Who is he?
Light thrown by Matthew’s birth and childhood narratives on the true nature of the Messiah.
The clear purpose of the opening two chapters of Matthew’s gospel is to whet the appetites of his readers – most of whom would at first have been Jewish – to digest avidly and seriously the rest of his account of the life of Jesus. Since almost all of the material he records in these chapters is unique to his gospel, and is rooted in what Matthew views as the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy, many sceptics have claimed that he has simply invented his material to bolster his view that Jesus was the long-promised Messiah. However, such cynicism fails to recognise the restrained and workman-like way in which Matthew handles his material. Nor does it face the fact that his accounts are not simply a recasting of traditional Jewish expectations for the Messiah. On the contrary, he presents a very unexpected picture, one dictated by extraordinary events and cryptic, heavenly interpretation.
The central impression made by these chapters is, indeed, that the birth of Jesus is the birth of the long awaited Messiah. Matthew begins by calling Jesus, ‘Christ’, or ‘Messiah’ – God’s anointed one (1:1). He then traces his legal family line all the way from Abraham and David, the key characters and promise receivers in the history of God’s chosen people. Fascination with one’s ancestry may seem like a modern epidemic, fed by the availability of census information over the internet, but the Old Testament shows plainly that it was also a vital concern amongst the Jews, and for a very practical reason. Their land entitlements depended on being able to trace their family roots. In a culture that put great emphasis on learning by rote such knowledge is far more believable than certain Bible critics would have us think!
The conviction that Matthew wants his readers to understand, from the outset of his gospel, that Jesus is the Messiah is further underlined by the way he uses the Old Testament in these two chapters. Five times he appeals to it to demonstrate that the birth and early life of Jesus exactly paralleled Old Testament expectations regarding the Messiah (1:23, 2:6, 2:15, 2:18 and 2:23). In Matthew’s eyes, the extraordinary nature of Jesus’ conception, the place of his birth, his early exile in Egypt, Herod’s vile assault on the young children of Judah, and Jesus’ residence in the obscurity of Nazareth were all foretold in the Old Testament, demonstrating conclusively that he is indeed the long promised Messiah. And yet it is clear, from even the opening chapters of his gospel, that Matthew’s portrait of the Christ is not in line with the saviour for which his contemporaries were looking and longing.
In some ways Matthew’s Messiah seems a lesser figure than might have been expected. His descent from Abraham is only recorded as a legal one; it is his step-father, Joseph, whose line Matthew traces back to the great patriarch. Matthew reports Joseph being instructed (by heaven) to take the already pregnant Mary as his wife, and to signal his legal adoption of the newborn child by carrying out the duty of naming him. Then Matthew’s Messiah is revealed as the vulnerable one, who must be carried hurriedly into exile in the land of bondage (the land of Egypt) to protect his life from the threats of Israel’s king. There, he can only survive because of timely, valuable, portable gifts brought to him by strange travellers from afar. Furthermore, this ‘Messiah’ must be brought up in the obscurity of the backwaters of Galilee simply to guarantee that he will make it to manhood. To the first century Jew all this would appear to be a startling, and scarcely believable, humility and obscurity for God’s great deliverer. Could this really be the Messiah – especially as most of Matthew’s Old Testament quotations seem rather obscure? It is testimony to the honesty and reliability of Matthew’s account that his portrait of the early life of Jesus was so different from common expectations of the Messiah. Furthermore, it is worth noticing that, with the exception of Micah’s pinpointing of his place of birth, Matthew doesn’t use the favourite prophetic texts of his day to support his claim that Jesus is the Christ.
However, side by side with this portrait of vulnerability and obscurity, Matthew’s account of the birth and early life of Jesus Christ is one of extraordinary claims for the child. These claims go far beyond the expectation of the Jews in at least four areas.
First, Matthew insists that this Jesus was virgin born – that no man was involved in his conception (1:18). This claim has been widely ridiculed in the world (and in that part of the church that has been overrun by the world) but Matthew is very clear on this point. In some mysterious (and, of course, non-sexual) way the Holy Spirit of God is responsible for the fertilisation of Mary’s egg, which leads to the natural development of the baby in her womb. (Notice, also, that Matthew’s words clearly imply that the child is not only born from Mary in the sense that she carried him, but from her in the sense that he is formed out of her substance. Compare also Luke 1:42 where Jesus is called literally the ‘fruit of her [Mary’s] womb’.) Joseph’s conviction about the supernatural conception of Jesus is not the result of blind trust in Mary, promoted by deep-seated infatuation. It is the fruit of an extraordinary revelation in a dream given by a heavenly being.
