01.03. III. The Childhood of Christ

III THE CHILDHOOD OF CHRIST

“And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him”—Luke 2:40. THE childhood of Jesus is a subject of easy speculation. Apocryphal gospels there are which narrate the most marvelous and unimaginable things as the experience and acts of the wonderful Nazarene lad. But the true Gospel passes full thirty years in a silence broken but a single time, and that time is clearly recorded in Luke 2:40-52. A solitary glimpse of Jesus, but a significant one. The remarks made concerning His growth are significant. His attendance upon the feast of the tabernacles was significant. His place in the temple was significant. His questions and answers before the Sanhedrin were significant. His ready yielding to His parents and His implicit obedience were significant.

While it may seem most unnatural to pass through this great and potential period of youth with only this solitary reference to it all, it is most natural and even most wise to give us the glimpse of Him at twelve years of age when He was passing from boyhood to manhood, at the moment when those emotions that make up life were beginning to stir every part of His being, perhaps the time when the very plans of life itself were being unfolded to Him by His heavenly Father. Then He let us look at His face just once. What a lad!

Frederick W. Farrar, in his “Life of Christ,” tells us that when the moon is in crescent a few bright spots are visible through the telescope upon its unilluminated part; those bright spots are mountain peaks, so lofty that they catch the sunlight. And then he remarks, “One such point of splendour and majesty is revealed to us in the otherwise unknown region of Christ’s youthful years, and it is sufficient to furnish us with a real insight into that entire portion of His life.”

Consenting with Dean Farrar, I call your attention to some suggestions of the Scripture Luke 2:40-52.

I. THE NATURAL GROWTH. The remark “The child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon him” undoubtedly looks to a natural three-fold division of life—physical, mental and spiritual. He was approaching a manhood which should come to the full, He was not to be a one-sided man, all physique and hence beastly; all intellect and hence a hook-worm, or all devotion and hence a bald monk. The Young Men’s Christian Associations have insisted that there is a four-fold development of life, physical, social, intellectual and spiritual. I think we will find even this in the text, for before we shall have finished we will see that Jesus increased not alone in wisdom and “in favour with God,” but also “in favour with man.” His growth in stature reveals His true humanity. Paul, in writing to the Hebrews, makes a very significant remark. Quoting from Isaiah—“Here am I, and the children whom thou hast given me,” the Apostle adds, “For as much, then, as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same.” The humanity of Jesus is absolutely essential to His priesthood for, as the same apostle writes to the same people, “We have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us, therefore, come boldly to the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in time of need” (Hebrews 4:15).

I have no question myself but that His humanity was not only real but robust, and that this text is our Scriptural warrant for such a statement. He “grew” in stature! Dr. Campbell Morgan, pleading for the physical prowess of Jesus, says, “When will some inspired artist give us a true picture of this glorious Man? He is almost always depicted as frail in physical form and lacking in bodily beauty. Perhaps the German artist Hoffmann has come nearest to the true ideal. ‘There is no beauty that we should desire him,’ but the prophet did not mean that He would be devoid of beauty, rather that men should not recognise it. We strenuously hold that He was perfect in physical form and proportion. The body is the outward and visible sign of the inward and invisible spirit, and the perfect spirit of Jesus would form a perfect physical tabernacle in which He passed the probationary life.” Visitors to the First Baptist Church, Minneapolis, who walk into one of the social rooms will see on the wall Mrs. Wayland Hoyt’s painting of the Christ. It is Dr. Morgan’s conception, a man of enormous proportions; the fullness of whose strength is suggested by every full-rounded muscle, yet the refinement of whose nature is distinctly painted into every feature of the great face. “Know ye not that ye are the temple of the Holy Ghost?” And is it not of the religion of Christ that the physical growth of the child should have the utmost care, and that a sound body should be reckoned as the best seat of a sound mind and a healthy soul?

But, as we have already suggested:

There was a social side to Christ’s life. The lad of twelve was growing in another direction “in favour with men.” I am glad that this phrase appears in Luke’s report. It tends to present the two sides of Jesus character, two sides which some people believe cannot exist in the one and same man—sweetness and strength, kindness and courage, personal attractiveness and professional repulsion. It is not difficult to imagine that the little children of Nazareth ran in and out of His shop for the pure pleasure of His smiles, that the young men and maidens often dropped into the same to hear His hearty greetings, to uncover to Him some secret of life or love which they would not share with another, and get His kindly counsel, and that even old men and women who watched His growth from infancy to manhood often remarked on Him in the language of ardent admiration.

