Between After and Before

We live in a both-and world, not yet and already sitting side by side. Both Advent and Christmas.

We live in a both-and world, not yet and already sitting side by side.

Both Advent and Christmas.

Both brokenness and beauty.

Creation and rebellion and redemption all together.

We sing O Come Emmanuel and Joy to the World.

The Place in Between

Throughout the history of God's purposes, his people have been a people between, a people who occupy the space between after and before.

After God calls, moves, stirs and starts.

But Before he completes and perfects his plans.

All throughout Scripture we can look into the stories of the people of faith in Yahweh, the Triune God, revealed in Jesus Christ, and they have been a people between, occupying the place between after and before.

One man in this exact scenario was Joseph, the husband of Mary, the man who raised Jesus.

The Holy Spirit tells some of Joseph’s story in Matthew 1. There's so much there, about the purposes of God in enfleshing his Son inside of Mary's womb. The conceived child is miraculously created by the Holy Spirit (v. 20). He is called Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins (v.21). Our greatest need met in the conception of the Christ child. This happens and fulfills a 700 year old prophecy from Isaiah, and even greater than could be imagined, the child is God's very presence (v.22-23).

But we might skip over something significant in v.18, "Now the birth of Jesus Christ took place like this: after his mother Mary had been engaged to Joseph, but before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit."

Joseph found himself in the same place we occupy so often: the space between after and before. After the engagement, the legal betrothal, but before they came together, meaning conjugated the marriage through sexual union.

Think about this moment from Joseph's perspective. He finally got the girl, Mary. They were engaged, legally bound for marriage—getting ready for the wedding, and the wedding night. Joseph was getting ready. They were renting the tuxes and buying bridesmaid dresses, getting the wedding hall booked, interviewing florists and photographers—and then…Mary was pregnant.

Now we know the VH1 Behind the Music, that Mary didn't do anything shady. It was a Spirit-miracle inside of her. But of course Joseph wouldn't have seen it that way at first. He would assume what we all would assume.

“I know I'm not the daddy, which means that someone else must be the daddy. We have got a problem.”

Joseph was a good dude. He didn't want to shame Mary and ruin her life any more than it already would have been. So it says in v.19 that being a righteous, a just and good man, he decided he would divorce her quietly. His engagement to Mary was a legally betrothal but not yet a marriage. Sexual infidelity would make divorce permissible, and Joseph decided to end things.

Imagine what he was thinking and feeling. Heartbroken, betrayed, ashamed, disgraced. “How could she? Why would she? The ‘Holy Spirit’— yeah right!”

After he made what he thought was a gracious and fair decision, he then got a visit from an angel. The angel calls him “Joseph, son of David” (v.20). We know from the genealogy in the first half of the chapter that Joseph's dad was Jacob (v.16), but the lineage traces back to David, the king (v.6). God had specifically chosen a human man to raise Jesus in the line of David, because God had covenanted with David to sit his heir on an eternal throne.

Joseph was afraid, cautious to take Mary as his wife, in light of her unfaithfulness. But the angel says “Don’t be,” explaining that she hasn't been unfaithful—in fact, the opposite and Joseph should marry her.

This child would be the Messiah, the Anointed (with the Spirit) One, the Savior, the incarnate God in humanity, and Joseph was privileged to raise him in his house. He had been entrusted with God's own Son to raise as his son on earth.

But go back to that space in between in 1:18. After they had been engaged, but before they had come together. Why did God choose that exact moment to place the miraculously conceived human-divine Christ-child inside of Mary's womb? Why let them walk through the place of engagement, legal betrothal, yet let Mary remain a virgin?

God certainly had his reasons. So that Jesus' legal father on earth would be a Davidic father, a father who was a Son of David, so that the promise of a king from the lineage of David could be fulfilled. So that Joseph would already be bound to Mary, and feel the importance of his connection and commitment to her.

It wasn't just haphazard, but think about it from Joseph's perspective. In those moments, God let him walk through the anger, betrayal, fear, pain, and whatever else he was experiencing, and then he told him through the angel what was really up.

And we live with Joseph in that space in between after and before. We live in between, on two levels, macro and micro, the big story and our story.

The Big Story

On the macro level, we live in a broken world, fractured by abortion and racialization and sex slavery and corruption and disease and suffering. We live in a world awaiting a Savior to come in fullness and fix what seems sometimes irreparably broken. Just like the first coming of Christ, they were waiting. And all over the Scripture it says God sent Jesus at the perfect time. When Jesus came preaching the Gospel in Mark 1:15 he said, "The time is fulfilled, the kingdom of God is near, repent and believe in the gospel." Scripture says God has a "purpose set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time to unite all things in him, thing in heaven and things on earth" (Eph 1:9-10). We wait for the 2nd coming, like they waited for the first coming of Messiah. We're waiting for the "appearing of Jesus Christ, which he will display at the proper time" (1 Tim 6:14-15).

We’re in an indefinite season of Advental longing.

We're waiting with the whole creation, praying for Jesus to come and fix this. Humanity was the most amazing achievement of all creation, and therefore the most tragically lost when fallen and broken.

God is redeeming a people for himself through the first coming of the Messiah, and consummated in the 2nd coming of Messiah. So we are a people between, After the first coming and before the second. We live, we work, we pray, we love—and we wait, with longing and hope.

Our Story

On the micro level, we also live in the space between after and before. In so many different ways, we experience the tension. If the macro level is waiting for God's eternal purpose to save a people and renew the creation, the micro level is the small, incremental, slow, painful pruning of God's sanctifying grace in each of us.

Here we live in relationship to three salvational realities: justification, sanctification, glorification.

Those who have not experienced justification are those outside of Christ. The Bible says all humanity is guilty before God because of sin, and the only hope is justification—for God to consider us not guilty because of Jesus Christ in his perfect life, crucified death for sinners like us, and resurrection from the dead. Christians live in the forever after of justification. It’s a done deal, a holy joy.

On the other side of waiting is glorification, when we die, and in the final hour God will raise all in Christ to everlasting life in a redeemed creation. Sickness, sorrow, and sin will dissolve and joy will be our forever song.

Yet in between we walk the slow, painful, tense path of God's sanctifying grace in us.

Sanctification. It’s a place of muddiness and tension. But it’s a tension we embrace. The strings of a guitar or violin require the proper tension to ring with song. We shouldn’t try to relieve the tension. We should tune to the pitch of God’s grace, and let our lives be a new song of praise.

We live in the place between, after and before. Sometimes, the place between is minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, and sometimes we don't see the purposes of God's loving sanctifying work before we shut our eyes for the last time.

Yet we celebrate and sing.

Yet we mourn and wait.

In between after and before, we hear God’s Word to us: “Don’t be afraid.”