Jesus was a growing boy.

JESUS WAS A GROWINGBOY.
MENTALLY, PHYSICALLY, SPIRITUALLY AND
SOCIALLY.
EDITED BY GLENN PEASE
LUKE 2:52 And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature,
and in favorwith God and man.
New Living Translation
Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with
God and all the people.
BIBLEHUB RESOURCES
Pulpit Commentary Homiletics
Growth, Our Lord's And Our Own
Luke 2:51, 52
W. Clarkson
The growth of Jesus Christhis subjection to his parents teachus some things
respecting him, and they suggestsome things for our own guidance.

I. THE GROWTHOF JESUS CHRIST.
1. The fullness of his condescension. We find this in his stooping so far as
(1) to make it becoming that he should "be subject to" his parents, and
(2) to make it possible that he should grow.
How the Infinite One could so bereave himself of his infinitude as to be able to
increase in wisdom, we cannot understand. But we cannotunderstand
infinitude at all, and we act wiselywhen we do not draw hard-and-fast
deductions from it. We stand on far firmer ground when we take the
statementof the historian in its natural sense, and open our mind to the fact
that Jesus Christ, "our Lord and our God," did stoop so far that it was
possible for him to increase in knowledge andin favor with God and with
man. We do not question the reality of his growth in body; why should we
doubt, or receive with any reserve, the affirmation that he grew also in mind?
2. The harmoniousness of his growth. He grew
(1) in bodily stature, and, of course, in all bodily strength and skill;
(2) in mental equipment - in technicalknowledge, orin the "education" ofhis
time, in appreciationof nature, in knowledge ofmankind, in apprehension of
Divine truth, in generalintellectualenlargement;
(3) in spiritual beauty and nobility - "in favor with God and man." Not that
he was at any time faulty or lacking in any excellencywhich it behoved him at
that time to show, but that, as his faculties expanded and his opportunities of
manifesting characterwere multiplied, he developed all that was admirable in
the sight of man and of God. There is a far greaterpossibility of spiritual
beauty and nobility in a young man with matured faculty and widening
relationships than in the very little child, restricted, as he must be, in powers
and in surroundings. So, as Jesus increasedin years and grew in wisdom,
there was in him an unfolding of moral and spiritual worth which attracted
the eyes of men and which satisfiedthe Spirit of the Holy One himself.
II. OUR HUMAN GROWTH.

1. Unlike our Lord, there is no element of condescensionimplied in our
growth. We did not stoopto infancy; our course had then its commencement;
and in the youngestchild, with all its helplessness,but with all its latent
capacities,there is a great gift from the hand of God. Whateverit means, in its
humiliations and in its practicalillimitableness, it is so much more than we
could claim.
2. As with our Lord, our growth should be harmonious. All the three elements
in our compound nature should undergo simultaneous and proportionate
development. This is at first a parental question, but subsequently it is one
that affects every one capable of growth.
(1) Training of the body; its nurture and culture, so that it shall be continually
advancing in strength and skill and symmetry.
(2) Discipline of the mind; its instruction and exercise, so that it will be ever
increasing in knowledge andenlarging in faculty.
(3) Culture of the character;its guidance and formation, so that there shall be
(a) attractiveness in the sight of man, and
(b) worthiness in the judgment of God.
It is, indeed, true that we may not give pleasure to men in proportion as we
grow in moral and spiritual worth, for, as with our Master, our purity and
devotion may be an offense unto them. It is also to be remembered that we
may gain God's distinct approval long before we have reachedthe point of
irreproachableness;for that which he delights to see in his children is an
earnesteffort after, and a constant growthtowards, that which is true and
pure and generous. - C.

Biblical Illustrator
And Jesus increasedin wisdom
Luke 2:52
A pattern childhood and youth
H. M. Grout.
1. He grew, not in stature only, but in wisdom and favour with God and man.
Christ, as Divine, must have had all knowledge andpower from the first. But
subjecting Himself to the laws of human development, He thereby consented
to an unfolding which, in childhood should exhibit a perfect Child, in youth a
perfect Youth, in manhood a perfect Man. It was the unfolding of a perfect
bud into a perfectflower. At eachadvancing step He was only evincing larger
measures of that wisdom and moral excellence which, in possibility and germ,
were in Him from the first.
2. He was content with an obscure and humble home. In these days there is
everywhere a greatcrowding into cities and populous towns. These are
thought to have peculiar advantages for the training and educationof
children. But have not the solid men, for whose living in it the world has most
reasonto be grateful, oftenestcome from hillsides and homes like that of
Nazareth? It is in obscure places that youth escapesthe wasting strifes of
ambition, the unproductive chase aftervanities; that he learns not only "to
scorndelights and love laborious days," but to think his own thoughts and to

stand alone. The wise youth is content just where it has pleasedGod to place
him. If the station is lowly and the lot obscure, he does not chafe and repine;
he rather gives thanks.
3. He was a winning example of filial piety and obedience. Forthirty years He
was contentedly subjectto parental guidance and authority. It is the discipline
of a well-ordered home which makes goodcitizens. It is a blessing, above all
others, to grow up in a house where the gospelrule prevails. There it is that
foundations are laid for every moral virtue. There is the best safeguardof
purity. It is there that one learns the sweetnessoflowly ambitions and the
surpassing wealthof pure affection.
4. It is time to speak of His self-subjectionto the discipline of helpful industry.
He was called "the carpenter's son." He was Himself the carpenter. , who
lived as near to Him as we do to George Washington, speaksofHim as "a
workerin wood," and says that He "made ploughs and yokes and other
implements relating to husbandry." After Joseph's death, the care of His
mother would devolve upon Him. It is therefore proper to think of Him as
early sharing the lighter labours of His home. His little feet bear Him on many
a helpful errand for His mother. Pitcher in hand, He runs for waterto the
well. To kindle the fire He gathers and brings the wood. Soon, with growing
limbs, He begins to wield the hammer, the axe, and the saw in the shop; to
invent and shape toys for Himself and useful things for the house. In the
process oftime, He settles into a more patient industry. In the little village on
the hillside of Nazareth, He is "the carpenter." And such a shop as that in
which He wrought, must have been I Do you think He ever made reckless
promises, and failed to keepthem? Do you think He ever did poor work, and
chargedthe price of good? ThatHe ever concealeda flaw, or tried to get the
better of another in trade — can you believe that?
5. He was not in undue haste to have done with the work of preparation and to
enter upon His public ministry. In such backing lies the strength of all great
workers. Have we not often seenmen of ripened age, men of whom the world
never so much as heard the name, suddenly burst upon the stage of action,
assume an easyleadership, and carry off the best prizes of emolument and
honour? They are equal to the places they attempt to fill. They endure. Such

