Firstborns in the modern era have completed baby books.  When our first child was born we had sticker calendars.  First bath, first time to roll over, first visit from Grandma, first army crawl, first spoon of rice cereal, first words, and first birthday.  A firstborn’s baby calendar had more stickers than the window beside a toddler’s car-seat.   But second-born children are a different story.   Their bevy of ‘first’ stickers often don’t make it to the calendar.   We place a few but miss more than a few.  We had good intentions.  But diapers, sleeplessness, and an active toddling older sibling inevitably hinder our chronicling.

By the time baby three comes along, we don’t even have a sticker calendar.  All the ‘firsts’ are captured and archived among terabytes of digital photography, rarely accessed and hard to locate. It’s not that those subsequent ‘firsts’ are less precious, it’s just that the tyranny of the urgent insists on more itinerant curation. 

Before the modern era, however.  That is, when I was a boy, we had no sticker calendars or baby books.  The mementos of our birth and growth were simply placed in a decorative box, to be discovered and perused every decade or so at a Feast of our Nativity. Growth out our house was charted simply with pencil marks, initials, and dates on the doorway in our kitchen next to THE telephone.   Each year on our birthday, and sometimes at the beginning of the school year, my father would assemble us in the kitchen for the ritual marking.   Like rings on a tree, these marks recorded only how much larger we were than last year.   Silent, but salient, these marks on the doorframe spoke of growth and change. 

It is part of being human to grow and to mark our physical, mental, relational, and vocational growth.  On the fourth day of the world, God created celestial calendars to mark the days, months, years, and seasons.   Even before he made man, he marked time.   Man was created into and continues to be born into a cycle of days, months, years, and seasons.   To be human is to exhibit and chart growth.

One of the great truths of our faith, central to God’s redemptive plan and indispensable to the gospel, is that our Savior is both fully God and fully man.  Paul noted in 1 Timothy that this is a great mystery, writing, ‘Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of godliness: He was manifested in the flesh.’ (1 Timothy 3:16).   And elsewhere he wrote.

Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.

Philippians 2:5-7

 The Westminster Confession of Faith, chapter 8.2, expresses this mystery well.

The Son of God, the second person in the Trinity, being very and eternal God, of one substance, and equal with the Father, did, when the fullness of time was come, take upon Him man’s nature, with all the essential properties and common infirmities thereof; yet without sin: being conceived by the power of the Holy Ghost, in the womb of the Virgin Mary, of her substance. So that two whole, perfect, and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion. Which person is very God and very man, yet one Christ, the only mediator between God and man.

Westminster Confession of Faith, VIII.2

Yet this great mystery has always been a fertile field for confusion and error.  And often this confusion has tended to diminish Christ’s humanity as merely illusory.  Or it has confused and conflated his divine and human natures in some hybridized fashion.  We often hear Jesus referred to by the theologians as the ‘God-man.’  But even this term reveals our struggle to accept that ‘two whole, perfect, and distinct natures, the Godhead and the manhood, were inseparably joined together in one person, without conversion, composition, or confusion.’

The Scriptures are replete with the revelation of the deity of Jesus Christ.  Even the best efforts of anti-trinitarians to deliberately redact the Greek New Testament cannot erase the pervasive scriptural witness that Jesus is fully God.   And yet, the New Testament also gives clear and compelling witness to his full humanity.   A humanity that is true and distinct from his divine nature, though joined in one person. 

The story of the boy Jesus in the Temple is a prime example.  Bookended by two passages that speak of Jesus physical, intellectual, emotional, relational, and spiritual growth, we encounter in Jesus’ response to his mothers’ rebuke, his first recorded words.  Words that acknowledge a growing consciousness of his identity.  A growth that surprises us but should not.

It is part of being a real human to grow.  And like the marks on the doorframe of my childhood kitchen, the Bible points to the true humanity of Jesus by indicating that he grew.  He grew in size.  He grew in wisdom.  He grew in favor with God and man.  He learned obedience.  And in his humanity, there are many times when there were things he did not know.   And while this surprises us, it should not.  

We cannot fully understand the interaction of Jesus’ human and divine nature.  Yet we can be sure that Jesus’ humanity was real.  It was not hybridized, confused, or conflated with his deity.  The heart of the gospel and our redemption depends upon the full deity and full humanity of Jesus.   The Westminster Larger Catechism puts it well.

38. Why was it requisite that the mediator should be God? It was requisite that the mediator should be God, that He might sustain and keep the human nature from sinking under the infinite wrath of God, and the power of death; give worth and efficacy to His sufferings, obedience and intercession; and to satisfy God’s justice, procure His favor, purchase a peculiar people, give His Spirit to them, conquer all their enemies, and bring them to everlasting salvation.

39. Why was it requisite that the mediator should be man? It was requisite that the mediator should be man, that He might advance our nature, perform obedience to the law, suffer and make intercession for us in our nature, have a fellow-feeling of our infirmities; that we might receive the adoption of sons, and have comfort and access with boldness unto the throne of grace.

40. Why was it requisite that the mediator should be God and man in one person?
It was requisite that the mediator, who was to reconcile God and man, should Himself be both God and man, and this in one person, that the proper works of each nature might be accepted of God for us, and relied on by us, as the works of the whole person.

Westminster Larger Catechism, Questions 38-40

In Luke 2:40-52 we encounter a passage that challenges us.   We see the reality of Jesus’ humanity displayed through the very fact of human growth.  And in this we learn that our Savior is indeed our faithful high priest “touched with the feeling of our infirmity.”  And sharing with us in flesh and blood that he might, in our nature“ destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery.” (Hebrews 2:14-15)

The story of the boy Jesus at the Temple is more than a literary transition from his infancy to his manhood.  It is a critical passage reiterating the glorious truth of our Savior’s full humanity.  Join us as we examine Luke 2:40-52 and consider the reality and significance of Jesus’ full humanity. We meet on the square in Pottsville, right next to historic Potts’ Inn at 10:30 am for worship.  Get directions here or contact us for more info.  Or join us on Facebook Live @PottsvilleARP or YouTube.