What did Joseph mean when he said, "You meant evil against me, but God meant it for good" (Genesis 50:20)?

The brothers send a message to Joseph telling him that their father had told them to request Joseph that he would forgive the trespass and sin of his brothers. Joseph was so deeply moved by this that he wept (v. 17). Why? Because he was saddened to think that his brothers were doubting his faithfulness. How much more is the Lord Jesus saddened by our doubts of the fullness of His forgiveness! But the brothers even humble themselves to the point of coming to bow down to Joseph and tell Him they are his slaves (v. 18).

Joseph's reply is beautiful: “Do not be afraid, for am I in the place of God?” (v. 19). Joseph would not think of judging his own case, for only God is Judge. Also, in spite of his exaltation in Egypt, he faithfully maintained his relationship as brother to all Jacob's sons. He did not excuse their evil thoughts against him (v. 20), but insisted that God had used their evil to produce great good in saving many people from death. So also, the Jewish leaders in Israel meant only to do harm to the Lord Jesus in crucifying Him, but they actually fulfilled God's great counsels of love toward mankind in the accomplishing of a perfect redemption. Many have been saved by this from eternal destruction, though others, sadly, have maintained cold hatred against the Lord, and can only expect judgment.

For those who have repented there is not only the fullest forgiveness, but a provision of great blessing, together with words of kindness and comfort, as is seen in Joseph's assurance of blessing for his brothers (v. 21). He desired simply that they should trust him and believe his word. This is what the Lord Jesus desires of us.

Having wept, Joseph replied and his words show afresh how consistently God was before him. He was not in the place of God, and therefore not free to act without reference to Him. God had acted in the whole matter, and meant it to good. That being God's intention, he would not for a moment swerve from it. His acts toward them would also be consistently for their good. His exaltation in Egypt was such that they were indeed his servants, as they confessed, but he would use his power for their nourishment and protection. He comforted them by kindly speech.

Verse 20 is a fine summing up of the whole story. They had committed a grievous wrong but God had overruled it for salvation. This at once directs our thoughts to the Lord Jesus Christ. The evil thought, which was wrought out against Joseph by his brethren, was as nothing compared with that perpetrated by the Jews when they rejected and crucified their Messiah. God permitted it because He meant it to good in the accomplishment of an eternal redemption; for the laying of the foundation, whereon rests securely the superstructure of blessing, in a new creation according to His eternal purpose. Thus has God made the wrath of man to praise Him.

The biting famine comes. Joseph’s brethren are driven to Egypt for supplies of food. Joseph makes himself known to them in the memorable words, “Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither: for God did send me before you to preserve life” (Gen. 45:5).

Their wrath had sold Joseph into Egypt. God used their sin, to utilize Joseph as the super-organizer of the day to the saving of countless lives. There could be no condoning of the terrible sin of Joseph’s brethren against their brother, but it must have been very consoling to their accusing hearts to find that God used the wrath of man to praise Him.

"And his brethren also went and fell down before his face," when they found what was in his heart — tenderness, nothing but love. They are at his feet most truly, and most real in their confession. "And they said, Behold, we be thy servants. And Joseph said to them, Fear not: for am I in the place of God. But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it to good, to bring to pass as it is this day, to save much people alive" (vers. 19, 20). He does not minimise their guilt, but pardons it in grace.

A further thing characterized Joseph, as we see in verses 5-8. His eye rested upon God and not upon circumstances, however trying they had been. The evil actions of the brethren had faded into insignificance in his mind. He recognized that God had been behind all that they had done, and had worked it in as part of His plan for salvation and deliverance. We are reminded of that prayer of the primitive church, when they acknowledged that Herod, Pilate, Gentiles and Jews, gathered together against the Lord Jesus, had only accomplished "whatsoever Thy hand and Thy counsel determined before to be done" (Acts 4:28). Joseph had been instrumental in bringing to pass "a great deliverance," yet it was very small when compared with the deliverance wrought by the death and resurrection of Christ.

And further, God had sent Joseph down into Egypt in order to preserve a posterity in the earth for Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. He knew what Joseph can hardly have known; that many centuries after out of that posterity, as concerning the flesh, would come the Christ, who is over all, God blessed for ever. Turn where we may in Scripture, Christ is ever before the mind of God, and at this epoch Joseph was the instrument used of God to preserve that line of descent that finally would lead to Him.

