Growing up, my parents took me and my brothers to church every Lord’s Day. They also served the church in various ways, which meant that some Sundays required us taking two vehicles—one parent needed to leave earlier, while the other brought us kids later. But more than once, I can remember Mom or Dad walking in the door after church and accounting for only two of three boys. With eyes full of panic, I’d then hear, “Did you get Brandon?!” “No, I thought you were getting Brandon!”

What a sinking feeling it is when a child is missing. You can see it on a mom’s face as she scours the department store wondering which rack of clothes her child is hiding in. You can see it on grandad’s face when he’s peering over the crowd looking frantically for his granddaughter at the park. You can see it on a teacher’s face when, on the field trip, only 22 of the 23 kids get on the bus. It’s frightening to lose track of a child.

Today, we learn that Joseph and Mary had a similar experience with Jesus when he was 12. On a return journey from Jerusalem, they didn’t know where Jesus was. Even worse, it took three days to find him. One could easily imagine their inner turmoil. At the same time, God was working in unexpected ways to reveal more about his Son’s identity and mission. Was Jesus lost or right where he was supposed to be? Who is Jesus’ true father? And what would that mean for the days ahead? Let’s pick up the story in Luke 2:39. Page 858 in the pew Bible. Hear the word of the Lord…

³⁹ And when [Joseph and Mary] had performed everything according to the Law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own town of Nazareth. ⁴⁰ And the child [Jesus] grew and became strong, filled with wisdom. And the favor of God was upon him. ⁴¹ Now his parents went to Jerusalem every year at the Feast of the Passover. ⁴² And when he was twelve years old, they went up according to custom. ⁴³ And when the feast was ended, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem. His parents didn’t know it, ⁴⁴ but supposing him to be in the group they went a day’s journey, but then they began to search for him among their relatives and acquaintances, ⁴⁵ and when they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem, searching for him. ⁴⁶ After three days they found him in the temple, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. ⁴⁷ And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. ⁴⁸ And when his parents saw him, they were astonished. And his mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.” ⁴⁹ And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” ⁵⁰ And they did not understand the saying that he spoke to them. ⁵¹ And he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was submissive to them. And his mother treasured up all these things in her heart. ⁵² And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and man.

Jesus’ Childhood

What a peculiar story. To this point angels have appeared, a virgin gave birth, strangers blessed Jesus in the temple. But this story seems more ordinary, down to earth, like something any parent might experience. It’s also peculiar because, among the Four Gospels, it’s the only account of Jesus’ childhood we have—that is, outside the initial events surrounding his birth. The Gospels that we recognize as canonical—they don’t include much of anything from Jesus’ childhood. We don’t learn when he took his first steps, or how he did at school, or at what age he bought his first donkey. We don’t know his first miracle or when he first learned of his mission to die.

Now, much later some would attempt to fill in details from Jesus’ childhood. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is one example. Not to be confused with the second-century Gnostic writing called The Gospel of Thomas—this one is dated to the fourth- or fifth-century AD; and it shares stories from Jesus’ childhood that you’ll also find in the Koran. But in the Infancy Gospel are stories like Jesus, at age five, taking soft clay and fashioning twelve sparrows as he plays with the other children. But it also includes stories like when another kid accidentally bumps Jesus while running through town; and Jesus, a bit agitated, says, “You won’t finish the race,” curses him, and the kid dies.

But here’s the thing: while these stories might satisfy curiosity, they are not historically credible. These apocryphal writings pretend to be written by someone they’re not. They often show no geographical familiarity with the regions they name. And they’re written well outside the timeframe of the apostles and other eyewitnesses. At the end of the day, the best historical sources we have are the Four Gospels. But our Four Gospels just don’t include much from Jesus’ childhood.

From a historical standpoint, this was consistent with other Greco-Roman biographies at the time. Usually, there was a birth narrative to establish ancestry, followed by an occasional anecdote about the hero’s upbringing, and then the account rapidly shifts to the person’s public debut. That also happens here in Luke’s account.

Also, from a literary standpoint, this reminds us that our Four Gospels are not exhaustive, chronological accounts of everything Jesus said and did. As John puts it in his Gospel, “There were many other things that Jesus did. Were every one of them to be written, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.” “But these are written, so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.” The authors of our Four Gospels were selective, and what they selected was ordered and brought together for a specific purpose. For Luke, that purpose was already stated in 1:4, “that you may have certainty concerning the things you have been taught.”

But then also from a theological standpoint—if God thought it necessary to our salvation for us to know more of Jesus’ childhood, he would’ve included it. As it is, what the Spirit has included is sufficient for us to know God and Jesus Christ whom he has sent. What’s important for us to know is that from birth till he was twelve, he grew in wisdom, and the favor of God was on him. And then from age twelve till he started his public ministry. again he grew in wisdom and in favor with God and man.

