CRITICAL NOTES
Luke 2:40. Waxed strong.—The words “in spirit” are added from Luke 1:80; omitted in R.V. Filled with wisdom.—Lit. “becoming full of wisdom.” The grace of God.—The favour of God. The first point noted is healthy physical growth, the second a proportionate increase of knowledge, and the third an enjoyment of God’s favour.
Luke 2:41.—The male Israelites were commanded to attend the three yearly feasts (Exodus 23:14-17); but the custom seems to have fallen into abeyance. The attendance of women was not enjoined; but the great Rabbi Hillel had recommended it.
Luke 2:42.—At the age of twelve a Jewish boy became “a son of the law,” and came under the obligation of obeying all its precepts, including attendance at the Passover. It was probable, if not certain, that this was the first time Jesus had been in Jerusalem at this feast.
Luke 2:43. The days.—The seven days of the feast (Exodus 12:15). Joseph and His mother.—“His parents” is the reading of the R.V.
Luke 2:44. The company.—The caravan, made up of those of the same district from which the pilgrims came.
Luke 2:46. After three days.—According to the Jewish idiom, this would be equivalent to “on the third day.” The days are easily accounted for: at the close of the first day Jesus was missed; the second day would be occupied with searching for Him on the way back to Jerusalem; on the third they found Him in the Temple. In the Temple.—I.e. in the part of it to which Mary could go (Luke 2:48), probably in one of the porches of the court of the women. The doctors.—Teachers of the law, Jewish Rabbis. Hearing them, and asking them questions.—The order of the words precludes the idea of Jesus sitting among them as a teacher. He was there rather as a learner, and, according to the custom of Jewish scholars, asking questions.
Luke 2:48. Thy father and I.—The use of this phrase is natural enough; but it is really inconsistent with the facts of the case. Jesus by implication draws attention to this fact in His reply. “He knew and felt that there was something in Him and in His previous history, which ought to be known to Mary and Joseph, that justified His being where He was, and forbade their anxiety about Him” (Popular Commentary, Schaff).
Luke 2:49. About My Father’s business.—Rather, “in My Father’s house” (R.V.). The phrase in the original might be translated in either way; but the latter rendering is so vivid and so happily suited to the circumstance of the case as to make it seem the more probable of the two.
Luke 2:51. Subject unto them.—Probably wrought at His reputed father’s trade (Mark 6:3). This is the last notice of Joseph: tradition speaks of him as advanced in age on his marriage with Mary. Probably he died at some time during the eighteen years which elapsed between this time and the beginning of our Lord’s public ministry.
Luke 2:52. Increased.—Rather, “advanced” (R.V.). Stature.—Or, “age.” The word, if taken in the latter sense, would include the former.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.— Luke 2:40-52
Growth in Strength, Wisdom, and Grace.—The fact that Jesus passed through various stages of development in bodily, mental, and spiritual life is one of great significance and importance, though we may find it impossible to reconcile it with our thoughts of Him as a Divine Being clothed with our nature. The assertion, however, that such was the case is made here, and in other parts of the New Testament we have testimonies of a similar kind. Thus in Hebrews 2:10 we read of His “being made perfect through sufferings,” and in Luke 5:8, “though He were a Son, yet learned He obedience.” Three stages of growth seem to be indicated in this brief record of His infancy and youth.
I. There is that of childish innocence.—No instances of supernatural knowledge or of miraculous deeds are recorded in connection with His early years. The idea is conveyed to our minds that He lived a simple, blameless life, unconscious of the high calling that lay before Him, subject to His parents in the same way that ordinary children are while they are too young to think and act for themselves, and that neither His parents nor fellow-townsmen saw anything in Him to prepare them for the claims He put forward when He grew to manhood and entered public life.
II. There is that in which He first began to realise and manifest a sense of personal responsibility to God.—This is indicated by His action in leaving His parents on the occasion of His first visit to Jerusalem to keep the Passover, and by His words in reply to their questions, in which He places His duty to God as an obligation superior even to that of ordinary filial obedience. He begins to distinguish between duties, and to give those which have paramount claims their due place. This stage is marked by the awakening of new and strange thoughts, and by His making inquiry concerning spiritual things from those who were qualified to teach them.
