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‘And He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.… And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.’
Luk_2:51-52
I. Submission.—He was ‘subject’—obedient—‘unto them.’ The characteristic virtue of childhood, its natural and necessary condition. The Apocryphal Gospels are full of marvels said to have been done by the Child Jesus at work or at play. Of such things Holy Scripture knows nothing. They would have been out of keeping with the laws of childhood, and ‘it became Him,’ Who took our nature upon Him, ‘to fulfil all righteousness.’ Every life has its times of Nazareth, its call for daily, hourly submission to the wills, the ‘ways’ of others. The happiness or misery of life depends largely on the use of such opportunities. Since family life is an essential part of human probation, the Lord has left us herein an example that we should follow His steps.
II. Work.—We know that the Lord shared the daily toil of the carpenter. Doing each day’s work in its appointed time—be the work what it may—fitted Him for the future when the work was different. Surely the lesson is not what do you do, but how do you do it?
III. Growth.—Here we tread on more difficult ground. Two things seem clear amid the darkness:—
(a) We must remember when we speak of growth that it does not necessarily imply imperfection. The child is not to blame because he is not a man all at once. It is the law of his being to grow. He lives by growth. Up to his measure he may be perfectly developed; but that measure, that capacity is continually expanding. And since all true growth, according to His own Divine law, must always be pleasing to God, it is but natural to read of the increase of Divine favour that accompanied the increase in wisdom as in bodily stature.
(b) Nothing can be more plain than this, that the Lord’s humanity was real indeed. Every line of the Gospels tell us this.