This passage contains the first words of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel. What does it tell us about Jesus’ relationship with God the Father?Ĥ. What does this passage - the only one in the Bible about Jesus as a kid - tell us about Jesus’ relationship with His parents?ģ. What do you think Jesus was like as a kid? As a ten-year-old? A teenager?Ģ. Only a real Jesus qualifies as a real Savior.īelieve me friend, you and I need a real Savior.ġ. Leaving none of His Deity behind, He did voluntarily release some of His divine prerogatives. This is why Jesus, the eternal Son of God, entered fully into humanity, in a time and place. Thus only a man should pay for sin, and only God can pay for sin. It follows that only an infinite God can solve that problem. However, our sin is an offense agains the holiness of an infinite God. So it follows that only man should pray for sin. As humans, our sin problem is a real problem, a deadly problem. This is a major force in the Gospel accounts of Jesus because only a read Jesus can qualify as a real savior.
#GROWING UP VERSES FULL#
This fact might be lost on us who fail to see Jesus’ words and deeds through eastern eyes in ancient times.Ĭonsider how critical it is for us to see Jesus as a real person, a full human. No one, even the great rabbis, would have dared to say such a thing of God. The reference to “My Father” would have been so wildly out of place and radical to the Jews of Jesus’ day. He also clearly understood His mission and His relationship to God the Father. It is both beautiful and challenging to see Jesus as a kid, growing and learning and exploring and understanding. In this we see Jesus as maturing spiritually, physically and relationally. He did, however, mature and “grow” in wisdom and stature. His “son of God” status was not something later “given” to Him at His baptism or later understood. Jesus, even at this young age, clearly understood His identity. These announcements are obviously veiled in some way to protect the timing and trajectory of Jesus’ ministry, but they are pronouncements nonetheless. In many ways, at least in the Gospel of Luke, this event serves alongside Jesus’ baptism and His triumphal entry as three key events where He announces His identity, ministry focus and fulfillment of God’s plan/prophecy. With this balancing statement of context, we can finally see the story for what it is meant to be, a pronouncement event. “And He went down with them and came to Nazareth, and He continued in subjection to them.” We see this in the summary and response statement in verse 51. Luke makes it clear that Jesus was not being this way, in Luke’s typical style of strict clarity. We need not see this story as evidence that Jesus was being a sassy or belligerent kid. Finally, third, we see in Jesus’ statement the fact that His relationship and proximity to the Father takes precedent over all other relationships in His life, including His relationship with His earthly family. Second, Jesus fully understands His relationship to God the Father and sees it appropriate to be in His presence on the earth, which was in the Holy of Holies within the Temple. He had a divine directive and understands his place in the temple as a necessity. There are at least three key things we need to see and expand upon in this single statement.
In response to Mary’s very frightened and frustrated “mom” question, Jesus respond, “Why is it that you were looking for Me? Did you not know that I had to be in My Father’s house?” Consider the weight and import of the first words of a story’s hero and focus. These words, and this is not unimportant, are the first words Jesus speaks in the Gospel of Luke. Perhaps the answer is in the center of this story, which is the statement from Jesus in verse 49.
Why is it important for us to see Jesus as a kid? Why would Luke include this episode? It happens when Jesus is twelve years old and occurs during the annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem from Nazareth for Passover. Only Luke, who records the longest and most detailed account of Jesus’ birth and the prophecies and angelic witnesses surrounding it, shares a story from these hidden years. Matthew records the birth of Jesus through a focus on Joseph and then moves directly to the ministry of John the Baptist and the baptism of Jesus. John and Mark’s gospel begin with Jesus’ public ministry as an adult. This passage in Luke 2 is the only account of any of the so-called “hidden years” of Jesus’ childhood.
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