III. The third stage is that in which He finds the way in which to reconcile higher and lower obligations, so as to render perfect obedience to the law of God as it touches the duties we owe to Him and to our fellow-men.—He returns to Nazareth, and is subject to His parents; but His obedience to them is of a higher cast than that which He had formerly rendered. It is intelligent, voluntary acceptance and discharge of duty, such as can only come with maturity of age. In all these stages of growth Christ has afforded a perfect example for all to follow.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Luke 2:40-52
Luke 2:40. A Picture of an Ideal Life.—
1. Physical health—“grew and waxed strong.”
2. Intellectual and moral development—“filled with wisdom”; acquiring true ideas
(1) concerning God, and
(2) concerning men and the world.
3. Having intimate relations with God:
(1) the object of His favour, and
(2) serving Him and loving Him perfectly and constantly.
Various Stages of Physical Growth.—St. Luke mentions in order all the stages of life through which Jesus passed—an unborn infant (Luke 1:42), a babe (Luke 2:12), a boy (Luke 2:40), a youth (Luke 2:43), a man (Luke 24:19). He did not, like Adam, first appear of full stature; but sanctified every stage of life from infancy to manhood. Old age became Him not. Bengel
“Filled with wisdom.”—Lit. “becoming full of wisdom.” The peculiar phrase here used implies both growth from less to greater and perfection at every point in the process; just as, if we could imagine it, a vessel increasing in dimensions and always remaining equally full, yet containing far more at the end than at the beginning.
Luke 2:41. “Went to Jerusalem every year.”—A hint is given of the pious atmosphere of the home in which Jesus grew up by the mention of the careful attendance of His parents year by year at the Passover feast in Jerusalem. His mother, like Hannah in earlier times, accompanied her husband, though the law did not prescribe her presence on the occasion. The fact of the corrupt and degenerate condition of religion and of the priestly order did not lead them to the disuse of public worship; and their example is a rebuke to those who become separatists on the ground of being unable to find that ideal purity in the Church which they desire.
Luke 2:42. The First Pilgrim-journey of Jesus.—This was apparently the first time Jesus had attended the Passover feast or been in Jerusalem since He was presented as a babe in the Temple. No doubt He came up regularly to the feast every year after this. “Every one who can remember his own first journey from a village home to the capital of his country will understand the joy and excitement with which Jesus set out. He travelled over eighty miles of a country where nearly every mile teemed with historical and inspiring memories. He mingled with the constantly growing caravan of pilgrims who were filled with the religious enthusiasm of the great ecclesiastical event of the year. His destination was a city which was loved by every Jewish heart with a strength of affection that has never been given to any other capital—a city full of objects and memories fitted to touch the deepest springs of interest and emotion in His breast. He went to take part for the first time in an ancient solemnity, suggestive of countless patriotic and sacred memories. It was no wonder that when the day came to return home He was so excited with the new objects of interest that He failed to join His party at the appointed place and time” (Stalker).
“When He was twelve years old.”—The age of twelve is no doubt specified as marking a new epoch in the life of Jesus, and a new attitude towards the law of God; for now, as having arrived at years of discretion, He, like other Jewish children, took upon Him the moral responsibilities of an adult. This corresponds to the action of joining the Church with us, an occasion when, in many Christian communities, the rite of confirmation is administered.
Luke 2:43. The Child Jesus.—The silence of Scripture is as eloquent as its speech. Here, as so often, the veil is the picture. There is a profound lesson in the fact that only one of the four evangelists has anything to tell us of the still unfolding of that perfect life before Christ’s entrance on His public ministry. The contrast between the one paragraph given to His childhood and youth, and the fulness of the narrative of His works, and still more the minute particulars of His death, ought to teach us that the true centre of His worth to the world lies in His “ministering,” and the vital point of it all in His giving His “life a ransom for many.”—Maclaren.
