5. The Youth of Christ
“When He Was Twelve”
The Youth of Christ
“AND JESUS INCREASED IN WISDOM
AND STATURE, AND IN FAVOUR
WITH GOD AND MAN” (Luke 2:52).
IT IS FULL of significance that the silence shrouding the first thirty years of our Lord’s earthly life is broken only once, and then to record an incident that occurred when He was twelve years of age (Luke 2:42–51). This incident recounted by Luke is the one authentic portion of an otherwise unwritten story. Why was this single episode selected by the inspiring Spirit from such a wealth of material? Its solitariness is a measure of its importance, for here alone are we afforded any insight into the inner probings of His mind as He reached adolescence.
As has been stated, at the age of twelve a Jewish boy crossed the boundary between childhood and youth. Becoming then a “son of the Law,” He assumed for Himself the religious responsibilities that had hitherto rested on His parents. Now He must observe the ceremonial law and attend the prescribed annual festivals at Jerusalem. It was when He attained this critical age that Jesus, with His parents and friends, made His first journey to observe the Passover feast in Jerusalem.
The Jerusalem Journey
A typical pilgrimage to Jerusalem is graphically reconstructed by W. Robertson Nicoll.
Their road was haunted by wild beasts and banditti. For defence they kept together, and as they journeyed they sang their songs, probably the fifteen psalms after the 119th. They would sing among the Arab tribes, “Woe is me, that I sojourn in Mesech, that I dwell in the tents of Kedar” [Psalm 120:5]. When they escaped the troops of their foes they would sing, “Our soul is escaped as a bird out of the snare of the fowler” [Psalm 124:7]. When they were journeying in cheerful accord, they sang, “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity” [Psalm 133:1].
Jesus would take part in their songs and understand their meaning … when Jerusalem came in sight, and the pilgrims shouted, “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, from whence cometh my help” [Psalm 121:1], when the mass of the great temple, white on the uplifted rock fell on His eyes, what must His feelings have been?
To the village lad the shining spires, the vast throngs of people in His Father’s house with officiating priests, reeking altars and ascending incense, must have been an exciting yet sobering experience. Participating in the sacred services of the Passover in these hallowed precincts must have had a solemnizing effect on Him. Without doubt this visit was an important watershed in His life, and marked an epoch in His deepening consciousness that between Him and His God there existed a relationship unique among men. How He would revel in instruction given by the learned doctors of the law, who came out from the Sanhedrin and taught the people colloquially in the Temple courts.
The distressing discovery. The festival over, the crowds began the journey home, among them Joseph and Mary, and presumably Jesus. Since it was customary for the youths of the party to travel and sleep together, Joseph and Mary were not concerned at her son’s absence from her side. But unconcern gave place to acute anxiety when at night they failed to find Him among His companions. They had traveled homeward, “supposing him to have been in the company” (Luke 2:44).
Never before had He caused them a moment’s anxiety, and such was their confidence in Him that His non-appearance in their party had aroused no concern. In passing it is noteworthy that He must have enjoyed considerable freedom in His boyhood. Many parents would not have allowed their children out of sight!
The distress of Joseph and Mary as the time passed without locating Him is not difficult to imagine. Had some accident befallen Him? Had he fallen ill? Was someone seeking His life (Matthew 2:13, 20)? Had Mary by her negligence failed in her sacred trust? It is in the light of this wholly understandable anxiety that we must interpret the first word of reproof she had ever addressed to Him. It should be observed, however, that the word she used in addressing Him was a tender, mother-word, perhaps the equivalent of the Scottish “bairn.” “My bairn, why hast thou thus dealt with us?”
The cryptic answer. Probably to His mother’s surprise, He did not tender the expected explanation or apology. Instead, He gently but none the less decisively “relegated her back within the limits beyond which she tended to advance.”
