Calling Jesus an immigrant and a refugee makes some people flinch. It sounds like you’re trying to provoke, poke, stir something up. But it’s not a question. It’s biography. Strip away the stained glass and the Christmas cards and you’re left with a child born into political violence, rushed across a border by terrified parents, and hidden in a foreign land to stay alive. That’s Matthew 2.
Jesus wasn’t dropped onto earth like a divine tourist. He left heaven, entered history the hard way, and showed up without anything. Born in Bethlehem sometime around 4 B.C.E., he didn’t arrive as a ruler. He arrived as a baby sleeping where animals ate. Not long after, King Herod lost his mind. According to Matthew, Herod ordered every boy under two in Bethlehem and nearby areas to be killed.
Joseph didn’t debate it. After being warned in a dream, he ran. Joseph took Mary and Jesus and fled to Egypt. Not for work. Not for opportunity. To survive.
By today’s definitions, that’s a refugee and an immigrant, right? The United Nations defines a refugee as someone forced to flee their country because of persecution, war, or violence. Merriam-Webster says a refugee is “one that flees.” Jesus qualifies as a refugee.
They stayed in Egypt until Herod died. Even then, home wasn’t safe. Herod’s son Archelaus ruled Judea, so Joseph settled the family in Nazareth of Galilee instead. Jesus grew up displaced. First a refugee. Then an internal migrant. His childhood map looks nothing like the tidy nativity scenes.
Matthew isn’t subtle about why this matters. He quotes Hosea: “Out of Egypt I called my son.” That line originally described Israel’s escape from slavery under Moses. Matthew applies it to Jesus. Not because it sounds poetic, but because Jesus reenacts Israel’s story. Threatened ruler. Flight. Exile. Return. New beginning. Jesus isn’t just part of Israel’s history. He carries it in his bones.
He’s not alone. Scripture is crowded with people on the move. Abraham left home without a GPS. Moses fled Egypt as a wanted man. Rahab defected from Jericho and hid with Israel. Ruth crossed borders with nothing but loyalty and hope, surviving by picking up leftovers in Bethlehem’s fields. David ran from Saul and hid in caves and enemy territory. Hebrews sums it up bluntly: people “wandering about in deserts and mountains, and in dens and caves of the earth.”
This doesn’t hand you a neat immigration policy. The Bible doesn’t tell governments how many people to admit or how to run border control. It does something more inconvenient. It trains your conscience.
You’re free to debate vetting systems and national limits. You’re not free to sneer at refugees or pretend they’re invisible. Scripture never does. God keeps siding with the displaced. Leviticus says, “Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt.” Jesus goes further. “I was a stranger and you invited me in.”
Jesus later chose a life with “no place to lay his head.” That wasn’t accidental. He sent his followers out the same way, without supplies, relying on hospitality. Welcome them or don’t. That response revealed where a village stood.
Most of us aren’t refugees. That distance makes it easy to ignore the issue. Until you remember this. If you’re in Christ, his story is your story. His flight. His exile. His rejection. Hebrews puts it plainly. “So Jesus also suffered outside the gate.”
Yes, Jesus was a refugee and an immigrant. And he’s still found among the ones nobody wants.
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