<p>1:19&nbsp;<em>And Joseph her husband, being a righteous man and not willing to make her a public example, decided to send her away secretly</em>- The very same phrase is used by Matthew to describe Christ as the ultimately just or righteous man as He hung upon the cross (27:19,24; Lk. 23:47; 1 Pet. 3:18); the implication is surely that Joseph&rsquo;s just or righteousness played a role in the final perfection of Jesus as the ultimately &ldquo;just man&rdquo;. For it was he who would&rsquo;ve first taught Jesus the&nbsp;<em>shema</em>, emphasizing the word &ldquo;one&rdquo; as Jewish fathers did, correcting the young Jesus as He stutteringly repeated it. The same term is used about Jesus now in His heavenly glory (Acts 22:14; 1 Jn. 2:1) and as He will be at the day of judgment (2 Tim. 4:8); the influence of parents upon their children is in some sense eternal. For Jesus is the same yesterday, today and forever; we too, as the sum of all the influences upon us, will really be saved and immortalized as persons. And the same was true of Jesus; hence the words and style of Mary&rsquo;s hymn of praise can be found repeated in the later words of Jesus, and also in the words He spoke from Heaven to the churches in Revelation. Joseph had various alternatives open to him; the trial of jealousy of Numbers 5, divorce, seeking compensation from the father, public shaming of the wife, or to stone her. But his justice was such that he sought to show grace and quietly divorce her (see on 1:20&nbsp;<em>Take unto you</em>). Love protects from shame, not as it were covering up sin which needs to be exposed, but seeking to cover over in the sense that God&rsquo;s atonement covers over our sins, as 1 Cor. 13 defines at length.&nbsp;</p>
<p>It was normal that the father of the crucified disposed of the body. But another Joseph, also described as a &ldquo;just man&rdquo; as Joseph was (Lk. 23:50), was the one who took this responsibility; remember that Joseph was alive and known as the apparent father of Jesus during His ministry (Jn. 6:42). Likewise one would think it appropriate that the first person to whom the risen Lord revealed Himself would&rsquo;ve been to His mother, for she after all was the channel of the whole marvellous thing, the only one who for sure believed in a virgin birth. But by an apparently cruel twist of circumstance, it was to another Mary, Magdalene, that the Lord first revealed Himself, and it is she and not His mother Mary who takes the message to others. In this context we recall how in His last mortal moments, Christ motioned to His mother that John and not He was now her son (Jn. 19:26), addressing her as &ldquo;woman&rdquo; rather than &ldquo;mother&rdquo;- an unusual and even rude form of address to use to ones&rsquo; mother in public. In all this we see a conscious diminishing of the human significance of the Lord&rsquo;s earthly family, in order to underline that now a new family of Jesus had been brought into existence by the cross. This must have been so hard for Joseph and Mary, as it is for us- to realize that we are but channels, used by God in certain ways at certain times, to the development of His glory according to His program and not our own.</p>