Orphan Care in the Gospels
The Old Testament is clear: Jews are to care for the ‘widow and the orphan.’ This care is one of the behaviors that marks them as separate from surrounding cultures and displays the character of God to those cultures.(Deut 10:10) Jesus does not specifically lay out a plan for how His followers should treat orphans, but there is no reason to believe that He advocated abandoning a practice that was so closely tied to the very character of God. Jesus was in fact adamantly upholding the Old Testament when He said, “Do not think that I have come to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I have not come to abolish them but to fulfill them. For truly I tell you, until heaven and earth disappear, not the smallest letter, not the least stroke of a pen, will by any means disappear from the Law until everything is accomplished.”(Matt 5:17-18) Both the law and the prophets speak consistently about the high priority God places on caring for orphans. Jesus warns His followers, “Therefore anyone who sets aside one of the least of these commands and teaches others accordingly will be called least in the kingdom of heaven, but whoever practices and teaches these commands will be called great in the kingdom of heaven.”(Matt 5:19) Caring for orphans is not even “the least of these commands;” it is in fact one of the most frequent.
Despite the fact that Jesus does not mention orphans specifically, they certainly fall into several of the groups He refers to in the Sermon on the Mount. Orphans definitely would be included in “the poor in spirit;” “those who mourn;” and “the meek.”(Matt 5:3-5) They would also certainly be included in the generic ‘poor’ about whom Jesus is continuously concerned. It is not surprising that Jesus does not teach specifically on adoption, for “the process of adoption was unknown among the Jews,” at least in the formal sense (such as the Romans practiced).1 It is clear, however, that Jesus constantly exhorts His followers to care for the unwanted and unprotected, and orphans epitomize this population.
Much of Jesus’ instructions in these areas were given by example more than by utterance, and He gave clear teaching on the importance of hospitality to children in Mark 9:36-37: “Taking a child, He set him before them, and taking him in His arms, He said to them, ‘Whoever receives one child like this in My name receives Me; and whoever receives Me does not receive Me, but Him who sent Me.’” It would be difficult to find a more direct injunction to care for the least of these. “Since a little child rather than an adult is the object of the verb here, more than simple hospitality to a guest is implied; something analogous to assuming a parental role may be intended. Not only love and acceptance (in contrast to denigration) of little children but attending to their needs in a more comprehensive sense is suggested by the parallelism of the verbs ‘hug’ and receive.’”2
Jesus teaches a similar lesson when the disciples try to keep children from pestering Him. In an episode recorded in both Mark and Matthew, Jesus rebukes the disciples and instead blesses the children with an action that echoes Jacob’s blessing of Ephraim and Manasseh (grandsons he adopted as his own) in Genesis 48:5. Jesus not only repeats Jacob’s action of laying hands on the children, He also speaks specifically of an inheritance: “Let the children alone, and do not hinder them from coming to Me; for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”(Matt 19:14) There is a strong suggestion of adoption imagery in Jesus’ actions here. The loving contact of taking the children in His arms and blessing them provides a beautiful model of God’s love for His own children, and the response believers are to have toward children in need.
One of the most significant instances of adoption in the New Testament is also one of the easiest to overlook. So much emphasis is placed on the fact that Jesus is God’s Son (and rightly so) that readers often miss the fact that Jesus is also Joseph’s adopted son. Certainly, the divinity of Christ is paramount to our fundamental theology, but the adoption by Joseph bears weight as well. Unlike Roman adoption, there was no formal court proceeding or legal document in Jewish custom. Instead, Joseph’s adoption of Jesus is administered through the naming of the child,3 just as Moses became Pharaoh’s daughter’s son when she named him. Moses’ adoption gave him the tools he would need in his later ministry, and Jesus’ adoption by Joseph gives Him rights and a lineage that will be essential in His role as the Messiah. “It is this adoption that makes possible the claim that Jesus is not only Son of God but also (still) son of David, Messiah, through his adoptive father. In this sense Joseph follows the pattern both of Old Testament and of first-century Greco-Roman adoption: he claims Jesus for his own and by claiming him makes him part of his patrilineal family--son of Joseph, son of David.”4
Jesus, Himself an adopted son, clearly instructed His followers to care for the various categories of the oppressed and hurting, a group which would certainly include orphans. Jesus never once uses the word adoption, and the beatitudes offer no promise specifically to the fatherless. Yet in one of His last interactions with the disciples before His arrest, Jesus tells the disciples that He is going to prepare a room for them in His Father’s house. His descriptions imply that this is more than an offer of hospitality; He is offering them a place in His family. This is made even clearer as He promises, “I will not leave you as orphans.”(John 14:18) Not only does He offer His followers a place in His family, He makes it clear that He is proactive in this relationship. It is not that they have a home if they should choose to come to Him; He says, “I will come to you.”(John14:18) The resulting relationship is closer than a blood tie: “In that day you will know that I am in My Father, and you in Me, and I in you.”(John 14:20) Jesus does not use the word adoption, perhaps because it was too weak a term culturally for the close relationship that He described. He instead declared that none of His followers would be orphans; all had a loving Father and family (the Trinity) that would seek them out and with whom they would live forever.(John 14:23)
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1. Douglas J. Moo, “Romans,” in Zondervan Illustrated Bible Backgrounds Commentary, volume 3, ed. Clinton E. Arnold, (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2002), 47.
2. Judith Gundry, “Children in the Gospel of Mark,” in The Child in the Bible, ed. Marcia J. Bunge, (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008), 156.
3. David L. Bartlett, “Adoption in the Bible,” in The Child in the Bible, ed. Marcia J. Bunge, (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008), 387. Exod 2:10; Matt 1:20-25
4. Bartlett, 387.
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