HOW ACCUSERS SAW JESUS

The Pharisees questioned Jesus as if He was a lawbreaker. He had to explain God’s rules for them. For some reason, they abruptly came up with a cunning question: 

The Pharisees also came unto Him, tempting Him, and saying unto Him, “Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?” (Mat 19:3)

 Jesus did not get testy with them even after being tested. Did He know scripture? Mosaic Law was that there be honesty with the engagement. If a woman was not a virgin, she would not act the virgin. If found not to be a maid, then the husband would have the right to hate her because the marriage would not be holy matrimony.

However, if the parents of the bride could prove that she was a virgin, then the two, even with the hatred, would be married forever; however the man would be chastised.

If it was proven that she had not been a virgin, then the death of the lying woman would be expected. (Deut 22:23-31).

Now consider the offense against Jesus that they were implying: Mary was espoused to a man named Joseph, the supposed father of Jesus (Luke 3:23). Either the people thought that Joseph was the father of Jesus, or that He just wanted people to believe that He was. In that case, Jesus would lie by what He was not saying rather than what He really was saying.

Jesus never claimed to the son of Joseph but was called the ‘son of man” and to that He admitted. He was not, however, the son of a man, as most think of it, but the gens (genetics) of Adam as the genealogy of Luke (chapter three) reveals; that even if He was the son of Joseph or not, He “was the son of Adam, which was the son of God” (Luke 23:38).

That He had flesh made Him the ‘son of man’ and that He was Spirit, that He was the ‘Son of God.’

The baptism of Jesus by John demonstrated that Jesus was literally, the ‘Son of God’ — His gens: “The Holy Ghost descended in a bodily shape like a dove upon him, and a Voice came from heaven, which said, ‘You are My beloved Son; in you I am well pleased” (Luke 3:22).

Jesus was born of the Holy Ghost from the womb; His Baptism was to show anyone who would doubt, that indeed, Jesus is the Spirit of God that was made flesh. His Baptism was a revealing much like maids were revealed to society in ante-bellum America.

The genealogies are not just filler material to be glossed over but the proof that Jesus was who He said He was. Never did He claim that either God or Joseph were His immediate cause, but that God was His ‘First Cause’ because Adam was of the LORD GOD as well.

Not hidden at all was His ‘Immediate Cause’ — Mary was the supposed ‘virgin.’ Would the crowd that mocked Jesus really believe that His mother was a virgin?

Imagine this: 

And in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God unto a city of Galilee, named Nazareth, to a virgin espoused to a man whose name was ‘Joseph,’ of the house of David; and the virgin's name was Mary. (Luke 1:26-27)

 David was noted for marrying the non-virgin Bathsheba. Often missed is that both David and Bathsheba would have the people believe that their marriage was honorable. Did the people of David’s time truly think that David’s son was his or Uriah’s? Just who was the supposed father of Solomon? The genealogy of Jesus provided that, “Jesse begat David the king; and David the king begat Solomon of her that had been the wife of Urias…” (Mat 1:6).

Were they questioning that Jesus was even of the house (gens) of David, as the ’son of David’?  Was Jesus even really a king in the order of David? You see; genealogy was important in those days. If Jesus was not the son of David, neither was he the Son of God, they might think, nor was He heir to the throne of David.

I submit that the Pharisees were not so much interested in the Law about marriage and divorce as they were whether Jesus; was He really who He said He was?

Mary and Joseph were “espoused” or promised to soon be together in Holy Matrimony. As such, Mary would not have known another man, by Mosaic Law. God chose Mary to be the ‘vessel’ in which Jesus was born because she was pure. If Jesus had been born of a harlot, then He would have been impure, according to Mosaic Law.

The Pharisees were essentially questioning the purity of Jesus for God is Pure and only Him alone.

That Joseph was of the House of David was significant. They thought that Jesus was truly heir to the throne of David; that is if Joseph was really the father of Jesus.

Jesus never claimed to be the ‘son of David;’ He was only accused of that, perhaps in mockery. If He had been the son of David, then He would not be the Son of God. They wanted Joseph to be the real father of Jesus as scripture suggests; then He would only be the son of Joseph, and not the Son of God.

Mary was the supposed mother of Jesus, or as Catholics claim, the “Mother of God.” Mary, however, was not the ‘mother’ of anyone at that time. She was merely a “a woman who has never had sexual intercourse with a man” (Strong 2006). What was Mary to Jesus, then?

John said that Jesus is the ‘Word’ and was there in the beginning, and that He was God; and that the Word was made (ginomai) flesh (sarx) — a living creature. (John 1:1-14).

Jesus was not made carnally as was Cain. He was the ‘Last Adam’ and was made in the same fashion as Adam. He was not born in a human sense but simply “became” a living creature in the same process as Adam. God breathed life unto the body of the Person that He made in the barren womb of Mary; His ‘Garden’ so to speak. At the Baptism of Jesus, God breathed life into the body of the Man only to show His method of procreation, and maybe to further shield Him from the fiery darts of the Wicked One at the temptations from the Devil.

Mary was not even the ‘Mother of God,’ but very much a ‘kiln’ that God ‘heated’ to generate His New Man. Jesus said, “I am the Light of the world” (John 8:12), hence He was generated (ginamoai) by the Power of God, and no other. (Note that Abram was remade Abraham (the ‘Shield’) with added holiness in the kiln of Nimrod in the land of Ur of the Chaldees, according to the Book of Jasher.)

The question was, “Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife for every cause?” Before Jesus was born, Mary was six months pregnant and was not yet the wife of Joseph. She was promised to Joseph, but the gossipers would have wondered who the father of Jesus relly might be. Obviously, some would say that they had engaged in sex before marriage, so Mary was the harlot. Others would think that Mary was the harlot of some other fellow. Either way, her pregnancy was not a ‘token’  that would be required by Mosaic Law to clear her reputation.

Joseph never contested whose child Jesus was because He knew! 

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was on this wise: When as his mother Mary was espoused to Joseph, before they came together, she was found with child of the Holy Ghost. Then Joseph her husband, being a just man, and not willing to make her a public example, was minded to put her away privily. But while he thought on these things, behold, the angel of the Lord appeared unto him in a dream, saying, “Joseph, you son of David, fear not to take unto thee Mary your wife: for that which is conceived in her is of the Holy Ghost. (Mat 1:18-20)

 By Law, Joseph should have put away Mary, but he did not. Joseph, as a lawbreaker, would not be a legitimate heir to the throne, in the same manner that Herod Antipas was not because he stole the wife of his brother, Philip.

John did not turn his head to the lawbreaker, Antipas; would Jesus turn his head away from Joseph? Would Jesus condemn His own so-called, ‘father’? As it turned out, Jesus would not even abandon His own Father, the LORD GOD, even though He thought His Father had abandoned Him (Mat 27:46).

(To be continued)