Did Jesus have a sense of humor? 

Matthew 19:24 – “…Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God.”

Click here to download a free digital copy of April’s gift to you, from which this is an excerpt, “Answers to the Top 85 Questions about Jesus” or donate to RealFaith for a physical copy. For those of you who pray and give, we are fully supported by ministry partners like you. 

Joy appears over 200 times in the Bible, laugh/laughter appears over 40 times. Elton Trueblood wrote an entire book entitled The Humor of Christ, which studies 30 Gospel passages. Here are some of my favorite passages:

“…there are numerous passages…which are practically incomprehensible when regarded as sober prose, but which are luminous once we become liberated from the gratuitous assumption that Christ never joked…Once we realize that Christ was not always engaged in pious talk, we have made an enormous step on the road to understanding.”

“Christ laughed, and . . . He expected others to laugh . . . A misguided piety has made us fear that acceptance of His obvious wit and humor would somehow be mildly blasphemous or sacrilegious. Religion, we think, is serious business, and serious business is incompatible with banter.”

Additionally, the Dictionary of Biblical Imagery says, “If there is a single person within the pages of the Bible that we can consider to be a humorist, it is without a doubt Jesus…Jesus was a master of wordplay, irony, and satire, often with an element of humor intermixed”.

Here are some examples of Jesus’ humor to study for yourself:

  • Plank & speck – Matthew 7:3
  • Camel & needle – Matthew 19:24
  • Peter – Rocky & Satan – Matthew 16:13-20
  • Jesus made fun of religious praying (Matthew 6:6), fasting (Matthew 6:16), tithing (Matthew 23:23), leadership (Matthew 15:14), silly rules (Matthew 15:10-14), so that they were offended by Him (Matthew 15:12), and said we would be blessed if we took Him seriously but not ourselves so we would not be offended (Matthew 11:6)

Have you thought of Jesus as having a sense of humor? Read some of the passages mentioned here to learn more about this attribute of Jesus. 

Text DEVOS to 99383 to be woken up with bold, unapologetic Bible teaching straight to your phone Monday-Friday bright and early.

Name(Required)