The Education of Jesus.—That Jesus was a solitary child seems unnatural to suppose. Compulsory education was the law of the land. If the law was in force in Galilee, He must have attended the national synagogue school, and formed one of a circle of children around the minister of the synagogue; joining, too, in childish sports with His school-fellows, as well as in childish lessons.—Vallings.
The Boyhood of Jesus.—This is the one only passage that speaks of the boyhood of Jesus, and I think all lovers of the graphic and picturesque touches of Holy Scripture will rejoice to find in the Revised Version the plain and very human expression “the boy Jesus” (Luke 2:43). What a text that will furnish for the school-chapels of England, what a storehouse of exhortation and doctrine for the struggling and weary and heavy-laden (and there are many) among the young soldiers of Jesus Christ—that large part of the human family which has all life before it, with its boundless capacities of use and abuse, of happiness and misery, of good and evil!—Vaughan.
“Jesus tarried behind in Jerusalem.”—His tarrying behind in Jerusalem was an act which was only to be justified by the higher relationship of which He afterwards spoke to His parents (Luke 2:49). His whole course of procedure on this occasion is an illustration of that wisdom which He possessed in ever-increasing measure, under the guidance of which He diverged from the course of conduct towards His parents to which He had hitherto adhered.
Luke 2:44. “Supposing Him to have been in the company.”—It is an indication of the confidence which His parents had in His discretion that they did not immediately seek Him when they discovered that He was absent. He evidently had been allowed a more than usual amount of liberty of action as a child by parents who had never known Him to transgress their commandments or be guilty of a sinful or foolish deed.
Luke 2:45-46. The Lord Jesus a Learner.—The only record of the interval between the Lord’s infancy and ripe manhood. No warrant for the gossiping stories of the early life and miracles of Jesus. An instructive incident, as showing how early the Lord began to display the inquiring and critical spirit which afterwards bore such precious fruits of knowledge and wisdom. The astonishment of the rabbis shows how different a student they found Him from such as were wont to sit at their feet. He asked no stock questions, and was to be put off with no stock answers. Not that He put Himself forward as a teacher under the guise of a learner. He questioned the doctors with a genuine desire to learn. Some of them were, as older men, in one sense wiser than Himself. It was possibly the acuteness with which He chose out and addressed Himself to such that chiefly raised the astonishment of the by standers.—Markby.
“In the midst of the doctors.”—The picture powerfully affects the imagination and stimulates the heart, of the sweet, serious Boy, with His fresh childface, touched with awe and eagerness, sitting at the feet of the grey-bearded rabbis, and bringing their so-called wisdom to the sharp test which so much learned lumber can ill endure—the questioning of a child’s heart. How sharp the contrast between the cumbrous doctrines of the teachers and the way of thinking of such a Child! His purpose was not to put the doctors to confusion; but no doubt these questions of the Boy would be the germ of those later questions of the Man which so often silenced the Pharisee and the Sadducee, and made their elaborate wisdom look like folly by the side of His deep and simple words.—Maclaren.
Luke 2:46. “After three days.”—Just as afterwards His friends and disciples lost Him for three days, and mourned for Him as for one dead, though their knowledge of Him should have prepared them to expect to see Him again. Even now a certain blame in like manner attaches to His parents for not knowing where at once to find Him. When He was left alone in Jerusalem, what other asylum could He seek but His Father’s house?
“Both hearing them.”—He who would teach must himself be a learner—must have the docile spirit. Those who have made it their object to study and expound the word of God are sure, whatever may be their faults and failings, to have something worth imparting. The example of Jesus on this occasion teaches that due honour is to be paid to those who in the name of the Church teach sacred truth.
“Sitting in the midst.”—This seems to imply a place of honour—as though these doctors willingly received Him into their order, though He professed Himself but a learner, because of the wisdom He manifested. It is, as noted (see critical remarks), quite evident that He did not do more than put questions and answer questions; but none the less even the teacher of most authority there must have instinctively felt that this was no common pupil. The idea of a child lecturing or teaching in a formal or authoritative way is a repellent one, and utterly contrary to the Divine order according to which all things are ruled.