men have takentime for preparation. They have both knowledge andself-
knowledge. Theyhave that self-controlwhich comes ofquiet introvision. They
have root; and a root grows:it is not made; only to an extent canit be forced.
6. The childhood and youth of Jesus were marked by delight in the truths and
ordinances of religion. At twelve years old, when takento Jerusalem, His feet
swiftly bare Aim to the Temple. Let no parent, or teacher, or workerin the
Lord's vineyard look upon a child as too young to be interestedin holy things.
Little feet linger where earnestwords are spokenabout (God and duty to
Him. Little minds are full of wonder concerning the very deep things of the
world unseen. Little hearts would gladly know and choose the way of grateful
and loving service. Childhood's years may be given to God. And oh, what
glory and safetyand blessednessit is to have begun thus early.
7. He made His most earthly work a service unto His Father. Back at
NazarethHe was all the time doing His Father's business, just as truly as
when sitting among the doctors in the Temple. There is a time to pray, and
there is also a time to read, and a time to work. Give to eachits own time. And
if, in each, your purpose is equally to do the will of God, and bring honour to
Him, He is just as well pleasedwith the one as with the other. Go where God
bids you go, abide where He would have you abide, and do eachhour the
work He appoints for that hour; do all in faith and love, and for His glory; for
the restyou need have no fears. Thus the lowly can win as sweeta smile and
as large a reward as those who fill the highest places. He is with us in life's
valleys as truly as on the mountain-tops. The little child cancome as close to
His heart as the greatking. It is not a great name, or a giant intellect, or
conspicuous service, whichGod wants. It is only a trusting and obedient heart.
Who cannot, who would not, give that?
(H. M. Grout.)
Progressin spiritual things
John Smith.

Religionis a generous and noble thing, in regardto its progress;it is
perpetually carrying on that mind, in which it is once seated, towards
perfection. Though the first appearance ofit upon the souls of goodmen may
be, but as the wings of the morning, spreading themselves upon the
mountains, yet it is still rising higher and higher upon them, chasing awayall
the filthy mists and vapours of sin and wickednessbefore it, till it arrives to its
meridian altitude. There is the strength and force of the Divinity in it; and
though, when it first enters into the minds of men, it may seemto be "sownin
weakness," yetit will raise itself "in power." As Christ was in His bodily
appearance, He was still increasing in wisdom, and stature, and favour with
God and man, until He was perfectedin glory; so is He also in His spiritual
appearance in the souls of men: and accordinglythe New Testamentdoes
more than once distinguish of Christ, in His severalages and degrees of
growth in the souls of all true Christians. Good men are always walking on
from strength to strength, till at lastthey see God in Zion. Religion, though it
hath its infancy, yet it hath no old age:while it is in its minority, it is always in
motu; but, when it comes to its maturity, it will always be in quiete; it is then
"always the same, and its years fail not"; but it shall endure for ever.
(John Smith.)
Orderly development
H. R. Haweis, M. A.
An orderly development; none of your monstrous athletes;none of your mere
intellectual book-worms;none of your emaciated, hystericalsaints and
ascetics;none of your hermits or fanaticalantisocialvisionaries. He grew in
body, in mind, in soul, and heart; stature, wisdom, favour — human and
Divine. Is not that parable of childhood writ clear! Is not the messageto you
and to your children? Follow the lines, not of your crushed, but of your
restrained, controlled, and regenerate nature. Learn, like Him, by the things
that you suffer, undergo, have to put up with. Learn, before you teach;obey,
before you command; going in and out amongstmen, toil hand and heart
about the Father's business, and with an earever attuned to the voices in the

upper air, until we all come in the unity of the faith and the knowledge ofthe
Son of God, to a perfectman, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of
Christ.
(H. R. Haweis, M. A.)
Christ's growth in wisdom
J. J. Van Oosterzee, D. D.
The increase ofJesus in wisdom during this period was —
1. Real. Jesus hadto learn from the words of others what as yet He knew not;
and that was entirely unknown to Him as a child, which He had a glimpse of
as a boy, conjecturedas a youth, and first clearlyperceived as a man.
2. Unchecked. In attributing to the Lord Jesus the relative imperfection of
childhood, we must carefully avoid imputing to Him the failings of childhood.
His life showedno trace of childish faults, to be hereafter conquered. The
words of John (Matthew 3:14) show, on the contrary, what impression was
made by His moral purity when thirty years of age, and the voice from heaven
(Matthew 3:17) sets the sealof the Divine approval on the now completed
development of the Son of Man, a sealwhich the Holy One of Israelwould
only have offered to absolute perfection.
3. It was effectedby means —
(1)Careful home-training.
(2)The natural beauties of the neighbourhood of Nazareth.
(3)The Scriptures.
(4)The annual journeys to Jerusalem.
(5)Prayerful communion with His heavenly Father.
4. Normal, and so an example of what our development should be in
fellowship with Him.