In his wise plan, God has withheld things from Jesus’ childhood that will continue to provoke our curiosity. But let’s be thankful that he didn’t withhold Jesus but gave him up for us all. And that is where the Gospels place their emphasis—on the identity of Jesus and how God was working in Jesus to reconcile us to himself.

Jesus’ Parents

What, then, do we learn from this brief account in Jesus’ childhood? Well, we continue to learn something of Jesus’ parents. Joseph and Mary are exemplary Israelites. Verse 39 reminds us how they “performed everything according to the Law of the Lord.” That included Mary’s purification after childbirth; it also included the consecration of Jesus as their firstborn son. (We looked at these things last Sunday.)

Luke also notes how they “returned to Galilee, to their town of Nazareth.” On foot, that’s about a three-day journey. One that, verse 41 says, they would make “every year at the Feast of Passover.” If we were reading John’s Gospel, perhaps he’d start making connections to Jesus becoming our true Passover Lamb and dying to free us from slavery to sin. But Luke has a different purpose. He mentions Passover to stress again the faithfulness of Joseph and Mary. Every year they made the pilgrimage to celebrate and remember God’s deliverance in the Exodus. It was their custom, Luke says.

Jesus grew up with parents who feared the Lord and steadily obeyed. They were the kind of parents who taught God’s law diligently to their children; and they modeled covenant faithfulness. I mention this not simply to say that it’s worth imitating their faith and example as parents, but also to show how Luke is setting us up for an important contrast. Jesus might’ve grown up with godly parents; but even then, their understanding of God’s will and work was limited.

Luke’s point isn’t to downplay their devotion, but to disclose how much greater Jesus’ devotion is. Even at the age of twelve, Jesus knows the Lord with a kind of intimacy that his parents don’t experience. The contrast begins to show that Jesus’ obedience to God holds a more fundamental place in God’s plan than their own obedience. It’s by Jesus’ obedience that all of God’s plans will come to pass.

I wonder if you believe that for yourself. God certainly calls us to obedience. Obedience to his word is a necessary outworking of our faith. But Jesus’ obedience is more fundamental. Our obedience could never fulfill God’s saving plan. Our obedience could never measure up to the perfection of God’s Law. Our obedience could never seal the new covenant. But Christ’s obedience did all those things. His obedience is our only hope for salvation; and that is seen here in the contrast between Jesus and his parents.

Jesus’ Humanity

We’ll speak more to that in a minute. But first consider also what this story says about Jesus’ humanity. In verse 40, Jesus is still about a month and a half old. His family returns to Galilee; and it says, “the child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom.” Earlier in Luke’s birth narrative, the angel called Jesus “Son of the Most High” and “Son of God” and “Christ the Lord.” When he was in the womb of Mary, Elizabeth called him “my Lord.” From John’s Gospel, we also learn of his preexistence with God the Father and his equality with God the Father: “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God” (John 1:1). Thus, it is right to affirm that the person of Christ is immortal, immutable, eternal, all-powerful, all-knowing, infinite in holiness, wisdom, and love. He is truly God.

And still, Luke says here: “the child grew.” The person of Christ has a real human body that developed and grew in physical stature. The one who is unchangeable in his divine nature took to himself a human nature that experienced change. He was once connected to his mother by an umbilical cord. His body grew stronger while nursing at his mother’s breast. He learned to crawl and walk and talk. He started with foods that were soft and then graduated to solids. His bones and brain matured just like ours.

We also learn from Luke’s testimony that Jesus had a human mind that grew in wisdom. He “became strong, filled with wisdom.” Verse 52 says that Jesus “increased in wisdom.” The one who is all-knowing and infinite in wisdom—he took to himself a human nature that learned stuff, that increased in wisdom. Notice how he listens to the teachers in verse 46 and asks them questions. Donald Macleod puts it this way: “[Christ] had a human mind, subject to the same laws of perception, memory, logic and development as our own. He observed and learned and remembered and applied…[He was] born with the mental equipment of a normal child, experienced the usual stimuli, and went through the ordinary processes of intellectual development.”[i]

When God the Son took on human flesh, he took on all of it—a “true human body and a reasonable soul.”[ii] Nothing changed in his divine nature when he added a human nature. The all-knowing, eternal Son did not forfeit or diminish his omniscience (nor any other attribute) when he became flesh. But that is not why his knowledge here as a man is so impressive. In his human nature, he did willingly forgo dependence upon his divine nature to assist his mission. He had to complete it as one of us, within all the limitations of human flesh—except for our sin.