Luke 2:47. “Astonished.”—He brought with Him a clear knowledge of God’s word, in which no doubt He had been versed from earliest years, and a mind and spirit undisturbed and unclouded by the errors and fantastical interpretations that prevailed in rabbinical schools. He might say with the psalmist: “I have more understanding than my teachers; for Thy testimonies are my study” (Psalms 119:99). “The Rabbins themselves said that the word of God out of the mouth of childhood is to be received as from the mouth of the Sanhedrim, of Moses, yea, of the blessed God Himself” (Stier). Cf. Psalms 8:2.
Luke 2:48. “Why hast thou thus dealt with us?”—The first reproof which Jesus had ever received from His mother; yet in it there is quite as much of astonishment at His conduct as of implied blame. The way is still left open for Him to justify His action and approve Himself free from fault.
“Sorrowing.”—No doubt often during those three days the ominous words of Simeon, spoken nearly twelve years before, had recurred to the Virgin’s mind (Luke 2:35): “Yea, a sword shall pierce through thine own soul also.”
A Parent’s Complaint.—The Lord’s mother was seriously disappointed with Him. We might indeed say she was vexed. But He defends Himself with warmth, as if injustice has been done Him. The incident is full of interest and importance, displaying Jesus as the type and ideal for opening youth.
I. There are stages, epochs, crises of growth in the spirit to be expected, appreciated, recognised.—The laws of our moral as well as of our physical nature are inexorable and benignant. We must neither lament, resent, ignore, nor resist them; but face, accept, and use them as they manifest themselves in opening years.
II. Occasionally there will be apparent suddenness in their manifestation.—Ripeness will seem to come all at once. The will has been maturing while the parent knew it not. It seems as if a mine had been sprung on him, and a sense of unfairness goes with it. This is natural, but unreasonable. Nature cannot wait for us till we are ready. When the blossom sets the fruit appears. There is no sin in this. It cannot be otherwise.
III. That surprise, disappointment, or pain results is no fault of the child.—Mary probably soon regretted her momentary heat. On the part of sons and daughters there is often abruptness, wilfulness, and audacity towards parents. This is the accident of the case, resulting from human infirmity. That the parent feels pain is inevitable. But love, good sense, and an instinct of justice soon heal the wound.
IV. For with patience and tolerance on the part of parents will come gratitude on the part of youth, and appreciation of our large-heartedness. Youth, with all its disdains, and caprices, and conceits, is still the world’s leverage, and the most lovable thing in it.
V. A real love of knowledge is a noble thing.—We are not to frown at it in the young, or be frightened, but encourage it, and judiciously direct it. The pursuit of knowledge has risks, but these are less dangerous than those which are concerned with the indulgence of the senses. Reason is a Divine gift, and is to be trained and cultivated for God.
VI. In the end our self-restraint and kindness, and faith in God’s holy will shall have their reward.—“Jesus went down to Nazareth, and was subject.” So it will be in the end between us and our children. We shall lose nothing by granting what belongs to them, but we shall gain more. They must be helped, not hindered, at this difficult stage in life’s journey. We, too, have been as they are. Let us not forget our own youth. Let us try to make friends with our children, and encourage them to confide in us.—Thorold.
Luke 2:49. Jesus in the Temple (for boys and girls).—The Boy in the Temple hallows the lessons of youth. The story that Luke tells should be full of interest and help to lads and maidens. Though only twelve, we should think of Him as we should among ourselves think of a youth of sixteen or seventeen. He was no longer a child. Those entering on the untried future of manhood or womanhood are standing just where Jesus stood. Learn then of Him. Follow in His footsteps. Find in His words—
I. His trust.—“Wist ye not?” It is a sad surprise to find that His mother had been in doubt as to where He was or what He was doing. He fully trusted in His mother’s understanding of the thoughts of her child. You who are beginning to live a life of your own must often be misunderstood. Do you show the same trust in the knowledge and sympathy of your parents? You, too, may be feeling, like our Lord, that there is an inner life into which even the nearest and dearest cannot enter. Do not, as He did not, on that account, by suspicion and discontent strain the bond of unity of thought and feeling until it snaps.