(J. J. Van Oosterzee, D. D.)
The growth of Jesus in wisdom
DeanGoulburn.
Our Lord's body grew in stature, so that, when He reachedmanhood, He had
attained fair and comelyproportions. And while the body grew, His human
mind grew also;His human intelligence unfolded itself gradually into full
blossom, in the same manner as the mind and intelligence of other children,
only, doubtless, in a much greaterdegree. Perhaps you cannot understand
how this could be. To grow in wisdom must imply that the person who grows
is, at a more advanced age, wiserthan when He was younger; knows
something, understands something, which he did not know, and understand
before. But how could this be in His ease? youmay reasonablyask. Was He
not God, you may say, even when He was quite a young child? And how can
God be ignorant of anything, or fail to understand anything? Now it is true,
doubtless — absolutelytrue — that our Lord, even while he was a child, was
the everlasting God. But it is true also that He was "Godmanifest in the
flesh," God sinking Himself down to the low level of human nature. He
became really and truly for our sakes aninfant, a child, a youth, a man. He
did not merely seemto be human, but He actually was human. Now in order
that He might be really and truly a man, He consented, in His wonderful
condescension, notto call into exercise those powers whichHe had as God.
You can quite understand a personhaving strength, but not using it. A man
might have the strength of a giant, who might choose to exert Himself very
little, might never walk above a few yards, might not employ his hands in any
harder work than turning over the leaves of a book or reeling off a skeinof
silk. And in like manner a man may have a perfectly strong and goodeyesight,
but he need not use it farther than he pleases. He may shut his eyes altogether,
in which case he will see nothing. He may only half open them, in which ease
he will see but dimly and confusedly; or he may go and live in a dungeon,
where only a few straggling rays of light pierce the gloom;and then, however
goodhis eyesightmay be, he will for the first few seconds be able to see

nothing; but when the eye has adjusted itself to the circumstances in which it
is placed, he will begin to make out the forms of things around him, but will
not see their colours, or have any powerat all of examining them closely. This
may help you to understand how our Lord, while He had in ]dis Divine nature
all power and all knowledge, yet, when He made His appearance among us as
man, was ignorant of certainthings, and unable to do certainthings. In
coming into the world, He, by His own free will and consent, limited Himself
to do the things which a man could do, and to know the things which a man
could know. He came into our poor, narrow, dark nature, just as a free man
might come out of the light of day into a narrow, dark, prison-dungeon, and
there consentto be shut up. Such an one might have the powerof walking
miles, but in the dungeon he can only walk a few paces;he might have a very
keeneyesight, but in the dungeon he cannoteven see to read. Christ took a
nature which, till He took it, was not His own, and accommodatedHimself to
the feeblenessand ignorance of that nature — limited Himself, if I may use
the expression, to the walls of it.
(DeanGoulburn.)
Christ's increase in the favour of God
DeanGoulburn.
We may compare our Lord's period of growth, during which He was
prepared for His work, to the gradual executionof some greatpiece of
sculpture, a bust or a statue. Let us say that the marble chosenfor the work is
a piece without flaw, spotless white, without a single vein running through it.
Thus our Lord's human nature, unlike that which all of us inherit, was
perfectly free from all tendency to evil; holy, harmless, undefiled at His very
birth. But a white block of marble, though white when it is drawn from the
quarry, can be made a more perfectly beautiful thing by being chiselledinto
an exquisite form. And a human nature, which was originally sinless, may be
made a more perfectly beautiful thing by being disciplined through grace, and
through the experience of suffering, into the perfectlikeness of God. And you
can quite understand how a sculptor, who is daily at work upon a statue, has

an increasing satisfactionin it, as the work becomes more and more perfect,
views it with greaterpleasure and complacencyto-day, when it has receivedso
many flourishing touches, than he did some months ago, whenit was a mere
resemblance ofthe human form in outline. The work increases in favour with
him daily; and when it is finished, he is then perfectly satisfied. Thus it was
that Jesus, as a man, "increasedin favour with God."
(DeanGoulburn.)
On the education of children
B. Murphy.
It is not, alas, according to this model, that the generality of Christians form
their children. We behold them principally intent on procuring for them
worldly accomplishments, while they totally neglectto make them acquainted
with the greatduties of Christianity.
1. The human mind cannot be too early impressed with religious principles.
The prudent will, indeed, be carefulnot to make that a burden which should
be a pleasure; they will be contentto unfold the gospelprinciples by degrees,
as the youthful mind is able to receive them.
2. Nature only requires a little gentle assistance to perfectall her productions.
You have seena tender plant springing upon a fertile soil, what though tall
and straight, and promising to become the pride of the forest, since one
unlucky stroke may have crushed its aspiring head, and forced it from its
natural direction, from that moment it bended and grew downwards to the
earth, instead of towering to the skies. Thus, the human mind while young and
pliable, is in perpetual danger of growing luxuriant by too much indulgence,
or losing all its strength by the unnatural restraint of too much severity, to be
suppressedby misfortune, checkedby disappointment, or chilled by penury.
How liable is it to deviate from the straight line of rectitude and honour, by
the fascinationof example, and the influence of imitation; to folly, vice, and
ruin. It is the pleasing but important task of parents and guardians, to direct
and defend this young and delicate production; leading it from lower degrees

of perfection to higher, from the nursery to the field of action, till it is adorned
with the fairest honours, enriched with the most precious fruit, and ripe for
transplanting to the paradise of God, where it shall bloom afresh under the
immediate sunshine of heaven, and flourish for ever in immortal beauty and
perfection.
3. The prejudices receivedin youth are sometimes so violent and inveterate,
that even maturity of years, the admonition of friends, the principles of hope,
fear, honour, and religion, are unable too often to restrain them. Nay, the best
of all teachers, experience, frequently attempts, but in vain, to cure the
maladies of a wrong education. It is nonsense to expecta harvest, where the
seed. time has been lost, and you must be disappointed, who wish to reap
where you have not sown.
4. The leastindulgence of the bad inclinations of children, sometimes produces
the most fatal effects in society. Witness David's indulgence of Amnon — it
produced incest; of Absalom — it produced assassinationanda civil war; of
Adonijah — it produced a usurpation of the throne and crown. Observe,
again, how God punished Eli, who neglectedto correctduly the crimes of his
children. Can you, O parents, hear these awful truths, and not shudder at the
idea of indulging the leastvicious propensity in your children? But let me turn
from those gloomy images, to hold up to your view the picture of a parent's
care, rewardedin a wise and virtuous offspring. These will be your pride and
glory in the day of your health and strength; but in the gloomy and
melancholy seasonof sicknessand old age, they will be the light of your eyes,
and the cordial of your fainting spirits; and as once with tender care you
watchedtheir tender infancy, so shall they with pious duty support your
failing strength, soften the pangs of a dying hour, close your eyes in peace, and
eventually follow you to that world where love and bliss immortal reign.
(B. Murphy.)
God's favour to be sought
H. C. Trumbull.

