It is forty days since we celebrated the birth of Jesus at Christmas and we celebrate the presentation of the boy Jesus in the Temple. In accordance with the Law of Moses, every firstborn Jewish boy had to be redeemed by an offering to God forty days after birth. The background to this law was the belief that, when God set the Jewish people free from Egypt, he saved their firstborn male children, when some mysterious death ("the angel of death") killed the firstborn male children of the Egyptians. So the people believed that the survival of these Jewish boys was a sign that the firstborn boy belonged to God and was somehow sacred to God. The child had to be presented, offered up, redeemed, in the Temple with gifts. Thus Mary and Joseph bring Jesus to the Temple to present him to God.

According to Luke, Jesus was born in Bethlehem because Joseph and Mary obeyed a Roman degree about registration. So now they obey the Law of Moses. Jesus belonged to a law-abiding family, who obeyed both civil and religious law: he was blameless both in his background and his own person and so died an innocent man though crucified as a criminal.