II. His task.—Even now He has an overmastering sense of duty. “I must be.” He began life with no thought of self-pleasing, but with the single aim to please His Father in heaven. He knew nothing of a divided heart or of a wavering will. As child, youth, man, there was wholehearted, steadfast surrender to God. Have you the single aim? Or is your desire only to be free—to do as you like? Do you wish to please yourself or God? Own His claim over you.
III. His thought.—“My Father’s house.” “My Father’s business.” He knew and felt God to be near in the place where He was, in the task that He did. He was doing God’s will in learning about the law. In the Temple-worship and teaching God was making Himself known to Him. He lived with and for God. Of Him He thought, Him He served as Father. Have you thus known God as near to you? Have you acknowledged Him in your humblest duty? When you pray to and praise Him you are in His house. In your lowly daily work, if you do it because you know it is God’s will for you, you are about His business.—Garvie.
“My Father’s business.”—The first recorded words of Jesus. His calm repose is in strong contrast to Mary’s not unnatural excitement. In one sentence, like a sudden beam of light shooting into some profound gulf, He shows the depths of His child-heart.
I. The consciousness of sonship.—There is an evident reference to Mary’s words, “Thy father and I.” She had carefully guarded from Him, hitherto, the mystery of His birth. His question is an appeal to her secret. There is no material given for deciding whether this consciousness was now felt or expressed for the first time. The words point to a distinct and unique con sciousness of sonship, apprehended in childish fashion. This is the first note to which the after-life is so true.
II. The consciousness of a Divine vocation.—Here is the first expression of that solemn “must” of which we hear the echoes all through His subsequent life. Sonship implies obedience; the sense of sonship implies filial submission. His childish recognition of this necessity grew in depth and solemnity with His growing years; but here we have it clearly discerned as the guiding star of the Child’s life. The parallel in youthful lines is when the sense of duty and responsibility becomes more active. It is a solemn time when young shoulders first begin to feel the burden of personal responsibility. Happy they who feel not only the pressure of a law, but the hand of a Lawgiver—who say not reluctantly but gladly, “I must”!
III. The subordination of all human ties to this solemn necessity.—The incident itself illustrates this. The call to the Father’s business was more imperative than the call to Mary’s side. It was the first breaking away from the seclusion and peace of Nazareth, the first time that His conduct had shown that anything was to Him more sacred, than a mother’s love or than a mother’s sorrow. The dawning on the soul of that consciousness of supreme duty does not extinguish the light of filial duty to parents, nor darken the brightness of any of the sweet charities of family and kindred. But it decisively puts them second, and opens the possibility, so dreadful to exacting human love, of apparent conflict between two duties, in which the lower may have to give place to the higher. It is a great moment in every life when the young soul discerns a law more imperative, because he has become aware of a love more tender than the commandment of a father or the law of a mother. The recognition of the will of a Father in heaven, to whose “business” all earthly ties must yield, lies at the foundation of every holy and noble life.—Maclaren.
“I must.”—It is interesting to observe that it is the sterner view of duty that seems to influence the child—“I must.” In other parts of Scripture we have indications that this was not His only view—that doing God’s will was a joy to Him. But, strange to say, at the early age of twelve, we find Him rather girding Himself for what is trying and irksome to human nature; bringing His young soul to face it, like one breasting a hill or buffeting the waves. The lesson is obvious. Nothing is more salutary or more promising than this early grappling with labour: no flinching, but the stern, steady “I must.”—Blaikie.
“My Father’s business.”—The “Father’s business” on which He entered at twelve was not preaching, and working miracles, and going about doing good in a public manner, but for the time remaining at home, a dutiful child, a glad, helpful youth, and an industrious, growing man.—Miller.
