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‘Jesus increased in wisdom.’
Luk_2:52
And yet, after all, can we say nothing of those hidden years? May we not, at least with a reasonable probability, conjecture somewhat of the blossoming and unfolding of Christ’s perfect life? Is it not possible from His later words and actions to divine just a little of what went before?
In following this path, we must tread with caution. We cannot believe that the mind of the Man, Who is also God, can have opened, enlarged, matured in precisely the way that merely human minds mature. We cannot admit that, even in the days of His flesh, the inner experience of Christ was exactly the same as ours. Surely from the very beginning He must have had some special, some Divine endowment—some consciousness at least of His unique relation to His heavenly Father—which it is not given to mere man to harbour. And yet, however carefully we may guard the statement, the indubitable fact remains that Jesus grew. There was nothing portentous about Him. Sin only excepted, He was perfectly human. Hallowing all the stages of our human progress, the Lord Incarnate, with the ripening of His years, ‘increased in wisdom.’
‘Jesus increased in wisdom.’
I. Through intercourse with books.—He was not what the people of the period would have called a scholar. He never was sent to a rabbinic college, or sat, like St. Paul, as a regular pupil in ‘the House of the Midrash.’ He was only a poor countryman. Yet you must not conceive the fancy that our Saviour was untaught. The Jews of His day were exceedingly zealous in the cause of education. Some kind of instruction, therefore, Jesus surely had. And, moreover, He studied. He was thoroughly acquainted with the history, the law, the poetry of His people; He was not unversed even in the curious learning of the scribal schools. At a later time, indeed, men said to one another, in astonishment at His wisdom, ‘Is not this the Carpenter? Whence hath this Man these things?’ But let us go still further. Research can point out for our edification what were the very books the Master studied while he lived on earth. The beginning of His training was, undoubtedly, the law, and the first text that He ever learned was taken from the Book of Deuteronomy. As a very little child, almost as soon as He could speak, He was taught by His mother to repeat by heart that solemn affirmation of the unity of God and the absolute devotion that His people owe Him. ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.’ That was our Lord’s first text. As He grew older He mastered other passages, and from the age of twelve He was accustomed, like every other pious Jew, to recite each morning and evening a portion of nineteen verses, selected from the Books of Deuteronomy and Numbers. But the books ascribed to Moses were not the only ones that Jesus knew. He must have been familiar with the earlier histories of the Bible and with several of the prophets—with Jeremiah and Hosea, with Jonah and Zechariah and Malachi. But the favourites of all—the books which our Lord pre-eminently studied and most dearly loved—appear to have been three. The first was the hymn-book of the synagogue, the Psalms. And the second was Isaiah, particularly that part which tells of that innocent Servant of Jehovah Who ‘hath borne our griefs,’ Who ‘was bruised for our iniquities,’ and by Whose ‘stripes we are healed.’ The third was the prophet Daniel. These three—so far as it is possible to form a judgment—were the chosen books of Jesus.
II. Through intercourse with nature.—His eyes were continually open to the glories of nature round Him, and His mind was peculiarly sensitive to the truths that nature taught. The wholesome air of the hills and fields of Galilee breathes ever in His utterance. Nor shall we wonder at it when we recall the fact that Nazareth itself, no doubt, was a mean enough place, yet spreading all round were lands of such rich fertility that an old-time traveller likened them to Paradise. Here were green gardens and luxuriant cornfields. Here was abundance of olives and fig-trees and vines. Here, too, were streams, and variegated flowers, and herbs of sweet perfume. Above and behind the town there rose a hill, which Jesus in His youth must many a time have climbed. And from its summit one might gaze on a magnificent panorama of plain and vine-clad valley, of mountain-peaks and river gorge, and the blue of a distant sea. For thirty years it was the prospect of our Lord.
III. Through intercourse with men and women.—Our Lord was not denied such means of self-education as companionship affords. He never was a solitary. He loved, indeed, the quietness of the deserts and the hills, but He also loved the breathing crowds, the eager populations of the villages and towns, the busy life of the streets. He was bred, you must remember, in a country town. At fountain and in market-place He mingled with the people, and with searching, questioning gaze He studied them. The farmer, the slave, the officer of justice, the dealer in pearls on the sea, the long-robed Pharisee and the anxious housewife, the labourer waiting to be hired, and the criminal dragging along his heavy cross—all the types He knew. And was it not fitting that He Who became pre-eminently the Friend of man should first Himself have gained experience of man? Was it not right that He Who became, as no other may become, man’s Teacher, should first have taught Himself by accurate observation what man’s spirit is? For thirty years Jesus sat patiently with open eyes and watched the world pass by. ‘He needed not that any should testify of man; for He knew what was in man.’
IV. Other influences.—Let us notice two of the most important of these human influences on the growing life of Jesus.
(a) The home. May we not imagine that the beautiful allusions which our Saviour later made to family life and family affection were tinged with the colour of a tender reminiscence? and, further, that His doctrine of service, of mutual subjection and subordination in love, embalmed some experiences of those early years, when He Himself was subject to His ‘parents,’ and was glad to do their will?
(b) The synagogue. Here ruled the Pharisees. Sabbath by Sabbath Jesus would listen to their skilled disputes, mark their fantastic explanations of the law, hear them expound, with deep yet childish wisdom, their favourite dogmas of a resurrection, predestination, of the coming Messiah and the triumph of Jehovah. And as He listened to those earthly teachers, what trains of Divine ideas must have swept with an awful grandeur through the temple of His soul! Yet still He waited quietly for thirty years—listened, and learned, and pondered while the doctors taught. Then, at the very last, He went His way, sweeping aside the chaff and dust of Rabbinism, bursting the fetters of its forms outworn, and pouring from the depths of His immeasurable consciousness a doctrine fresh as the light, sublime as the heaven, Divine as God.
Rev. F. Homes Dudden.