Luke 2:51-52

3. The residence at Nazareth: Luke 2:51-52.

From this moment Jesus possesses within Him this ideal of a life entirely devoted to the kingdom of God, which had just flashed before His eyes. For eighteen years He applied Himself in silence to the business of His earthly father at Nazareth, where He is called the carpenter (Mark 6:3). The analytical form ἦν ὑποτασσόμενος indicates the permanence of this submission; and the pres. partic. mid., submitting Himself, its spontaneous and deliberate character. In this simple word, submitting Himself, Luke has summed up the entire work of Jesus until His baptism.

But why did not God permit the child to remain in the temple of Jerusalem, which during the feastdays had been His Eden? The answer is not difficult. He must inevitably have been thrown too early into the theologico-political discussions which agitated the capital; and after having excited the admiration of the doctors, He would have provoked their hatred by His original and independent turn of thought. If the spiritual atmosphere of Nazareth was heavy, it was at least calm; and the labours of the workshop, in the retirement of this peaceful valley, under the eye of the Father, was a more favourable sphere for the development of Jesus than the ritualism of the temple and the Rabbinical discussions of Jerusalem.

The remark at the end of Luke 2:51 is similar to that at Luke 2:19; only for the verb συντηρεῖν, which denoted the grouping of a great number of circumstances, to collect and combine them, Luke substitutes here another compound, διατηρεῖν. This δια denotes the permanence of the recollection, notwithstanding circumstances which might have effaced it, particularly the inability to understand recorded in Luke 2:50. She carefully kept in her possession this profound saying as an unexplained mystery.

The fifty-second verse describes the youth of Jesus, as the fortieth verse had depicted His childhood; and these two brief sketches correspond with the two analogous pictures of John the Baptist (Luke 1:66; Luke 1:80). Each of these general remarks, if it stood alone, might be regarded, as Schleiermacher has suggested, as the close of a small document. But their relation to each other, and their periodical recurrence, demonstrate the unity of our writing. This form is met with again in the book of the Acts. ῾Ηλικία does not here denote age, which would yield no meaning at all, but height, stature, just as Luke 19:3. This term embraces the entire physical development, all the external advantages; σοφία, wisdom, refers to the intellectual and moral development. The third term, favour with God and men, completes the other two. Over the person of this young man there was spread a charm at once external and spiritual; it proceeded from the favour of God, and conciliated towards Him the favour of men. This perfectly normal human being was the beginning of a reconciliation between heaven and earth. The term wisdom refers rather to with God; the word stature to with men. The last words, with men, establish a contrast between Jesus and John the Baptist, who at this very time was growing up in the solitude of the desert; and this contrast is the prelude to that which later on was to be exhibited in their respective ministries.

There is no notion for the forgetfulness or denial of which theology pays more dearly than that of a development in pure goodness. This positive notion is derived by biblical Christianity from this verse. With it the humanity of Jesus may be accepted, as it is here presented by Luke, in all its reality.