Joshua and Jesus
One
The Same Name
Did you know that Jesus and Joshua are actually the same name? The original name is something like “Yeshua” but anyway it’s the name both of Our Lord and of Moses’ right-hand man. We just use “Jesus” and “Joshua” to make it clear who we’re talking about, but again, they actually had the same name.
Now, nothing that happens in Salvation History happens by accident. As St. Thomas Aquinas says, “God writes with things the way human beings write with words.” So everything that we read about in the historical books of the Bible not only happened at the historical level but also signified something on the spiritual level.
So why did God choose to give His Son, Our Savior, the name of this one Old Testament figure? Or, since God is outside of time, we could also ask it like this: Why did God ordain that the Old Testament Joshua would have the same name as His Son? What was it about Joshua that God wanted to use to prepare us for understanding the coming of Jesus?
Two
The One Who Brings Us into the Promised Land
One obvious way in which Joshua foreshadows Jesus is that Joshua is the one who finally brings the chosen people into the Promised Land. It’s Moses who brings the Chosen People out of Egypt. It’s Moses who leads the Chosen People through the Desert. But it’s not Moses who leads them into the Promised Land. It’s Joshua.
So too, Jesus is the one who leads us into the Promised Land. He’s the one who can bring us into Heaven, who can finally and definitively purify and perfect us until we’re ready to come into the eternal and infinitely joyful presence of God.
The name Jesus or Joshua means “Savior”. And they both bring those who follow them to the Land of Salvation. But if Joshua foreshadows Jesus, as his name implies, what does Moses foreshadow? What does his life and his leadership symbolize? And what can that tell us about how to prepare for Christ’s coming?
Three
Moses – the Law / Our Own Effort
Moses is the great law-giver. He’s the one who gave the chosen people the Ten Commandments, and He’s also the one who gave them all the ritual and civil and hygienic rules that were to govern the chosen people down to the time of Jesus’ coming.
Those laws were good, they came from God. But they weren’t enough. They couldn’t get the people where they needed to be. The detailed observances of the Mosaic Code, those couldn’t make a person holy, or virtuous. And when Christ came, those observances were changed into the Sacramental System of the Catholic Church, a system that did have the power to make us holy.
Circumcision, ritual cleanliness, dietary laws, these rules are dead. Just as Moses died when Joshua took over the Chosen People, so did the mosaic rituals lose their authority when Jesus came to lead us Himself. But Moses also gave us the Ten Commandments. And the Ten Commandments should always be followed. They have as much authority for Christians as for the Old Testament Israelites.
The problem is, for us as for the Israelites in the Old Testament, we can’t seem to follow them on our own.
Four
Our Own Efforts Can Only Take Us So Far
As St. Paul pointed out, we can’t seem to manage to keep the Ten Commandments by our own strength. Our efforts at keeping the commandments only take us so far and then we stop short. There’s a sense in which Moses represents our own human effort to be good. Our own human effort to keep the commandments.
Moses led the Israelites out of Egypt. And we, if we work hard, can escape the worst aspects of the pagan culture that surrounds us. Moses led the Chosen People through the Desert. And we, if we work hard, can persevere in the desert of our temptations, where we fall, and suffer, and then try to get up again and keep going. But Moses couldn’t lead the Chosen People into the Promised Land. Into the Land of Milk and Honey.
No matter how hard we try, there are always certain sins that cling to us, weigh us down, and make our lives sad. There are always certain vices that make us unworthy and unfit for heaven. There are certain vices that, no matter how hard we try, we just can’t seem to get over. For those vices, Moses, the Ten Commandments, the law plus our own efforts, are just not going to be enough. For those areas of weakness and failure, we need Joshua. For these sins and vices, we simply need Jesus.
Five
The Savior is Coming – Where can we, of ourselves, go no further?
Joshua took over when Moses just couldn’t go any further. And Christ has come, and is coming at the end of December, to take over where we just can’t seem to get any further. So prepare for Christ’s coming by meditating on those sins, those infirmities, that your best efforts haven’t been able to overcome. The impatience, the lust, the gossip, the anxiety, the resentment, the fear and frustration at work, with your spouse, with your kids.
Jesus, the Savior, is coming to bring us into the promised land. To take us those final steps where our own efforts just can’t get us. Welcome the one who is coming to us in our helplessness and inadequacy. Because He can do what we cannot. He can save us from our sins, and bring us to purity and perfect happiness.