own home” (Jn 19:26-27). While our temptation during times of grieving might be to turn inwards and focus on our own needs, Jesus would not even allow His own suffering and death to distract from the needs of others. We are not alone in our suffering, and thus in our grieving we must care for those around us who are also grieving and in need.
4. SERVICE: Serve the Lord.
Lastly, Jesus’ entire life is a testimony to how we should respond to any hardship in life. When Jesus is tempted, He quotes Scripture (M 4:1-11; Lk 4:1-13); when He is taxed and tired, He goes to pray (Mt 14:23; Lk 5:16); in times when Jesus would prefer to be alone or have time to Himself, He tends to the needs of those around Him (Mt 14:13-14; Mk 4:35-41). Jesus’ life, from beginning to end, was one of service, and I think ours should be the same. One notable aspect of Jesus’ ministry was His constant reference to God as His Father and Himself as God’s Son; while our relationship to God is a bit different than His, nevertheless it remains true that it is our status as children adopted into the family of God that should motivate us to go out and serve Him with all we do. Just as Jesus, we can weep over the existence of sin and death in this world (Jn 11:35), but we should follow that weeping up with the proclamation of resurrection and life that is found in Jesus Christ (Jn 11:38-44).
Conclusion
How awesome is it that we have a Savior who can relate to us in our sufferings? How beautiful is it that we have a God who is not oblivious to our pain, but who shares in our affliction and has personally experienced it Himself? I can express to you how comforting this thought has been to me even this morning and afternoon as I have thought through these things. I hope and pray that it will encourage you as well, regardless of what you are going through.
Our God is a wonderful God, dear friends; draw near to Him and He will draw near to you. Whether you have lost someone recently or perhaps just need a fresh reminder of how we ought to conduct ourselves in this life, I think that the example of Christ is a worthwhile reminder for each of us regardless of our present circumstances. With our salvation in mind, let us recognize that death is not the end. Finding security in that salvation, let us know who our true Father is. Embodying selflessness in light of that secure salvation, let us care for those around us who are also grieving or in need. Motivated unto faithful service through a selfless mindset achieved by that secure salvation, may we go out into the world and serve the Lord in all we do.
Grace and peace.