It was only when He left the private life and went into the public; it was only when He could no longer exercise His personal graces, but delivered His professional and divinely appointed soul, it was only when to save the world He loved so much from death and hell, He had to speak of sin and show what it was, and what it would do in the lives of men, that both Gentile and Jew commenced to hate Him, commenced to overlook all His natural kindliness, to disregard His tender love, to misinterpret His warning speech, and finally to plead for His crucifixion. But if any man, reading the story of this antagonism, concludes that Christ must have been a very unattractive, repellent individual, let him turn back to this text and be corrected. He was a delightful companion. In private life men and women only knew Him to love Him. As He increased in age the circle of His friends widened, and when He closed the carpenter’s shop for Jordan and the baptism of John, doubtless the most popular man that had ever lived in Nazareth left the village of His boyhood to begin the most unpopular career upon which a courageous soul was ever sent. In the enlargement of Christ’s life the intellect was prominent. “He grew in wisdom.” Evidently that growth was not a normal one; evidently it was not such as the majority of the Jewish lads had revealed. Before His day other lads had shown strength, had either said or done remarkable things at this very age of puberty. The old Jewish legends tell that Moses had left the house of Pharaoh at that time, that such was Samuel when he heard the voice summoning him to the prophet’s office, that Solomon was also twelve years of age when he had given a judgment that made for wisdom, and Joseph, at about the same age, had his first dream of what he was destined to accomplish. “The child” is, truly, “father to the man.” Almost every lad at twelve is the prophecy of his own later life. The day does not break into full noon, there are the dawnings and the rising of the sun, but the man who studies the first can easily prophecy what is coming. A lightning flash is different, it breaks out unexpectedly; it illuminates with a glory beyond the sun; its brilliance is such as to compel the attention of all men. We are told that the second coming of Christ shall be like the lightning. The first appearance was the dawning of a new day.

Men have debated and will, when Christ became conscious of His deity. It is not a subject for dogmatism. It does seem, however, that at twelve years of age He either perfectly understood, or else had begun to understand. Happy the boy who thus early in life becomes conscious that God is in him, and gladly consents to the indwelling Spirit, and feels as Jesus felt the power of the same, so that He can say, “I must do the will of the Father.” If there is one thing in which I believe as the result of personal, mental, and emotional experience, any one thing which is an absolute necessity of all children of God, it is in the compelling voice, quickening the man, determining the will, pointing the way, namely, the voice of God.

Evidently also the devotion of spirit was keeping pace, for “The grace of God was upon him.” This Scripture suggests something other than the rites and ceremonies of the Jewish people, something more than the fact that He knew He was the child of circumcision; something beyond His familiarity with the Jewish traditions; something beyond His conscious kinship with Abraham and Isaac and Jacob; something beyond the formality of the phrase that is spoken to the effect that as “He had been joined to the covenant so might it also be to him in regard to the law and to good works.” This phrase compasses a communion between the Son and Father, between the child Jesus and the infinite God. No wonder Ernest Renan says of Jesus “He has no visions; God does not speak to Him as to one outside himself; God is in Him; He feels He is close to God; He draws from His own heart all that He saw of the Father; He lives in the bosom of God by contact at every moment; hears Him without need of thunder or burning bush like Moses, or revealing tempest like Job, or oracle like the old Greek sages, or familiar genius like Socrates, or the angel Gabriel like Mahomet.” That grace of God which was upon Him was the personal consciousness of God in Him, and God with Him. This is the way to develop devotion of spirit. We may attend church as often as we like, we may pray all night if we please, we may even enter the closet and “shut to the door” and thereby literally fulfill the Saviour’s injunction of secrecy, but unless somehow we get into the Divine presence and know the meaning of the phrase “with God” it is vain.

“In the secret of His presence How my soul delights to hide.

