6. The Earthly Occupation of Christ
“Is Not This the Carpenter?”
The Earthly occupation of christ
WHAT WAS HE DOING ALL THAT TIME,
FROM TWELVE YEARS OLD TO MANLY PRIME?
WAS HE THEN IDLE, OR THE LESS
ABOUT HIS FATHER’S BUSINESS?
THE LIFE OF OUR LORD has been so idealized by its sacred associations that we are apt to miss some of its most comforting and practical lessons from fear of profaning its sacredness. His earthly occupation is one of these.
Of eighteen years of Christ’s life we know absolutely nothing except what is contained in the words “the carpenter” (Mark 6:3). This is all that divine wisdom has seen fit to preserve for us. “The carpenter!” What a title for the Lord of glory!
What is the significance of the fact that, out of all possible occupations, God chose for His Son in His incarnation the lot of a working man? Why did the only one who could have chosen His earthly vocation without any restriction choose to become a carpenter? It is not difficult to conceive the wonder and consternation of the angelic host to see the great Jehovah, Creator of the rolling spheres, humble Himself to toil with saw and hammer at a carpenter’s bench for eighteen years; to see Him who made the heavens and “meted them out with a span” stoop to shape with His own hands a yoke for oxen.
Whatever else this act of condescension signified, it meant that Jesus purposed to identify Himself fully with the great bulk of mankind, the common people. It stamped men’s common toil with everlasting honor. It acquainted the Master with the feelings of the multitude and gave Him insight into man’s inmost thoughts. His willingness to occupy so lowly a sphere for so long a time affords us both example and incentive to be willing to do the common task joyously.
In common with all other Jewish boys, Jesus was required to learn a trade. What more natural than that He should be apprenticed to His foster father and become the village carpenter? In this connection it will be remembered that in keeping with the custom of the times, Paul mastered the intricacies of the tentmaker’s art as well as his university studies.
Think how in the sacred story
Jesus took a humble grade,
And the Lord of life and glory
Worked with Joseph at his trade.
It is a challenging thought, and one that should be closely observed by those who are preparing for a life of service for God, that our divine Lord spent six times as long working at the carpenter’s bench as He did in His world-shaking ministry. He did not shrink the hidden years of preparation. Preparatory years are important years. Jesus must be about His Father’s business and doing His Father’s will. If that will involved eighteen hidden, laborious, tedious years, He would not succumb to fleshly impatience, but would obey with delight (Psalm 40:8). It should be remembered that in those times the trade of a carpenter was not considered dishonorable. It was a vocation from which many rose to become rabbis.
The meekness exhibited by Jesus in working as a carpenter is all the more remarkable in the light of His subsequent amazing miracles. He could have dazzled the world with the display of His supernatural power. Instead, He worked as hard as any other man in order that in all things He might be “made like unto his brethren” (Hebrews 2:17).
From our Lord’s choice and pursuit of this occupation, three facts emerge:
He Exemplified the Nobility of Labor
He saw no incongruity in the Lord of glory’s standing in the sawpit laboriously cutting the thick logs into planks, or using plane and hammer. In days when white-collar workers tend to despise those who work with their hands, contemplation of the life of Jesus during those silent years would wither such contemptuous pride. He was a carpenter, a working man who earned His living, as others of His contemporaries, by manual skill. His was no forty-hour week but a twelve-hour day, doubtless with overtime as well.
If it was not beneath the Son of God to work as an artisan, then surely it is beneath none of His children. Because He was no stranger to “the dust and sweat of toil,” as the hymn asserts, “sons of labour are dear to Jesus,” and He has imparted to a life of toil both dignity and nobility. If they only knew it, Jesus is “the working man’s friend,” who from His own experience is able to sympathize with their lot.
He Exhibited Perfect Workmanship
An old tradition has it that Joseph was not a skilled tradesman. Be that as it may, it is certain that such a charge could not be laid at the door of his foster son. In work no less than in ethics His standard would be nothing less than perfection. Not without reason was it said of Him, “He doeth all things well.”