Thus, the church has confessed that Jesus is one person with two natures—truly God and truly man. To lose this is to compromise the gospel; and we must not take it for granted. These truths have not gone unchallenged in the history of the church.

Docetism, for example, taught that matter is evil and thus it’s unthinkable that God the Son could be united with human flesh. Such a belief led one man named Cerinthus to create a doctrine that separated Christ, who he called the heavenly one, from Jesus, who was merely a man. Another fella named Marcion argued that Christ was just a phantom—he had the appearance of man but without the substance.

Then came Apollinarianism, named after Apollinaris who claimed that when God’s Son took a human body, he did not take a human mind. He feared that the mind of Christ’s divine nature would be at odds with the mind of his human nature. So, he argued that Christ in his divine nature supplied the one mind. Thus, Apollinaris viewed Christ as something other than a true man. He even wrote, “He is not man, though like man; for He is not consubstantial with man in the most important element”[iii] (i.e., his mind).

Such objections forced the church back to the Scriptures; and passages like this one in Luke pressured them to clarify what the true church confesses about the person of Christ. And that clarity was then articulated in the Chalcedonian Creed:

We all with one voice teach the confession of one and the same Son, our Lord Jesus Christ: the same perfect in divinity and perfect in humanity, the same truly God and truly man, of a rational soul and a body; of one essence with the Father as regards his divinity, and the same of one essence with us as regards his humanity; like us in all respects except for sin; begotten before the ages from the Father as regards his divinity, and in the last days, for us and for our salvation, the same born of Mary, the virgin God-bearer, as regards his humanity. One and the same Christ, Son, Lord, Only-begotten, recognized in two natures, without confusion, without change, without division, without separation…

All the heresies I mentioned grew from noble desires to protect Jesus’ deity; but in doing so they diminished his humanity. We must be careful not to commit the same errors. The Son became truly man—body and soul. To fulfill his saving mission, he had to do it within the limits of a human body and mind—even the mind of a twelve-year-old. Again, to quote Donald Macleod, “Christ had to submit to knowing dependently and to knowing partially. He had to learn to obey without knowing all the facts and to believe without being in possession of full information. He had to forgo the comfort which omniscience would sometimes have brought.”[iv]

The times where he certainly knows much more than any human could know—like when he knows what people are thinking or when he tells them what will happen before it happens—it was the Father revealing it to him supernaturally. He was like us in every way, only without sin. He grew in wisdom by listening to his parents, by observing God’s created order, by reading the Scriptures. In short, he grew in wisdom much like we do. The only difference was that he didn’t have the hindrances of a sinful nature. His mind was always fully aligned with God’s will.

In every second, he loved the Lord his God with all his mind. He also shared a unique relationship with the Father. One more quote from Macleod: “Jesus lived in a thought world of pure revelation, so that to an extent we cannot fathom, God disclosed himself not only to his thinking but in his thinking.” It’s no wonder that Luke says twice—in verses 40 and 52—that the favor of God was upon him.

Jesus’ Sonship

This brings us to the main portion of our passage, where Luke is determined to help us see more of Jesus’ sonship. Jesus is at the Feast of the Passover with his parents. In verse 43, the feast is over and it’s time for the family to return. To this point, his parents have done everything for him. Mary gave birth. Mary laid him in a manger. Joseph and Mary took him to be circumcised. They bring him to the Feast.

But now in verse 43, there’s a shift. Jesus takes on a more active role. For the first time, he acts on his own initiative. He stays behind in Jerusalem. And in case we didn’t catch the significance of this moment, Luke tells us, “His parents did not know it.” This more active role then continues throughout the rest of the passage. It’s here that Luke records Jesus’ speaking for the first time. Jesus has his own reasons for staying behind. And then, when they eventually return as a family, it no longer says, “they returned” or “his parents brought him,” the focus remains on Jesus’ active role: “he went down with them, and he came to Nazareth.”

What is this shift in emphasis? What are we to make of Jesus’ choices as Luke’s Gospel moves forward? The answer comes in Jesus’ response to Mary. Mary and Joseph thought Jesus was with the group they traveled with. A couple weeks ago, I overheard one of our own parents say, “We don’t need to worry about our kids. They’re surrounded by people who love them.” I’m sure Mary and Joseph thought the same. They also showed some level of trust that, in some ways, Jesus knew his whereabouts. What they didn’t expect was for him to not be present at all.