“How is it that ye sought me?” was His counterquestion. “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” (Luke 2:49). By this He implied that there was less reason for them to be astonished at His remaining behind, than for Him to be surprised at their search for Him. The very way in which He set “my Father” against Mary’s “thy father,” indicated the clear conviction that God was uniquely His Father, and He thus tacitly but tactfully disowned any human relationship with Joseph. It has been suggested that on this, His first visit to the Temple, Mary may have told Him the secret of His infancy. This would not be inconsistent with His statement on this occasion.
The seven days of the paschal feast had been too short for His eager soul and inquiring mind. Already the zeal of His Father’s house was consuming Him (John 2:17). His true home was not the cottage in Nazareth, but here amid the worship and ritual of the Temple.
Acting in response to the call that had been growing louder in His inmost spirit, He elected to remain behind to learn more knowledge from the leading religious teachers of the day. “I MUST be in my Father’s house,” or “about my Father’s business.” It was under filial compulsion that He had remained in the Temple, and He must obey the call of the Spirit within, even at the risk of being misunderstood by those whom He loved dearly and to whom He had hitherto rendered unquestioning obedience.
As Jesus sat among the doctors of the law hearing their discourse, there was opportunity for Him to put His questions, for the Jewish mode of teaching was mainly catechetical, and great latitude of questioning was permitted. May it have been during these interchanges that Jesus gained His first knowledge of the traditions of the elders, which He later excoriated?
So unusual was His wisdom, so remarkable His artless statements, so penetrating His questions, that all who heard Him were astonished. “This was not precocity, a mind that was advanced beyond the boy’s age, but something of a far higher quality, a mind filled with heavenly wisdom, yet all unassuming, and only eager to learn.” At last He could unburden His heart, and find the answer to the seething problems that had crowded into His mind in Nazareth. If the rabbis thought that they had discovered one of the great rabbis of the future, they were not mistaken.
Joseph and Mary found Him where they should have first sought Him—in His Father’s house, engaged in His Father’s business. Where would our friends and acquaintances first look for us?
The Sequel
Jesus had now reached the greatest crisis of His life. What would be His attitude when He returned to His Nazareth home? In the simple words, “He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them” (Luke 2:49), Luke summed up the work of Jesus until His baptism. He developed from boyhood to manhood demonstrating filial obedience both to His human parents and His divine Father.
Thus the curtain falls on the boyhood, youth, and early manhood of the Son of Man. It seemed an anticlimax, but was in reality a great step forward. Then began eighteen years of hidden discipline and training, during which He was “in all points tempted … yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15). At home He learned the habit of self-surrender and implicit obedience (Hebrews 5:8) that characterized His attitude to His Father, and culminated in death on a cross. The Son of Man thus provided a pattern for Christian young people in their relations with their parents.
It is idle to speculate about the time when Jesus first became conscious of the fact that He was God’s Son in a unique sense, and had a Messianic function to fulfill. James Stalker says, “I cannot trust myself even to think of a time when He did not know what His work in this world was to be.” Some assert that He possessed this consciousness when a babe on His mother’s breast, others that it dawned on Him only when He visited the Temple.
But where Scripture is silent, it is the part of wisdom to refrain from speculation. There are certain things that we do know. We know that He was as divine when a dependent babe as when He ascended to the heavenly throne. We know that at the age of twelve He was conscious of being in a unique sense the Son of God. Whether His study of the Scriptures and the witness of the un-grieved Spirit within had disclosed to Him the mystery of His earthly manifestation, we have no means of knowing and no necessity to know. Suffice to say that thus early He knew that God was His Father and the He was His Servant and Son.
The yokes He made were true,
Because the Man who dreamed
Was too
An artisan;
The burdens that the oxen drew
Were light.
At night
He lay down upon His bed and knew
No beast of His stood chafing in a stall,
Made restless by a needless gall.
The tenets of a man
May be full and fine,
But if he fails with plumb and line,
Scorns care,
Smooth planing
And precision with the square,
Some neck will bear
The scar of blundering.GLADYS LATCHAW