Here we must be brief, as we have to do, not with Jacob, but with his sons; so that a mere sketch is all that we would now attempt. As man's and his brethren's part was evil toward the righteous Joseph, God wrought in His admirable providence, and caused what they did to injure only the more to accomplish His purpose of good, as well as to set him in honour who deserved it, but had to pass from one humiliation to a worse.

First we see Joseph concerned with the unhappy looks of Pharaoh's chief cupbearer and chief baker, bound in the same prison with himself. They had each his dream, and were grieved that there was none to interpret. But Joseph, replying that this belongs to God, asks to hear, and furnishes the desired light; which was exactly verified in the death of the baker and the restoration of the cupbearer (Gen. 40). Next, Pharaoh, at the end of two full years of prison trial to Joseph, has his dreams which not all the Scribes nor the sages of Egypt could explain. This woke up the forgetful heart of the restored chamberlain who tells the king of the Hebrew youth; and he, hastily sent for from the dungeon, disclaims any source but God for the king's need. But on hearing he is equally clear that God had sent the dreams to Pharaoh, and enabled him to let Pharaoh see what He Himself was about to do. The word came so simply yet convincingly home to the king and his servants, that none was so fit to direct aright the divinely given light as he who had been the means of making it known; and at one bound Pharaoh set the captive over all the land of Egypt, next to himself on the throne. And here again the prophetic dreams were punctually fulfilled to the immense relief of suffering man (Gen. 41). Among the sufferers (Gen. 42, Gen. 43) were Jacob and his sons, all but Benjamin being sent by their father to buy the food which Joseph alone could supply. "And Joseph knew his brethren, but they knew not him" (8). And a marvellous forecast follows of the way a greater than Joseph, first suffering from His brethren and the Gentiles, interpreter too of God's wisdom in His humiliation, and exalted to the right hand of the Highest, not only administers the richest blessing to the Gentiles, unknown to His Jewish brethren in their dark unbelief, but adopts deep and efficacious means to bring these to repentance and make Himself known as their Brother and gracious Friend in the day of His glory.

"Be not grieved nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither," he says: "for God did send me before you to preserve life." You have been guilty, Joseph says, but God had a purpose in it.

Moreover, as to the past, Joseph cannot allow that any regrets should rise up to mar their enjoyment of his love. "Now therefore", says Joseph, "be not grieved nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither" (verse 5). The sin had been confessed, and Joseph will not only forgive, but he will remove all lingering regrets and self-reproaches. He will assure them that behind their sin, yea, by means of their sin, God was working out His purposes of blessing. It is true, "You sold me hither," Joseph has to say, but he adds, "God sent me before you to save your lives by a great deliverance." Thus he delivers his brethren from occupation with themselves by engaging their thoughts and affections with himself, his glories, and the blessings that flow to them through his exaltation.

We can truly and rightly judge how low the fathers of Israel's tribes had fallen; and how calculated Joseph's words were to give them a new confidence in God's interest in them, far more intimate than His beneficence to Egypt's king and people and the lands which profited by His wondrous ways. "And God sent me before you to establish you a remnant on the earth, and preserve your lives by a great deliverance." Here was the true key, not merely the discovery to Pharaoh and the rescue of Joseph, and the provision generally in the singularly long plenty and the equally long dearth, but the accomplishment of His plans, long before divulged to Abram (in Gen. 15), whereby His ancient people should grow up from the family of Jacob in a stranger land of bondage and affliction, the oppressing nation to be judged, and themselves to emerge with great substance.

As it was, in the case of Joseph and his brethren; they told out the enmity of their hearts in flinging him into the pit, and selling him to the Ishmaelites. Here was the dark side. But then, mark these words of Joseph: "Now therefore be not grieved, nor angry with yourselves, that ye sold me hither; for God did send me before you to preserve life."

Here was the bright side. But to whom were these wondrous words of grace addressed? To broken hearts and penitent spirits, and convicted consciences. To men who had learnt to say, "We are verily guilty." It is only such that can at all enter into the line of truth which is now before us. Those who have taken their true place, who have accepted the judgement of God against themselves, who truly own that the cross is the measure of their guilt — they can appreciate the cross as the expression of God's heart of love toward them; they can enter into the glorious truth that the selfsame cross which demonstrates man's hatred of God sets forth also God's love to man. The two things ever go together. It is when we see and own our guilt, as proved in the cross, that we learn the purifying and peace-speaking power of that precious blood which cleanses us from all sin.