“The Case for Christ - Childhood Development” - (part 18)

'And the Child grew, and waxed strong; and becoming filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him.' 
(Lu 2:40) 

And, in v 52: ‘...Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favor with God and man.’

He 'grew' - what a word - 'grew'! 

The Child grew! Jesus, the Son of God, grew! The Son of God was growing toward manhood!

'Grew' - what does the word tell us about His humanity? 

It speaks of an enlargement, of growing to the highest potential possible, of the human-life processes working in their maximun power. 

It speaks of a movement onward - He was growing big and strong, always growing in His bodily frame and developing in wisdom as He grew in years.

So Jesus, the Child, 'grew and waxed strong'. 

This was the normal and natural way for an infant to grow into early childhood, and then into a young person, and, finally, on into adulthood.

There was nothing unusual about His growth in stature - He ‘grew and became strong’!

And, as He grew physically, He also grew in wisdom.   

Wisdom - He developed in His mental and intellectual capabilities.

And, what does growing in wisdom indicate in this little Child?

This is mentioned specifically, I believe, to show us that He did not just ‘know’ things, bypassing the normal human way of gaining knowledge and instruction.  

He was not being driven by a force that so controlled His destiny that it gripped Him, pushed Him, and coerced Him beyond the normal processes of developing life.

Oh - no - His ‘becoming filled with wisdom’ was exactly as it was with any infant on into childhood. 

His growth was a regular development that was not just the process of a physiological growth from within.

It was a growth coupled with influences coming from without - influences of instruction, of experiences, of observations, and the many ways a little child grows mentally.

He grew in essential truth, He grew in an ever-clearer knowledge of things, He grew in an understanding of the reason behind things.   

And, His growth was just naturally developing into God’s design and purpose for His life.

One of the greatest influences in this part of His growth was the effect Mary and Joseph had on Him.

We know that they were devout people who sought to keep all the requirements of the temple as they lived within the boundaries of their faith community for we see them there on a number of occasions.

They were careful to bring Jesus to the temple to be dedicated as one Who was to be set aside for service unto God.

This is what circumcision of the male child meant: it gave a child his name and marked his acceptance into the faith  community - he was set forth as one of God’s children.

This was an act of blessing: it invoked God’s sanction upon the child and the obedience of the parents to this detail was of utmost importance to the child’s life. 

And, just as a personal note here, I am always delighted when parents bring their little ones to the Lord’s house for dedication.  

It is there they hear - even as little babies who seemingly do not understand nor appreciate - even as little as they are, they are hearing their first sights and sounds of the glory of God and the love of God in praises and song!

What could be a better welcome to life?

It certainly is no small thing!

You see - when we, their parents, start from the very beginning - we know that there is being established an awareness of the Lord’s purpose that will, one day, respond to His reach into their hearts. 
 
All the experiences and influences received as a young child of the reality of God’s presence and love do bring insight later and do influence the framework for the building of a good spiritual foundation for life. 

And - so it was in Jesus’ growing-up years!

It was through the influence of Mary and Joseph that Jesus learned of His ‘Father’s House’.

It was there He learned ‘God’.

He learned of worshipping His Father in heaven, of hearing of those things that spoke of God’s glory.

He learned of God’s love, of His ever-present help and the care of His people in the Old Testament writings, of all the things spoken of about Him in the law and by the prophets.

I do not, for one moment, think that Jesus would have been able to clearly define His relationship to His Father except for those formative years He had to pass through.

God, His Father, was having direct and immediate dealings with this young Child as He was growing, inwardly and outwardly.

We know this, because - by the time He reached twelve years of age - He was found in the temple as an inquisitive, young lad, wanting to know more from the temple experts.

He had been taught well for He utterly astonished those learned men as they perceived His interest and depth of Scriptural knowledge.

They were amazed at His questions and His responses to them - for a twelve year old, it was remarkable to them.

