The Youth of Christ

We’re going through the New Testament now and looking for Trinitarian understanding of the text. I’m of high hopes that many of you are seeing signs of the Trinity that you had never seen before and are coming to appreciate just how important this doctrine is. I assure you, we will get to applicational principles, mainly in the epistles.

I would also like to thank Fenixpirit for their kind note on the Law of Undulation in the Screwtape Letters. That is a favorite work of mine of C.S. Lewis and that passage is the first one I think about when I think of that book.

I would also like to ask readers of this blog to be in prayer for my grandmother. She’s the only grandparent I’ve got left and she’s not doing well. I ask that you pray for her and pray for me in whatever happens as I am prone to anxiety.

Our passage today will again be in Luke 2. I find it amazing that there is so much deep theology in a book that would be sent to those who were not even Jews and who the writer himself could be the only Gentile writer in the NT.

 ⁴¹Every year his parents went to Jerusalem for the Feast of the Passover.⁴²When he was twelve years old, they went up to the Feast, according to the custom. ⁴³After the Feast was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. ⁴⁴Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. ⁴⁵When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. ⁴⁶After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. ⁴⁷Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. ⁴⁸When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.” ⁴⁹“Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” ⁵⁰But they did not understand what he was saying to them.

 ⁵¹Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. ⁵²And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.

This is the only reference we have in the gospels to Jesus as a boy. Now some people might wonder why more wasn’t said about him in this time period. The answer is that frankly, people didn’t care. It didn’t matter so much how someone got to where they were, but what they did when they got there.

What we get from it is that Jesus understood his identity early on. He was the Son of God. This was not something that happened to him at his baptism, contrary to what Adoptionists would have us think. Jesus knew who he was and was learned in the Scriptures at a young age.

Yet we also see the full humanity. Jesus grew in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man at the end. God’s blessing was on him and what would come of that blessing will be apparent as we go through the rest of the book.