Matthew also claims that the Old Testament prophet (Isaiah – though he doesn’t mention his name when quoting his writings) predicted that the Messiah would be conceived by a virgin. While the exegesis of Isaiah 7:14 is notoriously difficult, its obvious natural sense is that of virgin conception. The key word Isaiah uses means, at the very least, ‘a young unmarried woman’, and the child’s birth is said to be a miraculous sign from God to Israel. For such a birth to be a sign – something singular – it needed to be truly remarkable. Virgin conception certainly fulfils that criterion infinitely better than common fornication!
Secondly, Matthew insists (again on heavenly authority) that the Messianic child has a far greater mission than his contemporaries imagined, one of eternal significance. Heaven demands that the child be named Jesus, because that explains his great role and, indeed, the reason for his birth. Our hearts rejoice to hear that he is not an earthly political deliverer, or even one who would return Israel to the true worship of Jehovah. He is the rescuer of men and women from their sins (1:21). And the rest of the New Testament makes clear that the deliverance that he brings is total. People are saved from the guilt, bondage and presence of that sin which has long separated mankind from God.
The heavenly declaration that Jesus has such a role throws wonderful light on Jesus’ conduct and instruction during his public ministry that Matthew goes on to record. Yet it is as Jesus faces and speaks about his death that it becomes apparent he is supremely conscious that this is his great work in this world. He is born to die in a way that is true of no other, and with an effect which can and will nullify and reverse the deaths of multitudes of others, whom the angel calls ‘his people’.
Certain striking features in Matthew’s opening chapters raise for us the important question, ‘Who are the people for whom Christ dies?’. The genealogy makes interesting reference to notorious sinners like Judah and David whose grievous sexual failings actually establish Joseph’s line. It also includes the Moabite foreigner Ruth as one of Joseph’s ancestors. Then the subsequent history reports the arrival of pagan stargazers to worship the toddler. These details hint at the vast scope of his saving work. Later the Baptist calls him ‘the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world’!
Thirdly, there are indications in Matthew chapters one and two that the Messiah who is born to Mary is divine, that he is, mysteriously, both man and God in one person. What are those indicators?
Notice, first, that the names that Matthew is given for the child are very significant. The angel calls him ‘Jesus’, which means ‘Jehovah saves’. Then he recalls the name the child is given by God through the prophet Isaiah: ‘Emmanuel’, which means ‘God with us’. Clearly exalted though these names are, they do not, by themselves, prove that the child is divine. Conceivably such names might simply indicate that the child was given as a token of the fact that God would come in power to rescue and live with his people. Yet, the angelic voice declares that the child himself will save his own people from their sins, which implies very strongly that he is, indeed, no less than God come to save us.
That view of the child would certainly explain why his birth is surrounded by such incredible, supernatural events. Whether the Son of God could have taken human nature to himself without being born of a virgin is a debatable point. Yet such a miraculous entrance into this world is very appropriate if God desires to become man. Again, such a coming naturally fits with the stupendous sign in the sky (2:2) and worship by great sages with fabulous gifts (2:12). No wonder, too, that the Old Testament, rightly understood, should have so much to say about the fact and attendant circumstances of God entering his world in the weakness of human flesh.
Before we pass on to the final observation, we would do well to notice that Matthew consistently speaks of the one who was born in Bethlehem as ‘the child’ (2:9, 2:11, 2:13, 2:14, 2:20 and 2:21). By that designation he is clearly underlining that the one who was born is truly and fully human. But he is doing more than that. He is stressing the single personality of the Christ. The Messiah is not an uneasy union of two competing personalities. He is the Son of God for whom the Holy Spirit has created a perfect and complete human nature from and in the substance of the virgin. Thus, the Lord of glory became fully human and was born as a baby, while at the same time remaining truly God. And he lived his life here within the confines of that human nature, drawing on divine resources only when the will of the Father demanded it. It is this amazing mystery, of God manifest in the flesh, that alone fits all the pieces of information that Matthew provides us with here concerning Jesus Christ.
Fourthly, by regarding the statement of God (through Hosea) concerning the people of Israel being called from Egypt as a prophecy of the Messiah (2:15), Matthew explains to us that Jesus is the new Israel. As such he is the one who fulfils our part in God’s covenant, the part which ancient Israel miserably failed to fulfil. Hence Jesus is not only the one who can sympathise with the lot of the asylum seeker, he is the one who set out to keep God’s law in all the areas where his covenant people have failed. And the rest of Matthew’s gospel shows us that he is completely successful in that. Only then is he truly qualified to offer himself up to God as a sacrifice for our sin, the sacrifice that he makes once for all upon the cross. And we do not need to doubt its effectiveness or acceptance, for our Father raises him from the dead and lifts him to the throne of heaven to vindicate him absolutely.The unique opening two chapters of Matthew’s gospel certainly do not tell us all that there is to know about the mystery of the incarnation. Yet, carefully read, they give clear clues as to who Mary’s son is and why he is born. And they surely quicken our pulses to study the rest of his gospel, and that on our knees.
Why not make that your task this Christmas time?