Jesus wonthe favour of man by seeking the favour of God. It is not so
important that man should be pleasedwith us as that Godshould. But man's
favour is more likely to be won through seeking God's favourthan in any
other way. If we are always asking how those about us will look at us; if we
give large weight in our thoughts to the opinion of our fellows;if we
endeavour to so shape our course as to win popular approval, we are by no
means sure to have what we strive for; we may fall far short of the coveted
favour of man; and, moreover, may utterly lack God's approval, whether man
likes or dislikes us. But if we are always asking how God will look at our
course;if we give large weight in our thoughts to His opinion and His
commandments; if we seek to shape our course to win His approval, we are
sure to get what we most long for; and we are surer of having also the favour
of man than we could be through any other course. If Godis our friend, He
can secure to us man's approval. The best of human friends cannot win for us
God's favour.
(H. C. Trumbull.)
The secretofthe growth of Jesus
J. Clifford, D. D.
See the daisy. It opens its petals when the light dawns, and closes themat
sunset. It is in the right place to absorbout of earth and atmosphere the
nutritive forces it needs, and it grows. Go into a garden and ask what all these
various plants are doing. They toil not neither do they spin; they have no
visible machinery and yet they are all capturing sunbeams and converting
them into fragrances, essences,flowers and fruits for the welfare of the world.
Does your boy trouble about growth as he eats and drinks and plays? No!He
takes no thought for the morrow's growth. Flowers and children, rightly
placed, grow. Get a piston and place it where the steam is and it will go. Put
your water-wheelin the stream, and it turns. Man takes advantage ofthe
energies closeto hand and multiplies his forces a million-fold. So long as we
are in the wrong place we cannotgrow. The secretofthe growth of Jesus is
that He starts in the right place and keeps in it to the very end; He lives in and

for God; is bathed with the warm light, and refreshedby the pure breath and
nourished by the sweetfellowshipwith, and work for, the Father.
(J. Clifford, D. D.)
The silent growth of Jesus
J. Clifford, D. D. .
It is perplexing to some of us that there should be eighteenyears of unbroken
silence in such a life as Christ's. We have askedwhatwas Jesus at 17, 20, and
at 25? and though no audible voice responds to us, yet the silence, read in the
light of the wonderful work accomplishedin His brief ministry, is itself a sign
of the depth, continuity, and fulness of the moral growth. All growthis silent.
When nature is baptized in the fulness of spring forces, you hear not a rustle.
The whole movement takes place secretlyand silently, and the world comes up
anew without the sound of trumpet or the message ofherald: God builds His
temples without the sound of hammer. His great moral structures go up from
day to day without noise, His kingdoms come without observation,
notwithstanding the moment of their arrival may be one of tempest and
storm. Tyndall says" "All greatthings come slowlyto birth. Copernicus
pondered his greatwork for thirty-three years;Newton, for nearly twenty
years, kept the idea of gravitation before His mind; for twenty years also, he
dwelt upon his discoveryof fluxions; Darwin, for twenty-two years pondered
on the problem of the origin of species, and doubtless he would have
continued to do so had he not found Wallace upon his track." So Jesus stayed
in His place, did His carpentry, was obedient to His parents, acceptedthe
restraints of His position, silently devoured the many chagrins of His lot, met
His cares with a transcendentdisdain, drank in the sunlight of His Father's
face, and possessedHis soul in perfect patience, though urged by deep
sympathy and throbbing desire to save men. No boasting, no hurry, no
impatience, but a quiet maturing of power, and then so clad was He in
strength that He never lostan opportunity through delay or marred a bit of
His work by haste. When Perseus told Pallas Athene that he was ready to go
forth, young as he was, againstthe fabled monster Medusa the Gorgon, the

strange lady smiled and said, "Notyet; you are too young, and too unskilled:
for this is Medusa the Gorgon, the mother of a monstrous brood. Return to
your home and do the work which awaits you there. You must play the man in
that before I can think you worthy to go in searchof the Gorgon." It is hurry
that enfeebles us.
(J. Clifford, D. D. .)
The three ages ofChristian life
J. H. Grandpierre, D. D.
God in Christ has appeared among men to raise up againfallen humanity. In
order to do this, He laid hold upon it, in the cradle, and left it only at the
tomb; passing through all the stages ofits growth, traversing in successionall
the ages oflife, sanctifying our nature at all periods of our existence, and
causing us to see in His person, from the moment when He came into the
world till that of His exaltationin glory, the perfecttype of innocence and
holiness. It is thus that He became in turn an infant, youth, man; an infant,
obedient and submissive; a young man without reproach and keeping Himself
pure from all defilement of the flesh and of the world: a full-grown man
showing us in His characterand in His conduct the model of absolute
perfection. He stopped there; for He by whom and for whom are all things
ought: not to fail; it was necessarythat He should offer Himself a sacrifice in
all the vigour of age and in all the fulness of life: it was not becoming that He
should presentto us the picture of decrepitude and old age. But as there has
been a birth of the Son of God in the Man Jesus, a growthof the God-man in
the personof the Redeemer, so there has been, there is, and there will be, to
the end of time, a birth and growth of Christ in all the souls belonging to Him.
Christ is truly born. He grows up, He developes Himself in His people. There
is in turn, in their case, the infant, the youth, and the grown-up man, and He
completes in them the work of His grace till they come to the height of His
perfect stature.
(J. H. Grandpierre, D. D.)