The First Words of Jesus.—These are the first recorded words of Jesus, and are instinct with the Spirit that guided and animated His whole life—that of devotion to His Father in heaven. The quiet repose, and serenity, and self-possession of this reply are highly characteristic of Him.
Christ’s Testimony to Himself.—It is distinctly noticeable that to the “thy father” of Mary He opposes “My Father,” and that by His artless wonder that they sought for Him anywhere but in the Temple He claimed that special relationship with God which had been announced to Mary and Joseph before His birth (Luke 1:35; Matthew 1:20). “Hitherto pious Jews and lowly shepherds, waiting for the salvation of Israel, have borne testimony to the infant Messiah: He now bears testimony to Himself” (Lange).
Jesus Lost and Found.—The loss and recovery of Jesus may be taken to symbolise experiences in our own spiritual life. “Certain it is that we also, if we would find Christ, must seek Him where He is ever to be found, in His holy Temple” (Burgon).
Luke 2:49-50 The Idea of our Life-work.
I. We have to pass through the period of necessary unconsciousness.—There was a period in our Lord’s life of pure sensation. So it is with ourselves, with even the most intellectual and most spiritual—a time when there is scarcely any thought of God or knowledge of duty.
II. Then comes a time when the light of life dawns upon the soul.—Before Jesus was “twelve years old” He had pondered the great thoughts with which the Scriptures deal. The loftiest truths ask early admission to the soul. The little child has ideas immeasurably above the reach of the cleverest and best-trained animal.
III. The hour arrives when the idea of our life-work is recognised by the soul.—In our Lord’s case this life-work was exceptional, unique. Even now He did not understand all that it meant. As He “increased in wisdom” He became more fully conscious of His mission, and the shadow of the cross deepened. Still, in the Temple He had a very definite idea that His Father had chosen Him to do some great work. In our case the life-work of following Christ is binding upon all—the particular career varies, in which this following is to be carried out. It may not be a distinctively religious calling.
IV. At this momentous crisis we have to decide alone.—His parents “understood not the saying.” We might have thought His mother would have been sympathetic and intelligent. So Jesus was alone in all the critical hours of His career. We may be thankful for parental encouragement and human sympathy in every crisis; but with or without these, aided, unaccompanied, or opposed, we must for ourselves be about “the Father’s business” when His summons falls on our ear.—Clarkson.
Luke 2:50. The Idea of Divine Sonship.—It is, therefore, evident that the special relationship with God of which He spoke had not been a fact communicated to Him by His parents; nor was the idea of Messiah’s being Son of God as well as Son of man taught by the doctors amongst whom He had been sitting. It was a truth which had just dawned upon Him and led Him to act as He did.
A Flower from an Enclosed Garden.—This incident is the only one recorded in the life of Jesus between His presentation in the Temple when forty days old, and His appearance on the bank of the Jordan at the age of thirty when He received baptism from John. “It is a solitary floweret out of the wonderful enclosed garden of the thirty years, plucked precisely there where the swollen bud, at a distinctive crisis, bursts into flower” (Stier).
Luke 2:51. “Went down with them.”—The statement as to His obedience to His parents is almost necessary to correct misapprehensions we might have formed from the above incident. He did not henceforth act habitually in a manner they would be forced to consider wayward, on impulses which they could not understand. He did not allow His feelings to prevail over His duties as a son and as a member of a household; if His affections attracted Him to the Temple, the voice of duty called Him back to Galilee, and to that voice He rendered implicit obedience. The veil that concealed His higher nature, after being for a moment lifted, was allowed to fall again, and His normal human life passed back into its former course.
“Subject unto them.”—There is something wonderful beyond measure in the thought of Him unto whom all things are subject submitting to earthly parents. No such honour was ever done to men or to angels as was now done to Joseph and Mary. The calm of home-life, the healthy occupation of manual labour, and the seclusion of Nazareth were a better preparation for Christ’s public ministry than the Temple with its ritualism and the schools of the Rabbis would have been.