A little child's brain is always thinking, always creating, always imagining, always dreaming and Jesus was no different in this regard.

So, the mind of the physical body that was growing was being filled with 'wisdom’ - by observing, by being taught, by asking questions and having those questions answered.

He was discovering and learning to affirm His own identity, a problem that seems to be so important in our own generation: ‘Who am I’, is the topic of the earnest seekers of themselves and of the direction of their lives.

But - Jesus had no trouble in this: one day, He could declare, ‘I know where I come from and I know where I am going.’ (Jn 8:14)

It was not something He knew right off - it came as He grew in wisdom, to a fuller understanding of Himself.

It was so normal - so natural - so right - the Son of God was going through the normal processes of growing into manhood!

Why should this be so important? Why? - because He was learning of a little child’s nature and temperament.

How could He effectively be our High Priest now if He had not experienced every stage of man’s existence?

So, He is now able to be just as effective a High Priest to a little child as He is to an adult.

He grew in wisdom concerning this, too.

And - in all the normal processes of growing up - '...the grace of God was upon Him.'

What a sacred, beautiful description of a child’s development this is: ‘...the grace of God was upon Him’!

It was the wonderful grace of God that was covering Him - it was being showered upon Him in the most tender way!

How was this known that this was taking place in Jesus?

Luke, the writer, is reporting it as a fact of His early life. 

And how did Luke know that was happening?

He - and all others - could see God's grace coming out of Jesus in His very character, His attitude, and His demeanor - He was growing ‘...in favor with God and man.’

God, His Father, was approving of how He was growing.

And the grace of God was pleasing to all those about Him - He was finding favor with men, too. 

Did we catch that? He was finding favor with men because the grace of God was operating so clearly in Him!

There is a message here for us all - I hope you will think about it.

We can see the effect of this growth of grace in Jesus later when He spoke 'gracious words' in Luke 4:22.

Luke 4:22: 'And all bare witness, and wondered at the gracious words which proceedeth out of His mouth.'

Gracious words of the divine life do not proceed out of a man without it first having been put into that man.

You see - His childhood was the time set aside in His human life for Jesus to first learn the divine message He was to carry to the world. 

He was about thirty years old - thirty years old - by that time. It took far more than a few days or even a few years before those gracious words were to come forth.

Sometimes, we are so eager to speak when we really know nothing yet of God’s divine work in us.

Have you found that to be so?

We, too, need to learn that God’s grace needs the time and the space to work deeply within before we are ready to let His divine ‘gracious words’ proceed from our mouths.    

If we have no time for instruction from Him, no time for just waiting before Him in quietness, confidence, and humble yieldedness, no time for growing within the boundaries of a faith community where He is present in His glory and love, then that which comes forth from us is really of little worth!

It behooves us to remember that His ‘gracious’ words cannot come forth from us if it has never gotten into us yet!

But - what a witness of the workings of God of His childhood days when Jesus spoke the ‘gracious’ words in 
Luke 4:22.

‘He grew...becoming filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him.’ 

Now - let me say something about our little ones in regard to the growth pattern Jesus laid before us.

We certainly cannot equate Jesus with our children nor with any other child - of course, we know that. He needed no redeemer - we do!

In Him, there was the infinite mystery of His sinless Being that would answer to the announcement one day that He is our sinless Redeemer.  

But, within the references to His normal growth in wisdom, we know He was learning ‘God, His Father’ and He was learning to answer to the fact of life and what life held for Him.

Where was He learning most of it? It was from the example and influence of home life.

How Mary and Joseph responded to the work of God helped to shape Him into that direction.

Their obedience to the details concerning His birth, their obedience to the law that was so important for the male child’s place in the temple, their worship there, their recognition that God had fulfilled every one of His promises concerning the child's birth - these were all expressions of their deep awareness and their deepest commitments to God for the care of this Child.

As Jesus grew so normally, so our children ought also to grow where they learn to identify life, deal with life as they mature to adulthood.

