The Finding of Christ in the Temple.
I. One of the things which it would have been absolutely impossible for the intellect of a human infant to grasp would be the idea of Divine Sonship, the idea of that relation in which the Son of God stands to the Eternal Father. There must have been a period, then, in the life of Jesus of Nazareth, in which He awoke, as it were, to spiritual consciousness, and came to know who and what He really was. The light of this knowledge may have broken in upon Him by degrees. It probably did so. There were probably voices that came and went, voices that whispered into the ear of that wondrous Child mysterious hints of the unseen world and of the abandoned glory, long before they spoke out with distinct and unmistakable utterance: "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God."
II. "He went down with them." He, knowing now who He was, and for what He was intended, He, consciouslynow the incarnate Son of God, "went down with them and was subject unto them; but His mother kept all these sayings in her heart." We gather one or two concluding lessons from this verse. (1) A lesson of the importance of patient waiting and preparation and biding of God's time, for all true workers for God. None ever longed as Jesus longed to be about His Father's business, and to exalt His Father's glory, and yet, at the Father's bidding, He went quietly away to spend eighteen years of preparation and discipline, until the time came for His manifesting unto Israel. (2) A lesson as to the perfect understanding and sympathy which the life of Jesus establishes between Him and His people. Jesus did not anticipate the various stages of life; He did not crowd the duties of one period in amongst the duties of another; His human existence was one of gradual, regular, perfect development. (3) A lesson as to the dignity of human life. It has been a pleasure to some persons to cast contempt on the nature they wear and on the race to which they belong. Writers of note have done this. But surely such persons must forget or disbelieve that the eternal Son of God condescended to wear the nature they vilify, and to engage in the occupations and pursuits on which they pour out the malignity of their scorn. One glance at that humble home of Nazareth dispels such thoughts and throws a halo of dignity and honour round our common humanity.
G. Calthrop, Words Spoken to My Friends,p. 90.
References: Luke 2:48. Phillips Brooks, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxvii., p. 353.Luke 2:48; Luke 2:49. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. iii., No. 122.