GOD’S WORD FOR YOU
LUKE 2:50-52
50 But they did not understand what he was telling them. 51 Then he went down with them to Nazareth and was obedient to them. But his mother committed all these things to memory. 52 And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and with people.
What a contrast between Jesus’ family and the other people! The crowd was amazed by him, but his own family “did not understand what he was telling them.” It is yet another reason Mary needed a Savior every but as much as anyone else (Luke 1:47). This wasn’t going to change. Later, the Lord’s brothers wouldn’t believe he was the Messiah until after his death and resurrection (John 7:5).
So what did Jesus do? He went down (everything is “down” from Jerusalem) with them to Nazareth “and was obedient to them.” This is part of his state of humiliation, allowing himself to be subservient even to people who didn’t understand him. He did this because it is God’s will that children submit to their parents and obey them. Since it is God’s will, Jesus understood that it was his own Father’s will. We must recognize that Jesus and the Father are one (John 10:29), and so this was Jesus’ will as well. He was at the same moment obeying his Father and his own personal will, so that there was no discord at all between what Jesus wanted to do and what God the Father wanted him to do. This is a comfort for us in two ways. First, Jesus fulfilled his Father’s will in every way, always acting in complete and perfect harmony with the Father. So his life covers over the guilt of our sins by replacing our disobedience with his perfect obedience. Second, Jesus shows us what it’s like to have our will match the will of God, and this is what our life will be like in heaven. We will no longer be able to fall into sin or even be tempted to sin. We will act in harmony with God’s will at all times without being mindless robots. In heaven we will be like Jesus; sinless and willfully obedient, yet joyful and content in every way.
What does it mean that Jesus grew in wisdom and stature? His mind grew and developed in godly wisdom. He grew in knowledge and comprehension, humanly speaking, and he grew in his depth of understanding of the word of God. He learned God’s word in a way unattained by any other human before or since. He was wiser than Moses, more knowledgeable than Solomon, more profound than Isaiah, more compassionate than Jeremiah, and a more powerful speaker than Elijah or John the Baptist. He attained everything a human can possibly attain, yet remained humble, caring, and loving. As for stature, Luke simply means that Jesus grew up. His twelfth year turned over into his thirteenth, and so on. He worked, we are indirectly told, as a carpenter with Joseph. He grew into manhood, but he did not marry. An ancient theological question about Adam remained unanswered in Jesus: What would happen if a sinless man had a child with a sinful woman? Adam did not let that question be answered; he fell into sin along with his sinful wife. Jesus let the question remain a question by not taking a wife at all, and so if we absolutely must have an answer, it must be this: It would be better if this did not happen. And it never will.
Luke will let some time lapse between this moment and the next part of the story; about eighteen years. Jesus grew up into honorable manhood. He led a quiet, uneventful life in his youth. At some point—we don’t know when or why—Joseph died. We know this because Jesus handles his mother’s care from the cross (John 19:26-27). Joseph is never mentioned as being present in any of the accounts of Jesus’ ministry, so it’s most likely that he died before Jesus was baptized.
As in 2:19, I have translated syntereo (συντηρέω) with “committed to memory.” Mary did not forget these things that happened to Jesus when he was young, either in his infancy or this temple incident when he was twelve. Doubtless she remembered considerably more, but these are the things the Holy Spirit has seen fit to share with us. It is enough.
Jesus’ obedience to the fourth commandment proclaims both law and gospel to us. It is law because it is an example for us—a guide in the way we should live at all times. It is gospel because we fail to keep the commandment even at the best of times, but Jesus kept it perfectly in our place. His obedience means our salvation. We describe his keeping of the law with the term “active obedience.” This is his filling up what we fail to do. We describe his suffering and death with the term “passive obedience.” This is his atoning for what we did wrong. The two things together—his active and passive obedience—are what have made us right with God. We praise him for both. We praise him with our lives.
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Archives by Wisconsin Lutheran Chapel: http://www.wlchapel.org/worship/daily-devotion/
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, New Ulm, Minnesota