If you are following along in the Advent Devotional for this year, you will find that today’s devotion is a misprint and a duplicate of yesterday’s. The text for today, which expands upon Matthew 1:18-25, is provided below. You can also find it online here. (Access the audio recording here.)

What does it mean to be just? We get the translation “just” from the English Standard Version. “Righteous” is the word used for Joseph in the American Standard Version. Joseph was a just and righteous man, according to the Scriptures, because he chose to remain faithful to God by determining not to marry an adulteress, and by showing compassion to a young woman he surely loved by choosing not to expose her to public humiliation and possible condemnation. Put simply, Joseph demonstrated his justice by deciding to divorce Mary quietly. But that was just a demonstration of his justice; it does not appear that it was the cause for his being just. He was already a just man. “Being a just man,” Joseph was unwilling to put her to shame.

Are you just? If so, how do you demonstrate that? Or are you a stranger to God’s holiness? Unfair question? Can anyone truly be just or righteous? The answer is...yes! Joseph was, Noah was, David was, the centurion Cornelius was, and Joseph’s fiancée, Mary, was. So how does that happen? To a Jew in Joseph’s day, being just meant being faithful to the law of Moses. It meant making it your ambition to obey the law of God, to celebrate the appointed feasts, to be faithful to the covenant demands, to offer the requisite sacrifices, and to live with a hope and expectation for the coming of the Anointed One. It meant those things, but it also meant having personal integrity and allowing the goodness of the law to penetrate your life to an extent that goodness also penetrated your own thoughts and actions. In such a way, Joseph was a just man. He was faithful to the law, and that faithfulness bore the fruit of righteous actions in his life. He had mercy on his fiancée because he loved her and had compassion for her, but he also knew that he must obey the law and not marry an unfaithful woman.

Some might say, “If he were truly just, he would forget the rules and marry his fiancée anyway!” But that would only demonstrate Joseph’s mercy, not his justice. To have discarded the law in order to show mercy, Joseph would not have been just; he would only have been a merciful lawbreaker—similar to how a merciful judge might choose to let a convicted murderer go free. Nice to the murderer, yet unfaithful to the law.

In a comparable yet much more profound way, God demonstrates his own justice. Unable and unwilling to ignore sin because of his own perfect nature, God chose to both uphold the law and set the captive free. In such a way, the righteousness of God is made manifest. In God’s divine forbearance, he had passed over the sins of multiple generations, awaiting that day in space and time when Jesus, the earthly son of Joseph the just, would come and make atonement for those sins and the sins of all who would receive him by faith. In this action, God demonstrated his justice while at the same time saving those who belong to Christ by faith (see Rom. 3:21-26). This is a substantial reason for cur deus homo—why God became man. Humankind needed saving, but that could not be accomplished by God waving a wand and declaring sin to be okay. A sacrifice was necessary—and not just any sacrifice—a perfect sacrifice was called for.

So, how does one become just in our day? By faith in Jesus Christ, who is Emmanuel—God with us. Our righteousness flows not from our adherence to the law, but from our trust in the only truly Righteous One. And when our righteousness flows from him, we naturally demonstrate that righteousness, as Joseph did, in our daily lives. Joseph was a just man, but his justification would be made complete in the One who was born to his virgin wife, that he might die to make Joseph just, not only in man’s eyes, but in the eyes of the only One who truly matters, God, the Justifier and Savior of unrighteous men and women.

Do you desire to be just? You must know this: human justice (righteousness) does not flow from human activity but solely through the grace of God. “For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Cor. 5:21). Flee to Jesus this Advent season! In him, you will find not only justice and righteousness, but through the death and resurrection of this babe we celebrate, you will find eternal life as a free gift of grace.

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