And - in the case of being born to Christian parents, they ought to be effected spiritually all along.

When all other conditions are equal, as they should be in a child, then the growth leads naturally into a life where God's  spiritual purpose for them is realized.

Actually, the word 'train' in Proverbs 22:6 that speaks of a child's early development, has the idea of dedication so that training is toward the aim of godly awareness.

Declaring to them their relationship to God through Jesus Christ as they are growing is in line with the purpose for which they were dedicated unto the Lord.    

It is training into the way of the 'wise and the righteous', training into that spiritual growth that can find its beauty and grace only in its right relationship with God.

Apart from this, even if the physical and the mental are well trained - without the demonstration of the grace of God coming out from his home life, the formative years are wasted years for that child: they are years that have robbed him of potential toward true spiritual development for which he was dedicated.

And - that brings us to parents and the way we live before them where they see in us the pattern for their continuing lives during this period of development.

Yes - there is the rub! The question is of us: Have we dealt with life yet ourselves?

Have we, or are we, growing in the way of Christ so that they actually see His grace in us?

Is it so evident in us that it just flows out of us with a well-disposed, gentle, tender way, as it flowed out from Jesus in Luke 4:22, that I quoted earlier?  

Are we able to lead our children into that living experience in the way of Christ? 

We cannot, you know, if we are not in it ourselves?

I fear that all too often we act as though we are not related to Christ at all.

Our attitude of independence, of waywardness, of hardheartedness, of sin denies the fact of our relationship with Him.

We ought to know and to value above all things our relatedness to Him.

Our children ought to perceive that in such a way that they ought to be desirious to find that in their own lives.

You see - Peter was not speaking light-heartedly when he said: ‘grow in grace and in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ.’ (2 Peter 3:18)

‘Grow in the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ and grow in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ’, he said.

Other translations say: ‘continue to grow’ and ‘become better acquainted with’: in other words, be ‘becoming filled with wisdom’.

Peter was addressing the Christitan’s spiritual stability in this letter.

He was emphasizing that it is strengthened and supported in ‘growing’, in developing spiritual virtues and fruit born out of the increasing knowledge of the grace of Jesus Christ and the increasing knowledge of Jesus Christ, of moving onward in His grace and knowledge to keep from getting entangled in false doctrine and false practices, to keep from wrong thinking and wrong behavior. 

So - he admonished them to keep on growing in Christ - keep growing in His grace and keep growing in the knowledge of Him.

Fortunate is the Christian who knows - who really knows from deep within - that the grace and the knowledge of Jesus Christ is a lifelong learning experience with the aim of always knowing Him in a fuller and more intimate way!

Fortunate is the Christian who knows he will never - never - come to the end of learning Christ.

I hope we will hold on to that truth for the rest of our lives!

In closing, let me say this: it is a wondrous thing to see the workings of God in the life of a little child. It is a remarkable and extraordinary wonder to behold!

And it is a wondrous thing to know of the workings of Christ in our own lives, whether we are parents or not!

But - remember - the most valued place a little child can be is under the beacon light of godly parents whose lives shine forth the grace and the knowledge of Christ before the child.

And - as the growth pattern of Jesus is recorded, so it holds true of each one of us: ‘And the Child grew: and waxed strong; and becoming filled with wisdom; and the grace of God was upon Him.’

My prayer is that each of us will take this message and 
apply it to our hearts - not only for the sake of our little ones among us, but for our own sakes - in living lives that flow with the wisdom of Christ and with the graciousness God in Christ is in us.

Oh - that we may all come, as an entire fellowship, into the '...unity of faith and of the knowledge of the Son of God unto a perfect man unto the measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ:

That we [ourselves]...be no more children...but may grow up into Him, which is the Head, even Christ...'.

‘...that we may grow up into Him,...Christ...’.

So, ‘...grow in the grace of Jesus Christ and grow in the knowledge of Jesus Christ...’!

Let every heart say:

‘Amen! So be it!’