The humanity of Christ
N. Emmons, D. D.
That Jesus was reallya man. Here it may be observed,
I. That He was really man BECAUSE HE HAD A HUMAN BODY. It was
formed and fashionedin His mother's womb by the great Parentof all flesh.
So it was, says the inspired writer, that while His mother was at Bethlehem,
"the days were accomplishedthat she should be delivered."
II. He was really man BECAUSE HE HAD A HUMAN SOUL AS WELL AS
A HUMAN BODY. This is necessarilyimplied in what is said of Him in the
text. He "increasedin wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man."
Here both His wisdom and piety are asserted;and we know that these are
properties of the soul, and not of the body.
III. That Christ was properly a human person will appear, if we consider
THE STATE AND CIRCUMSTANCESIN WHICH HE WAS PLACED
WHILE HE LIVED IN THIS WORLD. For —
1. He was fixed in a state of dependence.
2. He was placedunder law, which implies that He was a human moral agent,
and accountable to God like other men. We are told that "when the fulness of
the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the
law, to redeemthem that were under the law."
3. That Christ was placed, like all other men, in a state of probation from His
birth to His death.I now proceedto improve the subject.
1. If Christ was really man, then the Arian notion of His pre-existence before
He came into the world is entirely unscriptural and absurd. The Arians
suppose that Christ was the first and noblest of createdbeings, and existed
before the foundation of the world. Forit is absurd to suppose that Christ had
both a human soul and a super-angelic soul, and that both these were
personally united with the SecondPersonin the Trinity, and so constituted

Him a Divine Person. The true scriptural doctrine of Christ's divinity is
founded upon the true scriptural doctrine of Christ's having a human body
and a human soul, which was personally united with the secondpersonin the
Godhead. It is necessary, therefore, to believe the real humanity, in order to
believe the real divinity of Christ. It has been found by observationand
experience, that the denial of Christ's humanity directly leads to the denial of
His divinity.
2. If Christ had a human body and a human soul, then we cannot accountfor
the early depravity of children through the mere influence of bad examples, or
bodily instincts and appetites. He was an infant, but He did not sin in infancy.
He had a frail, mortal body, but it did not corrupt His heart. He lived in a
wickedworld, where He saw many bad examples, but they did not lead Him
to follow them. He was a free moral agent, but He never chose to sin.
3. If Christ was really a man, then there is no natural impossibility of men's
becoming perfectly holy in this life.
4. If Christ was really man, then God is able to keepmen from sinning
consistentlywith their moral agency.
5. If Christ was really man, then there is no absurdity in the doctrine of the
final perseverance ofsaints.
6. If Christ was really man, then there is no reasonto suppose that men
possessa self-deter. mining power, or a powerto actindependently of the
Divine influence and control.
7. If Christ was really man, then His conduct is a proper example for all men
to follow.
8. If Christ was really man, then He is wellqualified to perform all the
remaining parts for His mediatorial office. In particular, to perform the part
of an intercessor.
9. If Christ be really a man, then they will be unspeakablyhappy, who shall be
admitted into His visible presence, and dwell with Him for ever.
(N. Emmons, D. D.).

STUDYLIGHT RESOURCES
Adam Clarke Commentary
Jesus increasedin wisdom - See on Luke 2:40; (note).
The following remarks, takenchiefly from Mr. Claude, on the foregoing
subject, are well worth the reader's attention.
I. The birth of Christ is announced to the shepherds.
God causes his grace to descendnot only on the greatand powerful of the
world, but also upon the most simple and inconsiderable;just as the heavens
diffuse their influence not only on greattrees, but also on the smallestherbs.
God seems to take more delight in bestowing his favors on the most abject
than in distributing them among persons of elevatedrank. Here is an
example: for while he sent the wise men of the eastto Herod, he sent an angel
of heaven to the shepherds, and conductedthem to the cradle of the Saviorof
the world.
In this meeting of the angels and shepherds, you see a perpetual characteristic
of the economyof Jesus Christ; wherein the highestand most sublime things
are joined with the meanestand lowest. In his person, the eternal Word is
united to a creature, the Divine nature to the human, infinity to infirmity, in a
word, the Lord of glory to mean flesh and blood. On his cross, though he
appears naked, crownedwith thorns, and exposedto sorrows, yetat the same

time he shakes the earth, and eclipses the sun. Here, in like manner, are angels
familiar with shepherds; angels, to mark his majesty; shepherds, his humility.
This mission of angels relates to the end for which the Son of God came into
the world; for he came to establish a communion betweenGod and men, and
to make peace betweenmen and angels:to this must be referred what St. Paul
says, Colossians 1:20, It pleasedthe Father, by him, to reconcile allthings to
himself.
Howeversimple and plain the employments of men may be, it is always very
pleasing to God when they discharge them with a goodconscience. While
these shepherds were busy in their calling, God sent his angels to them.
God does, in regardto men, what these shepherds did in regardto their sheep.
He is the greatShepherd of mankind, continually watching over them by his
providence.
II. The glory of the Lord shone round the shepherds.
When angels borrow human forms, in order to appear to men, they have
always some ensigns of grandeur and majesty, to show that they are not men,
but angels.
The appearance ofthis light to the shepherds in the night, may very wellbe
takenfor a mystical symbol. Night represents the corrupt state of mankind
when Jesus came into the world; a state of ignorance and error. Light fitly
represents the salutary grace of Christ, which dissipates obscurity, and gives
us the true knowledge ofGod.
III. The shepherds were filled with greatfear.

This was the effectof their greatsurprise. When grand objects suddenly
present themselves to us, they must needs fill us with astonishmentand fear,
for the mind, on these occasions, is not at liberty to exert its force;on the
contrary, its strength is dissipated, and during this dissipation it is impossible
not to fear.
This fear may also arise from emotions of conscience. Manis by nature a
sinner, and consequentlyan objectof the justice of God. While God does not
manifest himself to him, he remains insensible of his sin; but, when God
discovers himself to him, he awakesto feeling, and draws nigh to God as a
trembling criminal approaches his judge. See this exemplified in the case of
Adam, and in that of the Israelites whenGod appeared on the mountain:
hence that proverbial saying, We shall die, for we have seenGod.
The shepherds had just reasonto fear when they saw before them an angel of
heaven, surrounded with the ensigns of majesty, for angels had been formerly
the ministers of God's vengeance. Onthis occasion, the sad examples of Divine
vengeance, recordedin Scripture, and performed by the ministry of angels,
might, in a moment, rise to view, and incline them to think that this angelhad
receiveda like order to destroy them.
IV. Observe the angel's discourse to the shepherds.
The angels sayto them, Fearnot. This preface was necessaryto gain their
attention, which fear, no doubt, had dissipated. The disposition which the
angelwishes to awakenin them comports with the news which he intended to
announce; for what has fear to do with the birth of the Savior of the world?
The angeldescribes,
1st, The person of whom he speaks,a Savior, Christ, the Lord; see before on
Luke 2:11; (note). See,