Justin Martyr, who lived shortly after the death of John the apostle, wrote of Jesus: “When He was among men He made ploughs and yokes and other farm implements.” In His subsequent ministry Jesus aptly employed the figure of yoke and plough to illustrate His lesson. It is not difficult to imagine that farmers eagerly sought His yokes, for they were “easy,” to use His term, and did not gall the necks of the oxen. One writer suggests that there was one shop in Nazareth where benches were made to stand on four legs, and doors to open and shut properly, for no second-rate work ever left His bench—near enough was not good enough for our great exemplar (Matthew 11:28–29).
He Extracted Physical Strength for Future Service
Never in human history were physical frame and nervous system called upon to endure such unremitting strain as that imposed on our Lord during the three years of public ministry that climaxed in the cross. Only a physically perfect constitution could have supported such unceasing activity and expenditure of nervous force. When it was recorded on one occasion the He perceived “that virtue had gone out of Him” (Mark 5:30), we are given an indication of the cost at which all of His ministry was carried out. The physical effort alone was prodigious. His recorded journeys during the three years—and there is no reason to believe that all His journeys are included—cover at least two thousand five hundred miles traveled on foot. He was usually thronged with people, and always preaching, teaching, and healing.
What better preparation could there be for such a demanding program than twelve hours a day spent in the sawpit or at the bench, planing and hammering, in the seclusion of Nazareth? These silent years He recognized as part of His Father’s preparation, and they were invaluable in building up the physical and nervous reserves that were to be so heavily overdrawn in coming days that He would stagger under the weight of His own cross.
These considerations bring our Lord very near to us. Although we may not be able to emulate Him in His gracious ministry, it is open to us to follow Him in a life of faithful though perhaps hidden work. Like our Master, we can “do all to the glory of God.” We can appreciate the nobility of honest labor. We can welcome the years of hidden work that may be necessary to prepare us for public ministry.
In the shop of Nazareth
Pungent cedar haunts the breath.
‘Tis a low Eastern room,
Windowless, touched with gloom.
Workmen’s bench and simple tools
Line the walls. Chests and stools,
Yoke of ox, and shaft of plough,
Finished by the carpenter,
Lie about the pavement now.
In the room the Craftsman stands,
Stands and reaches out His hands.
Let the shadows veil His face
If you must, and dimly trace
His workman’s tunic, girt with bands
At His waist. But His Hands—
Let the light play on them;
Marks of toil lay on them.
Paint with passion and with care
Every old scar showing there
Where a tool slipped and hurt;
Show each callous; be alert
For each deep line of toil.
Show the soil
Of the pitch; and the strength
Grip of helve gives at length.
When night comes, and I turn
From my shop where I earn
Daily bread, let me see
Those hard hands; know that He
Shared my lot, every bit;
;as a man, every whit.
Could I fear such a hand
Stretched out toward me? Misunderstand
Or mistrust? Doubt that He
Meets me full in sympathy?
Carpenter! hard like Thine
Is this hand—this of mine;
I reach out, gripping Thee
Son of Man, close to me,
Close and fast, fearlessly.ARTHUR P. VAUGHAN
… Once again I saw Him, in the latter days
Fraught with a deeper meaning, for He came
To my Baptizing, and the infinite air
Blushed on His coming, and the earth was still;
Gentle He spake; I answered; God from heaven,
Called, and I hardly heard Him, such a love
Streamed in that orison from man to man.
Then shining from His shoulders either way
Fell the flood Jordan, and His kingly eyes
Looked in the east, and star-like met the sun.
Once in no manner of similitude,
And twice in thunderings and thrice in flame,
The highest ere now hath shown Him secretly;
But when from heaven the visible Spirit in air
Came verily, lighted on Him, was alone.
Then knew I, then I said it, then I saw
God in the voice and glory of a man.F. W. H. MYERS