The Lesson of Patience.—What a lesson of patient waiting for the wider sphere is here! Young people, conscious of power, or often only stung by restlessness, are apt to think home a very contracted field, and to despise its quiet monotony, and chafe at its imposition of petty obedience. Jesus Christ lived till He was thirty in a poor little village buried among the hills, worked as a carpenter, did what His mother bade Him, and was content till His “hour” came. Vanity, selfish ambition, proud independence, are always in a hurry to get away from the modest shelter of a mother’s house and make a mark in the world. The prodigal, who wants riotous living, is in a hurry too. But the true Son is the more a Son of Mary because He feels Himself the Son of God, and nourishes His pure spirit in sweet seclusion, which yet is not solitude, till the time comes for larger service in a wider sphere. The wider work is quietly postponed for the narrower tasks.
“Thy soul was like a star, and dwelt apart,
And yet thy heart
The lowliest duties on herself did lay.”
—Maclaren.
Willing Dependence.—You do not read of any ambition in Jesus Christ to be independent; you do not find Him remonstrating or murmuring against the restraints of home, and beginning to remind Himself or others that the time had come for self-management and self-concern. Shall not the son, the daughter, in a Christian home deem that good enough and great enough which a Saviour, who was also the Creator, thought happy enough and honourable enough for Him?—Vaughan.
The Silent Years of Christ’s Life.—In these quiet and simple words years of meek submission are condensed, as a thin film of imperishable stone represents the growth and leafage of a forest that waved green through geological cycles. For eighteen uneventful years the story of His life lies in these few words that we may learn how the spirit of a son makes every place the Father’s house and every meanest task the Father’s business.—Maclaren.
“Kept all these sayings in her heart.”—The Virgin did not merely keep these sayings in her memory; she kept them in her heart. This is the true way in which to store up spiritual knowledge. That which is committed to the tablets of the memory may fade away, and may not, of necessity, be much of an influence upon our feelings, and thoughts, and lives. But the things that are kept in the heart lose none of their freshness with the lapse of time, and are a perpetual stimulus to holy life and action. The things we store up in the heart are things we love; and in them we have a motive to service of God, which yields to none in strength—a ground of assurance that will overcome all our doubts and fears—a means for understanding God’s dealings with us more perfectly, and for recognising things that are hidden from natural vision and from intellectual research.
Luke 2:52. “In favour with God and man.”—Innocence grew into holiness, and did so in such an artless, natural mariner that it won the approval of men as well as the favour of God. The world did not as yet hate Him, for He did not, except by unconscious example, testify against it that its deeds are evil (cf. John 7:7).
The Growth in Wisdom of the Divine Boy.
I. His growth was real.—His human nature must have had the inexperience and ignorance of childhood, and must have passed, in a normal manner, to wider knowledge and clearer self-consciousness. There is nothing to startle in this. Growth does not imply imperfection. It only implies finiteness, and therefore development in time. The capacity of His human spirit increased, and therefore His wisdom increased.
II. His growth was uninterrupted, unstained, symmetrical, universal.—He alone fulfilled His own law of growth—“first the blade,” etc. The best of us grow by fits and starts, and in the wrong direction. In His growth there were no pauses, no sinful elements mingled, no powers unduly developed or deformed. His childhood had no failings, and all in it that could be retained abode with Him in His manhood.
III. His growth in wisdom was by the use of means.—Life taught Him. Scripture taught Him. Communion with His Father taught Him. The heavens and the earth taught Him. His own heart taught Him. But the result of all those, and whatsoever other forces shaped His human growth, was a human character which had so perfectly assimilated them all that no trace of any particular influence appears in it. So, in lower fashion, genius uses all the outward means available, but is their master, not their servant, and is not made by them, but only finds in them stimulus and an occasion for development of its, inborn power. Jesus is not the product of any or all of these outward means. He grew by their help, but was not shaped by them. A perfect man must be more than man. A sinless Jesus cannot be the son of Joseph and Mary.—Maclaren.