2dly, What he speaks ofhim; he is born unto you.
3dly, He marks the time; this day.
4thly, He describes the place; in the city of David.
5thly, He specifies the nature of this important news;a great joy which shall
be unto all people. See Claude's Essay, by Robinson, vol. i. p. 266, etc.
Concerning Simeon, three things deserve to be especiallynoted:1. His faith. 2.
His song. And 3. His prophecy.
I. His faith.
He expected the promised Redeemer, in virtue of the promises which God had
made; and, to show that his faith was of the operation of God's Spirit, he lived
a life of righteousness anddevotedness to God. Many profess to expect the
salvationwhich God has promised only to those who believe, while living in
conformity to the world, under the influence of its spirit, and in the general
breach of the righteous law of God.
The faith of Simeon led him only to wish for life that he might see him who
was promised, and, be properly prepared for an inheritance among the
sanctified. They who make not this use of life are much to be lamented. It
would have been better for them had they never been born.
The faith of Simeon was crownedwith success.Jesus came;he saw, he felt, he
adored him! and, with a heart filled with the love of God, he breathed out his
holy soul, and probably the last dregs of his life, in praise to the fountain of all
good.
II. Simeon's song. By it he shows forth: -

The joy of his own heart. Lord, now thou dismissestthy servant; as if he had
said: "Yes, O my God, I am going to quit this earth! I feel that thou callest
me; and I quit it without regret. Thou hastfulfilled all my desires, and
completed my wishes, and I desire to be detained no longerfrom the full
enjoyment of thyself." O, how sweetis death, after such an enjoyment and
discoveryof eternallife!
Simeon shows forth the glory of Christ. He is the Sun of righteousness,rising
on a dark and ruined world with light and salvation. He is the light that shall
manifest the infinite kindness of God to the Gentile people; proving that God
is goodto all, and that his tender mercies are overall his works.
He is the glory of Israel. It is by him that the Gentiles have been led to
acknowledge the Jews as the peculiar people of God; their books as the word
of God, and their teaching as the revelationof God. What an honor for this
people, had they known how to profit by it!
He astonishedJosephand Mary with his sublime accountof the Redeemerof
the world. They hear him glorified, and their hearts exult in it. From this
Divine song they learn that this miraculous son of theirs is the sum and
substance of all the promises made unto the fathers, and of all the predictions
of the prophets.
III. Simeon's prophecy.
He addresses Christ, and foretells that he should be for the ruin and recovery
of many in Israel. How astonishing is the folly and perverseness ofman, to
turn that into poisonwhich Godhas made the choicestmedicine;and thus to
kill themselves with the cure which he has appointed for them in the infinity
of his love! Those who speak againstJesus,his ways, his doctrine, his cross,

his sacrifice, are likelyto stumble, and fall, and rise no more for ever! May the
God of mercy save the reader from this condemnation!
He addresses Mary, and foretells the agonies she must go through. What must
this holy womanhave endured when she saw her soncrowned with thorns,
scourged, buffeted, spit upon - when she saw his hands and his feet nailed to
the cross, andhis side pierced with a spear! What a swordthrough her own
soul must eachof these have been! But this is not all. These sufferings of Jesus
are predicted thirty years before they were to take place!What a martyrdom
was this! While he is nourished in her bosom, she cannot help considering him
as a lamb who is growing up to be sacrificed. The older he grows, the nearer
the bloody scene approaches!Thus her sufferings must increase with his
years, and only end with his life!
He foretells the effects which should be produced by the persecutions raised
againstChrist and his followers. This swordof persecutionshall lay open the
hearts of many, and discovertheir secretmotives and designs. When the
doctrine of the cross is preached, and persecutionraisedbecause ofit, then the
precious are easilydistinguished from the vile. Those whose hearts are not
establishedby grace, now right with God, will turn aside from the way of
righteousness, anddeny the Lord that bought them. On the other hand, those
whose faith stands not in the wisdom of man, but in the powerof God, will
continue faithful unto death, glorify God in the fire, and thus show forth the
excellencyof his salvation, and the sincerity of the professionwhich they had
before made. Thus the thoughts of many hearts are still revealed.
The designof our blessedLord in staying behind in the temple seems to have
been twofold.
1st. To prepare the Jews to acknowledgein him a Divine and supernatural
wisdom: and
2dly. To impress the minds of Josephand Mary with a proper idea of his
independence and Divinity.

Their conduct in this business may be a lasting lessonand profitable warning
to all the disciples of Christ.
1st. It is possible (by not carefully watching the heart, and by not keeping
sacredlyand constantlyin view the spirituality of every duty) to lose the
presence and powerof Christ, even in religious ordinances. Josephand Mary
were at the feastof the passoverwhenthey lost Jesus!
2dly. Many who have sustainedloss in their souls are kept from making
speedy application to God for help and salvation, through the foolish
supposition that their state is not so bad as it really is; and, in the things of
salvation, many content themselves with the persuasionthat the religious
people with whom they associateare the peculiar favourites of Heaven, and
that they are in a state of complete safetywhile connectedwith them.
They, supposing him to be in the company, went a day's journey.
3dly. Deepsorrow and self-reproachmust be the consequenceofthe discovery
of so greata loss as that of the presence and power of Christ. Josephand
Mary sought him sorrowing.
4thly. When people are convinced, by the light of the Lord, that their souls are
not in a safe state, and that unless they find the Redeemerofthe world they
must perish, they are naturally led to inquire among their kinsfolk and
acquaintance for him who saves sinners. But this often proves fruitless; they
know not Jesus themselves, andthey cannot tell others where to find him.
They sought him among their kinsfolk and acquaintance, and found him not.