And verse 44 says they didn’t discover his absence until a day into their journey. They search for Jesus among their relatives and acquaintances. Verse 45, they can’t find him. So, they return to Jerusalem (that’s another day). And after three days—verse 46—they find him in the temple, “sitting among the teachers, listening to them, asking them questions” like it’s no big deal. Jesus is answering these teachers (at age twelve!) like he’s more than one of their equals. Everybody’s impressed. That is, everybody except his momma and daddy. Mary says, “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.”

And Jesus says, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” Other translations have, “Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business.” Literally, it’s “in the things of my Father.” In any case, we’re immediately struck by an important contrast. Mary just said, “your father and I,” referring to Joseph. But it’s clear that Jesus doesn’t have Joseph in view when he says, “my Father”—“Did you not know that I must be in the things of my Father.”

In other words, his relationship with God the Father supersedes his relationship with Joseph. Joseph is Jesus’ adoptive father, but God is Jesus’ Father in the truest sense. Primary allegiance belongs to Jesus’ heavenly Father. Joseph and Mary played an important role in raising Jesus; and they will continue to play an important role. As Luke says in verse 51, Jesus returned with them to Nazareth and was submissive to them. But moving forward, Jesus’ steps will be determined by ultimate submission to his Father in heaven. He will have to make choices that, like the situation here, don’t make any sense to them. Verse 50, “they didn’t understand the saying that he spoke to them.”

In the moment, Mary and Joseph could’ve thought, “Child, what are you talking about? The best thing for you to do is be with us.” But little did they know that at the age of twelve, Jesus was already learning what it meant for him to choose God’s will even when the closest family members wanted him to align with their will. Sometimes those two things would overlap—to submit to his parents was to submit to God. But when their will differed from God’s, Jesus would choose the will of his Father in heaven. Choosing God over family is something Jesus would have to face again and again on his mission—with his siblings as well.

This was the path set before him. Jesus’ life is determined by his heavenly Father more than his earthly parents. And eventually such an alignment with his Father’s will would lead him to the cross, where he would die to forgive our sins. Brothers and sisters, I hope you see the good news here in Jesus’ sonship. Jesus’ mission to the cross is not his personal plan to rescue us from an angry Father. That’s a distortion of the gospel. The cross is the Father’s plan from the beginning; and one that his Son gladly submits to. God does not love us because of the cross. God loves us because he freely chose to, and that love then compels him to send his Son to bring us to himself.[v]

It was the whole reason God’s Son became a man. Yes, we needed a Savior who was God, because we needed a sacrifice of infinite value. Only God can satisfy God. But we also needed a Savior who was man. The human race stands guilty and cursed with death, because the first man, Adam, disobeyed God. We too have sinned in our flesh and are accountable to God’s punishment as humans. To save us, God had to provide a Savior who was truly man—a new Adam to obey where the first one failed; a man who’s unwaveringly committed to his Father’s will; a human substitute to die for human sinners. In the person of Christ, we find both—he is the God-man.

Just think, the Son of God knows what it’s like to experience the limitations of our humanity. He knows what it’s like to grow up and become a teenager. He knows what it’s like to keep having to submit to his parents. He knows what it’s like to be misunderstood by his parents when he’s doing the right thing. He knows what it’s like when pressed to choose God over family. And all this he experienced without sin, and with a mind wholly tuned to God’s will, in order to become our perfect Savior.

Mary didn’t yet understand all these things. But her lack of understanding didn’t keep her from treasuring up all these things in her heart—verse 51. The pattern of Mary’s life continues to be one of faith, of humble reception of whatever God throws at her. Even when she’s rebuffed by her twelve-year-old son (and Lord), she doesn’t put him off or grow bitter. She treasures these moments and ponders them in her heart.

In writing these things, Luke hopes that we’ll respond the same way—that even when you don’t yet understand everything about Jesus, what you do understand will be treasured. Because, you see, the lack of understanding eventually gets solved. Throughout Jesus’ ministry, his family and his disciples will continue to misunderstand him. They won’t get all that he’s doing and saying. And yet Jesus continues to teach them and love them. He dies for them; and then he rises from the dead, meets them on the Damascus road, and starts opening their minds to understand who he truly is.

The misunderstandings start getting solved in light of his resurrection victory. So that everything you treasure about Jesus on the way to his finished work becomes all the more glorious. He is the Son of God, just as the angel told Mary; and that Son obeyed his Father with an unwavering resolve to save us all. Trust what Luke has written here; and treasure these things in your own heart.

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[i] Donald Macleod, The Person of Christ (Downers Grove: IVP, 1998), 164.

[ii] Macleod, Person of Christ, 164.

[iii] Macleod, Person of Christ, 159.

[iv] Macleod, Person of Christ, 169.

[v] See especially the discussion in John Murray, Redemption: Accomplished and Applied (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1955), 10-11.