Luke 2:50

‘And they did not understand the saying which he spoke to them.'

Meanwhile they did not understand what He was talking about. They could not appreciate the depth of his feeling about being with His Father. It was not surprising. No one else had a son who on coming to Jerusalem spent the week at the Temple learning and asking questions. Other people's sons saw themselves as on holiday, and as they got precious few of those they made the most of them. And most boys looked mainly to their fathers for teaching about religion. So they could not understand that Jesus had a source of learning that went beyond that. And that that was indeed the secret of His special ‘wisdom' (Luke 2:52). They could not fathom the Messianic mind.

But for Jesus there was no greater delight than to learn the meaning of the word of God and to hear about His Father, and He had a special understanding that no other had. This brings out the great gulf there was between Him and all mankind. And even though ten or so years before they had learned that He was to be something special, they had not expected it to be quite like this. Even His parents did not understand Him. He had never behaved like this before, because He was too young. But they had failed to appreciate that now He considered Himself ‘grown up' religiously, and so as needing to be built up by the special wisdom that He could receive from His Father, something beyond what His father could teach Him. Thus He had felt a new sense of needing to know His Father more intimately. But such a concept was beyond them.

And so in a quite unemphasised way we learn of the uniqueness of this young boy Whom no one understood, a young boy Who lived in such close touch with His Father that He could not understand why others did not do the same. He called Him ‘My Father' and saw Him rather than Joseph as His father when it came to religious matters. That demonstrated His sense of the unique relationship that there was between Him and God. Perhaps He did not yet fully realise that He was His Father's only Son in the full sense. It may be that that understanding would come later as He matured. But if He did not He was well on the way to it. He knew that His relationship to God was unique (note the ‘My', and compare its use in Luke 10:22; Luke 22:29; John 10:29; Matthew 10:32; Matthew 11:27; Matthew 25:34; Matthew 26:42, all of which indicate a unique relationship with God).

Note also how this incident links Jesus with the Temple. Indeed the whole of these first two Chapter s stress connection with the Temple. The point is being made that the message of Jesus did not start out with a bias against the Temple, but rather that He and His witnesses had the closest of relationships with the Temple. He was approved by the choice souls who frequented it, and He Himself sought truth there. And when listing the temptations Luke placed the last crucial one in the Temple (Luke 4:9). All this stressed that He came from the very centre of Israel's worship. Salvation was very much of the Jews (John 4:22). It was only later in Luke that He would have to warn of the destruction of the Temple (Luke 13:35; Luke 21:6) because He had found out what it was really like (Luke 19:45), and even then He still preached there (Luke 19:45; Luke 19:47; Luke 21:37). It was, however, finally the Temple that rejected Him (Luke 22:52). (Yet even so the Apostles end up praising God in the Temple (Luke 24:53), and the first acts of witness in Acts will be in the Temple).

The same thing happens in Acts. The Apostles continue regularly to preach and pray in the Temple. And it is only when the Temple rejects first the Apostles, and then Paul, that they go elsewhere. Christianity was thus to be seen as springing from all that was good in the Temple (compare Ezekiel 47:1). In a sense it was like the chicken from the egg. But once the chicken had come forth, the new Israel from the old, the eggshell could be thrown away. It was no longer needed.