5thly. When people perceive that they have proceededin a certain course of
life for a considerable time, without that salvationwhich God promises in his
word, they should first stop and inquire into their state, and when they find
that they have been posting into eternity, not only without a preparation for
glory, but with an immense load of guilt upon their souls, they should turn
back, and, as their time may be but short, they should seek diligently.
They turned back to Jerusalem, earnestlyseeking him.
6thly. The likeliestplace to find Jesus and his salvation is the temple. The
place where his pure unadulterated Gospelis preached, the sanctuary where
the powerand glory of God are seenin the conviction, conversion, and
salvationof sinners. They found him in the temple, among the doctors.
7thly. Trials, persecutions, and afflictions are all nothing, when the presence
and powerof Christ are felt; but when a testimony of his approbation lives no
longerin the heart, every thing is grievous and insupportable. The fatigue of
the journey to Bethlehem, the flight from the cruelty of Herod, and the
unavoidable trials in Egypt, were cheerfully supported by Josephand Mary,
because in all they had Jesus with them; but now they are in distress and
misery because he is behind in Jerusalem. Reader, if thou have lostJesus, take
no rest to body or soul till thou have found him! Without him, all is confusion
and ruin: with him, all is joy and peace.
Copyright Statement

These files are public domain.
Bibliography
Clarke, Adam. "Commentary on Luke 2:52". "The Adam Clarke
Commentary". https:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/acc/luke-
2.html. 1832.
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Albert Barnes'Notes onthe Whole Bible
In favour with God - That is, in proportion to his advance in wisdom. This
does not imply that he ever lackedthe favor of God, but that Godregarded
him with favor in proportion as he showedan understanding and spirit like
his own. Happy are those children who imitate the example of Jesus - who are
obedient to parents who increase in wisdom - who are sober, temperate, and
industrious, and who thus increase in favor with God and people.
Copyright Statement
Bibliography
Barnes, Albert. "Commentaryon Luke 2:52". "Barnes'Notes onthe Whole
Bible". https:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/bnb/luke-2.html. 1870.
The Biblical Illustrator
Luke 2:52
And Jesus increasedin wisdom--
A pattern childhood and youth

1.
He grew, not in stature only, but in wisdom and favour with God and man.
Christ, as Divine, must have had all knowledge andpower from the first. But
subjecting Himself to the laws of human development, He thereby consented
to an unfolding which, in childhood should exhibit a perfect Child, in youth a
perfect Youth, in manhood a perfect Man. It was the unfolding of a perfect
bud into a perfectflower. At eachadvancing step He was only evincing larger
measures of that wisdom and moral excellence which, in possibility and germ,
were in Him from the first.
2. He was content with an obscure and humble home. In these days there is
everywhere a greatcrowding into cities and populous towns. These are
thought to have peculiar advantages for the training and educationof
children. But have not the solid men, for whose living in it the world has most
reasonto be grateful, oftenestcome from hillsides and homes like that of
Nazareth? It is in obscure places that youth escapesthe wasting strifes of
ambition, the unproductive chase aftervanities; that he learns not only “to
scorndelights and love laborious days,” but to think his own thoughts and to
stand alone. The wise youth is content just where it has pleasedGod to place
him. If the station is lowly and the lot obscure, he does not chafe and repine;
he rather gives thanks.
3. He was a winning example of filial piety and obedience. Forthirty years He
was contentedly subjectto parental guidance and authority. It is the discipline
of a well-ordered home which makes goodcitizens. It is a blessing, above all
others, to grow up in a house where the gospelrule prevails. There it is that
foundations are laid for every moral virtue. There is the best safeguardof
purity. It is there that one learns the sweetnessoflowly ambitions and the
surpassing wealthof pure affection.
4. It is time to speak of His self-subjectionto the discipline of helpful industry.
He was called “the carpenter’s son.” He was Himself the carpenter. Justin
Martyr, who lived as near to Him as we do to George Washington, speaks of
Him as “a workerin wood,” and says that He “made ploughs and yokes and
other implements relating to husbandry.” After Joseph’s death, the care of

His mother would devolve upon Him. It is therefore proper to think of Him as
early sharing the lighter labours of His home. His little feet bear Him on many
a helpful errand for His mother. Pitcher in hand, He runs for waterto the
well. To kindle the fire He gathers and brings the wood. Soon, with growing
limbs, He begins to wield the hammer, the axe, and the saw in the shop; to
invent and shape toys for Himself and useful things for the house. In the
process oftime, He settles into a more patient industry. In the little village on
the hillside of Nazareth, He is “the carpenter.” And such a shop as that in
which He wrought, must have been I Do you think He ever made reckless
promises, and failed to keepthem? Do you think He ever did poor work, and
chargedthe price of good? ThatHe ever concealeda flaw, or tried to get the
better of another in trade--canyou believe that?
5. He was not in undue haste to have done with the work of preparation and to
enter upon His public ministry. In such backing lies the strength of all great
workers. Have we not often seenmen of ripened age, men of whom the world
never so much as heard the name, suddenly burst upon the stage of action,
assume an easyleadership, and carry off the best prizes of emolument and
honour? They are equal to the places they attempt to fill. They endure. Such
men have takentime for preparation. They have both knowledge andself-
knowledge. Theyhave that self-controlwhich comes ofquiet introvision. They
have root; and a root grows:it is not made; only to an extent canit be forced.
6. The childhood and youth of Jesus were marked by delight in the truths and
ordinances of religion. At twelve years old, when takento Jerusalem, His feet
swiftly bare Aim to the Temple. Let no parent, or teacher, or workerin the
Lord’s vineyard look upon a child as too young to be interestedin holy things.
Little feet linger where earnestwords are spokenabout (God and duty to
Him. Little minds are full of wonder concerning the very deep things of the
world unseen. Little hearts would gladly know and choose the way of grateful
and loving service. Childhood’s years may be given to God. And oh, what
glory and safetyand blessednessit is to have begun thus early.
7. He made His most earthly work a service unto His Father. Back at
NazarethHe was all the time doing His Father’s business, just as truly as
when sitting among the doctors in the Temple. There is a time to pray, and

