Jesus Stayed on the Cross Because He Wasn’t Joseph’s Son

“If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross!” (Matt 27:40)

There’s Mary, standing near the base of the blood-stained heath, hearing this taunt hurled at her son. If only they knew what she knew, their wagging heads would have bowed low. If only they had heard what she had heard, their mocking lips would have been shut in a terrible silence.

If only they knew that he wasn’t Joseph’s son!

The tradesman from Nazareth, descendent in the line of David, betrothed to the pious young Mary. Though totally pure and righteous in his conduct towards her, he found out she was pregnant (Matt 1:18-19). 

Who knows what he said to her, what she said to him? Instead of legal retribution or a public scandal, he chose a quiet courthouse divorce to protect his reputation and her life. Until the angel told him in a dream that this child was “from the Holy Spirit” (1:20). Joseph knew that he wasn’t the father, but he had never imagined that God himself would be the Father.

Why did it matter that this was the Son of God, not of Joseph? The angel told him: “She will bear a son and you shall call his name Jesus, for he will save his people from their sins” (1:21). 

The wording paralleled the prophecy from Isaiah, “Behold, the virgin shall conceive and bear a son, and shall call his name Immanuel” (Isa 7:14). This was the Messiah, who would bring the presence of God to his people, and in so doing would save them.

But why did it have to work that way? What did it matter that Joseph “knew her not until she had given birth to a son” (Matt 1:25)? Why did he have to be the Son of God, and not of Joseph, to save his people from their sins?

Well, there are a number of reasons why Jesus had to be the Son of God and not the son of Joseph (as was supposed), but Matthew the Levite wants us to see just one of those reasons, and it’s bound up in that title: “Son of God.”

The first two beings to call Jesus “Son of God” in Matthew’s gospel are from hell. Satan tempts Jesus with a reminder of his own divine identity: “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread” (4:3). 

Jesus responds with Scripture about Israel’s son-like relationship with God. Later, two demon-possessed men call out to Jesus, “What have you to do with us, O Son of God? Have you come here to torment us before the time?” (8:29). Jesus casts them out.

Eventually, the disciples begin to understand who their rabbi really is. Jesus walks to them on the water during a storm, pulls Peter up, climbs in the boat, and stops the beating wind. “And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God’” (14:33). When Jesus puts the question directly to Peter sometime later, “Who do you say that I am?” Peter responds, “You are the Christ, the Son of the Living God” (16:16).

Imagine the disciple’s shock, then, when the Son of God is arrested and thrown into a mock trial in the high priest’s home. 

“And the high priest said to him, ‘I adjure you by the living God, tell us if you are the Christ, the Son of God’” (26:63). Caiaphas’ demand is a distorted mirror image of Peter’s blessed confession. Jesus doesn’t deny it, but “said to him, ‘You have said so’” (26:64).

So, they nail the Son of God to the cross to watch him die like countless other sons before him. Then Matthew records for us this astounding insult:

“And those who passed by derided him, wagging their heads and saying, ‘You who would destroy the temple and rebuild it in three days, save yourself! If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross.’”

Matthew 27:39-40

Oh, what horrific, glorious irony is in that sentence! Oh, the sword that must have pierced Mary’s heart to hear it! They crucified the man they believed to be only a carpenter’s son and mocked him for claiming to be who is, the Son of God!

But, brothers and sisters, do not miss this even greater irony, because it’s the reason why Joseph could never have been his father. The crowds taunted him by repeating the devil’s deceit, “If you are the Son of God, come down from the cross,” but it is precise because he is the Son of God that he stayed on the cross. It is because he is Immanuel, God dwelling with us as a man, that he stayed on that cross. It is because he is Jesus, who came to save his people from their sins, that he stayed on that cross. The only one with the divine power to spare himself from the cross would not do it. Instead, he would harness the unfathomable strength of eternal love to stay on that cross and bear the weight of his own Father’s holy retribution on behalf of condemned sinners.

And his death did not go unnoticed. Heaven answered with its own commentary on the slain Son of God – darkness, earthquakes, opened tombs, a torn curtain (27:45-53). The Father declared his judgment on his beloved Son.

And, seeing all this, the Roman guards who had been standing watch over this execution “were filled with awe and said, ‘Truly this was the Son of God!’” (27:54).

No longer, in their eyes, was Caesar the Son of God. No longer was this man the son of Joseph. They knew, then, what Mary had heard from Gabriel, what Joseph was told in a dream, what Peter had confessed, and what kept Jesus on that cross: He is the Son of God.

We do not serve, worship, and preach the son of Joseph. Joseph had four other sons, and they could never have saved us from our sins. But the Son of God who stayed on that cross until it was finished – he is the sun in our solar system, the center of our lives, the joy of our hearts. We preach the Son of God because he is far greater than any son of Joseph because only he can be God with us “always, to the end of the age” (Matt 28:20).

Because he stayed on the cross.

Dan Crabtree