{"id":933,"date":"2026-05-05T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.spendayearwithjesus.com\/djp\/?p=933"},"modified":"2025-04-23T05:53:34","modified_gmt":"2025-04-23T10:53:34","slug":"working-community","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/?p=933","title":{"rendered":"Working-Community"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The<\/a>

The Gospel of John, 2005<\/p><\/div>\n

Jesus grew up a carpenter, Joseph’s son (Lk 4:22; Mk 6:3). 2nd century churchman Justin Martyr wrote that Jesus “was considered to be the son of Joseph” and that he “was\u00a0in the habit of working as a carpenter\u00a0when among men, making plows and yokes…”* According to Luke’s Gospel, when he was about 30 years old, he began his teaching and healing tours (Lk 3:23). The question follows, did Jesus give up his carpenter’s apron?<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>

The Gospel of John, 2005<\/p><\/div>\n

I was pleased to see the scene from John 7:1-9 in The Gospel of John<\/em> (2005). It shows Jesus working at carpentry after his ministry began. The images to the right offer a visualization of the setting of Jesus’ life. For example, Jesus probably worked at carpentry outdoors rather than in an enclosed shop.<\/p>\n

Though teaching was Jesus’ primary vocation, it was natural for him to continue his trade. In fact, “Rabbis were expected to gain a skilled trade apart from their study (thus Paul was a leather-worker), so that the stratification that divided teacher from manual laborer in Stoic and other circles of the Hellenistic world was not a significant factor in much of Palestine.”** We are not surprised to read about Paul working as a tent-maker at various times, so why not apply that same logic to Jesus’ experience?<\/p>\n

* Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, <\/em>chapter 88, trans. by Philip Schaff. The rest of the quote states, “making plows and yokes; by which He taught the symbols of righteousness and an active life; but then the Holy Ghost…descended on Him…” Justin\u00a0sees a contrast in Jesus’ activity (“but then”) when his teaching ministry began, so our question to decide is how much contrast?<\/p>\n

** D.A. Carson and Douglas J. Moo, Introduction to the New Testament<\/em> (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2005), 240.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jesus grew up a carpenter, Joseph’s son (Lk 4:22; Mk 6:3). 2nd century churchman Justin Martyr wrote that Jesus “was considered to be the son of Joseph” and that he “was\u00a0in the habit of working as a carpenter\u00a0when among men, making plows and yokes…”* According to Luke’s Gospel, when he was about 30 years old, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-telling-the-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/933\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wjes.us\/b\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}