Oh, how precious are the moments Which I spend at Jesus’ side,” is a hymn which has always appealed to me as one that must have been voiced by a soul en rapport with God, but
“A little talk with Jesus Makes it right, all right,” has always had a jingle of insincerity, not alone because of the jangle in tune, but largely because of the lightness with which the subject is treated. “A little talk with Jesus!”—That is the curse of the Church of God! Christ was in constant communion with the Father. Oh, that as Christians we might be in constant communication with Christ. It is the only way to have the grace of God in Christ.

II. THE SUPERNATURAL WISDOM. The incident of Christ’s remaining in Jerusalem when the parents departed for home results in their return.

What a scene! A twelve-year-old in the Temple, “sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions,” and the remark —“All that heard him were astonished at his answers.” The Temple was His preferred school. The posture was the posture of a student—“sitting.” How different from the modern idea. Many of the twelve-year-old lads and lasses are now being made familiar with temples of vice; the picture show, the dance hall, the theatre,—these are modern institutions, and men tell us that they have their “educational features.” Truly! But they are out of all harmony with Christ’s education. For His education He went to the Temple of God. The public school is all right in its place; secular information is not a sin; to know science is to know how God does His work in the natural world. But when men separate the School and the Temple, secularise the latter and flout the former, they are destroying the foundations of society. Has it not occurred to you that the great men of the past have grown in the Temple of God? Not only its great prophets, but its great discoverers, its great inventors, its great scientists. Columbus was a church man, Livingstone learned much in the House of God. Men of letters have learned much there. Shakespeare was able to quote copiously from the Scriptures, and the temple in which he used to worship is still standing in Stratford-on-Avon. Carlyle was a child of the Church; let no modern scientist imagine that his predecessors were atheists, or even infidels. Call the roll:—Galileo, Kepler, Faraday, Henry, all trouped forth from the Temple of God. If you want reformers you will bring them from the same secret presence. Luther and Huss, Knox and Savonarola received not alone their inspiration, but much of their education there. The day when the Temple of God no longer plays a part in the education of the youth will be the same as the day in which this child Christ will no longer be regarded as an ensample to children, and that day will sound the death knell of the education that is worth while.

Mark again: Doctors of Divinity were His chosen teachers. For He sat “in the midst of the doctors; both hearing them and asking them questions.” These were not catch questions! These were not questions propounded to reveal His superior wisdom. These were questions of the earnest student who gave audience to His elders, and then to bring further information He plied them with questions.

There are people in the world, now, who imagine that the poorest place we can go for information is to the feet of the “Parson,” as they call him. It might be well for such to remember what part the Doctors of Divinity have played in the whole educational scheme. It might be well to remember that these are the men who laid the foundations of Oxford, of Harvard, of Yale, of Brown and of Princeton, and that more of these men have been presidents and hold professorships than come from any other walk of life. It was truly a dark day for Harvard when she had as President a man who ruled the Bible out of his five feet of essential books. Boys graduating from the feet of such scholars, even though they be named “Doctors of Divinity,” are destined to greatness only on the condition of parting company with their professors.

It is not difficult to see why Samuel became a noted man in Israel. In the Temple and at the feet of Eli he learned. It is not hard to imagine how Spurgeon became England’s most prominent preacher; on the knees of Dr. Knill, and from many other great students and teachers in the Church of God he took his great lessons, and in truth, never did he feel the need of another or better college than that which provided for the coming of these men to his father’s house. Is it not a strange sight, the modern school, supported in no considerable part by the money of men and women who love God and believe His Word, conducted now without a reference to His Holy Name? Almost anything permitted to enter its halls except His holy Word, and almost any subject under heaven, high or low, exalting or debasing, presented to the student-body save Christianity. Rum stains the escutcheon of the nation. Rome has almost removed her foundation stone. And yet further, remember, His understanding was an amazement. “They that heard him were astonished at his answers.” There had been bright lads before this lad appeared in Jerusalem, but there had been no lad like Him. There had been precocious youths, a multitude, previous to Jesus; no one of them had produced the impression upon the Sanhedrin that He was making, without ostentation, perhaps without even consciousness on His own part that He had accomplished it. He compelled the admiration of this circle of wise men and left them in a dumb amazement at the wisdom of which the remark of later days would have been true even then, “We never heard it on this wise.”

