The Birth and Youth of Jesus
The Birth and Youth of Jesus
Each evangelist begins his story at a different place. Mark plunges almost immediately into Jesus’ public ministry, heralded as it was by John the Baptist. John goes to the other extreme and reaches back into a past eternity to the pre-incarnate existence of Jesus Christ. As “the Word” he was with God in the very beginning. Indeed, he was himself God, and was active in the creation of the universe. Long before he actually “came” into the world by becoming flesh, he was continually “coming into the world” as the true light (though unrecognized) to enlighten every man with the light of reason and of conscience (John 1:1–14).
It is Matthew and Luke who tell us the actual story of Jesus’ birth. Luke tells it through the eyes of the Virgin Mary (perhaps even from her own lips), while Matthew tells it from Joseph’s point of view.
Luke records the angel’s announcement to Mary that both her conception and the boy to be born will be supernatural:
Luke goes on to describe how Mary shared her secret with her cousin Elizabeth who was shortly to give birth to John the Baptist; how Joseph (whose painful dilemma over Mary’s pregnancy Matthew describes) traveled south with her from Nazareth to Bethlehem, their ancestral home, in order to comply with the requirements of the imperial census; and how it was in the stable of a Bethlehem inn that Jesus was born and laid, by his mother, in a manger.
Although the world’s Savior was born in such lowliness, and received no public acclaim, there were those who came to pay homage to him. Luke tells of certain shepherds who learned the good news from angels, and Matthew of mysterious Magi—astrologer-priests from Persia—who were guided to him by a star. There seems to have been a deliberate providence in bringing these two contrasting groups. For the shepherds were Jewish, untutored and poor, while the Magi were Gentile, cultured and rich. Yet the barriers of race, education and social rank were transcended by their common worship of the infant Christ. They foreshadow the colorful diversity of Christ’s followers.
Not everybody worshiped him, however. Herod the Great, who in the course of his reign murdered every possible rival, was alarmed to hear the Magi say they had come to honor the King of the Jews. For he was the king of the Jews. So who was this? Warned by God of Herod’s resolve to destroy the child, Joseph and Mary fled with him to the safety of Egypt, and the one who was born to rule became a refugee.
Jesus was brought up in Nazareth in Galilee. His home must have been far from affluent, for when presenting their firstborn son to the Lord, Joseph and Mary brought a pair of pigeons as their offering, prescribed in the law for those who could not afford a lamb. But it would have been a happy home, shared (as the years passed) by other children of the family. Joseph worked as a carpenter and taught his trade to Jesus, while Mary would have nurtured him in godliness and righteousness by teaching him to read the Scriptures and to pray. In the beautiful countryside around he would have become familiar with the lilies of the field and the birds of the air, to which he later referred, and with the living God who clothes and feeds them.
The only incident from Jesus’ boyhood which is recorded in the Gospels took place when he reached the age of twelve and was taken up to Jerusalem for the Passover, to prepare at thirteen to become a “son of the commandment.” After the festival he was accidentally left behind. His parents found him “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.” These Jewish leaders were “amazed at his understanding and his answers,” and his parents were perplexed when he asked them: “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” (Luke 2:49). His sense of communion with God as Father and of compulsion to do his will were to remain with him throughout his later ministry.
Apart from this story, recorded in Luke 2:41–51, the verses which immediately precede and follow it tell us all we need to know about Jesus’ youth. Both are bridge verses, verse 40 spanning the twelve years from his birth and verse 52 the remaining eighteen or so years before his public ministry began. Both tell us that during these years Jesus was developing naturally, yet perfectly, in body, mind and spirit. Here is verse 52:
And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.
Although the evangelists are not concerned to give us a strictly chronological account of the Lord’s public ministry, it appears from John’s Gospel to have lasted approximately three years.3 We can call the first the year of obscurity, the second the year of popularity and the third the year of adversity.