Yes, there is so much in the life of Christ that is inexplicable that those who deny His deity are dumb in His presence. There is but one explanation! Truly, in the language of Carnegie Simpson, “He is beyond our analyses. He confounds our canons of human nature. He compels our criticism to over-leap itself. He awes our spirits.” There is a saying of Charles Lamb which is responded to by a very deep feeling within the heart of every true student of Christ, “If Shakespeare was to come into this room we should all rise up to meet him, but if Christ came we should all fall down and try to kiss the hem of His garment.”

III. THE UNNATURAL SUBJECTION. The reproof from His mother was gently given (Luke 2:48-52). “Son”—it is introduced with a word of affection—“why hast thou thus dealt with us?” It is a question sincerely put with the expectation of an answer. “Thy father and I have sought thee, sorrowing.” It is a revelation of her love. Oh, wise mother! A lad had behaved badly in the presence of company. The mother looked at Him, but said not a word. Later she called Him aside and in a secret conference, with no one looking on to see the blush mantling the little cheeks, she told Him how it hurt, and how badly it looked. A friend of John Adams told him he had found out who made him, by the reading of his mother’s published letters. Many a man has been compelled to confess that the gentle, wise mother was God’s wonderful agency for the formation of his life. We have the testimony of many of earth’s greatest in this matter. Suppose we listen to them while two of its most eloquent talk to us about it.

John Ruskin says, “My mother steeped my soul in the knowledge of the Sacred Scriptures. I have just opened my oldest Bible. My mother’s list of chapters with which she established me in life has just fallen out of it, and truly this maternal installation of my mind with those chapters I count the most precious, and on the whole, the most essential part of my education.”

Let Tennyson sing of his sainted mother. In “The Princess” he tells the story of his admiration for the woman who bore him and at the same time reveals her character.

“Yet was there one thro’ whom I loved her, one Not learned, save in gracious household ways, Not perfect, nay, but full of tender wants, No Angel, but a dearer being, all dipt In Angel instincts, breathing Paradise, Interpreter between the gods and men, Who look’d all native to her place, and yet On tiptoe seem’d to touch upon a sphere Too gross to tread, and all male minds perforce Sway’d to her from their orbits as they moved, And girdled her with music. Happy he With such a mother! faith in womankind Beats with his blood, and trust in all things high Comes easy to him, and tho’ he trip and fall He shall not blind his soul with clay.”

I am glad that Christ was a mother’s child, and that Mary lives, a mother’s ensample.

Mark His reply—It was firm but gracious. “Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?” I love that word “must.” I believe in men who do things because they are compelled to do them, who do them because they cannot do otherwise; men who choose a certain path because they have heard Christ say, “This is the way, walk ye in it”; who face certain tasks because the Father demands it; who walk even to Calvary if that be His will; who fail not, even in Gethsemane, but conclude their agony with the cry, “Not my will, but thine, be done.”

There is in that word the sound of a holy necessity. The man who can choose one path as well as another, the man who can please one party as well as another, the man who tries to please all parties, is a poor excuse of manhood and as far removed from the Man of Nazareth as the poles of the earth are apart.

Thank God for the statement “I must.” There are some things we may do, but oh, there are other things we must do or lose out with God, and those are the things that involve “the Father’s business.” That is my business!

Finally, His subserviency was surprising. “And he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.” What a strange subjection, the subjection of the superior to the inferior! And yet that unnatural subjection was a further revelation of the unusual character. The lad of the truly great heart, the girl whose brain is blessedly developed, these may know more than their parents but they never parade it, they refuse even to think it, they give it no place in their feelings; to voice it is the last thing they would do. It is only a little man that wants to be forever giving orders. It is only a cramped and contracted life that is forever demanding allegiance and obedience. The man who lives in the large, as Christ lived, the man who looks upon all things and sees clearly, the man who is worthy to command, he is the man who stands ready to obey. For such the law of the Lord is not a. hardship. David could say, “I will walk at liberty for I seek thy precepts.”

Within the limits of His mother’s will and his father’s desire Christ found sufficient liberty, and yet He found delight, for, as Farrar remarks, “His self-subjection to them was all the more glorious in proportion to the greatness of the self-subjected.” When will men learn that “To obey is better than sacrifice”?