there is also a time to read, and a time to work. Give to eachits own time. And
if, in each, your purpose is equally to do the will of God, and bring honour to
Him, He is just as well pleasedwith the one as with the other. Go where God
bids you go, abide where He would have you abide, and do eachhour the
work He appoints for that hour; do all in faith and love, and for His glory; for
the restyou need have no fears. Thus the lowly can win as sweeta smile and
as large a reward as those who fill the highest places. He is with us in life’s
valleys as truly as on the mountain-tops. The little child cancome as close to
His heart as the greatking. It is not a great name, or a giant intellect, or
conspicuous service, whichGod wants. It is only a trusting and obedient heart.
Who cannot, who would not, give that? (H. M. Grout.)
Progressin spiritual things
Religionis a generous and noble thing, in regardto its progress;it is
perpetually carrying on that mind, in which it is once seated, towards
perfection. Though the first appearance ofit upon the souls of goodmen may
be, but as the wings of the morning, spreading themselves upon the
mountains, yet it is still rising higher and higher upon them, chasing awayall
the filthy mists and vapours of sin and wickednessbefore it, till it arrives to its
meridian altitude. There is the strength and force of the Divinity in it; and
though, when it first enters into the minds of men, it may seemto be “sownin
weakness,” yet it will raise itself “in power.” As Christ was in His bodily
appearance, He was still increasing in wisdom, and stature, and favour with
God and man, until He was perfectedin glory; so is He also in His spiritual
appearance in the souls of men: and accordinglythe New Testamentdoes
more than once distinguish of Christ, in His severalages and degrees of
growth in the souls of all true Christians. Good men are always walking on
from strength to strength, till at lastthey see God in Zion. Religion, though it
hath its infancy, yet it hath no old age:while it is in its minority, it is always in
motu; but, when it comes to its maturity, it will always be in quiete; it is then
“always the same, and its years fail not”; but it shall endure for ever. (John
Smith.)
Orderly development

An orderly development; none of your monstrous athletes;none of your mere
intellectual book-worms;none of your emaciated, hystericalsaints and
ascetics;none of your hermits or fanaticalantisocialvisionaries. He grew in
body, in mind, in soul, and heart; stature, wisdom, favour--human and Divine.
Is not that parable of childhood writ clear!Is not the messageto you and to
your children? Follow the lines, not of your crushed, but of your restrained,
controlled, and regenerate nature. Learn, like Him, by the things that you
suffer, undergo, have to put up with. Learn, before you teach;obey, before
you command; going in and out amongstmen, toil hand and heart about the
Father’s business, and with an ear everattuned to the voices in the upper air,
until we all come in the unity of the faith and the knowledge ofthe Sonof
God, to a perfectman, to the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.
(H. R. Haweis, M. A.)
Christ’s growth in wisdom
The increase ofJesus in wisdom during this period was--
1. Real. Jesus hadto learn from the words of others what as yet He knew not;
and that was entirely unknown to Him as a child, which He had a glimpse of
as a boy, conjecturedas a youth, and first clearlyperceived as a man.
2. Unchecked. In attributing to the Lord Jesus the relative imperfection of
childhood, we must carefully avoid imputing to Him the failings of childhood.
His life showedno trace of childish faults, to be hereafter conquered. The
words of John (Matthew 3:14) show, on the contrary, what impression was
made by His moral purity when thirty years of age, and the voice from heaven
(Matthew 3:17) sets the sealof the Divine approval on the now completed
development of the Son of Man, a sealwhich the Holy One of Israel would
only have offered to absolute perfection.
3. It was effectedby means--
4. Normal, and so an example of what our development should be in
fellowship with Him. (J. J. Van Oosterzee, D. D.)
The growth of Jesus in wisdom

Our Lord’s body grew in stature, so that, when He reachedmanhood, He had
attained fair and comelyproportions. And while the body grew, His human
mind grew also;His human intelligence unfolded itself gradually into full
blossom, in the same manner as the mind and intelligence of other children,
only, doubtless, in a much greaterdegree. Perhaps you cannot understand
how this could be. To grow in wisdom must imply that the person who grows
is, at a more advanced age, wiserthan when He was younger; knows
something, understands something, which he did not know, and understand
before. But how could this be in His ease? youmay reasonablyask. Was He
not God, you may say, even when He was quite a young child? And how can
God be ignorant of anything, or fail to understand anything? Now it is true,
doubtless--absolutelytrue--that our Lord, even while he was a child, was the
everlasting God. But it is true also that He was “Godmanifest in the flesh,”
God sinking Himself down to the low level of human nature. He became really
and truly for our sakes aninfant, a child, a youth, a man. He did not merely
seemto be human, but He actually was human. Now in order that He might
be really and truly a man, He consented, in His wonderful condescension, not
to call into exercise those powers whichHe had as God. You can quite
understand a person having strength, but not using it. A man might have the
strength of a giant, who might choose to exert Himself very little, might never
walk above a few yards, might not employ his hands in any harder work than
turning over the leaves of a book or reeling off a skein of silk. And in like
manner a man may have a perfectly strong and goodeyesight, but he need not
use it farther than he pleases.He may shut his eyes altogether, in which case
he will see nothing. He may only half open them, in which ease he will see but
dimly and confusedly; or he may go and live in a dungeon, where only a few
straggling rays of light pierce the gloom;and then, howevergoodhis eyesight
may be, he will for the first few seconds be able to see nothing; but when the
eye has adjusted itself to the circumstances in which it is placed, he will begin
to make out the forms of things around him, but will not see their colours, or
have any powerat all of examining them closely. This may help you to
understand how our Lord, while He had in ]dis Divine nature all power and
all knowledge, yet, when He made His appearance among us as man, was
ignorant of certain things, and unable to do certain things. In coming into the
world, He, by His own free will and consent, limited Himself to do the things

which a man could do, and to know the things which a man could know. He
came into our poor, narrow, dark nature, just as a free man might come out
of the light of day into a narrow, dark, prison-dungeon, and there consentto
be shut up. Such an one might have the powerof walking miles, but in the
dungeon he canonly walk a few paces;he might have a very keeneyesight,
but in the dungeon he cannot even see to read. Christ took a nature which, till
He took it, was not His own, and accommodatedHimself to the feebleness and
ignorance of that nature--limited Himself, if I may use the expression, to the
walls of it. (DeanGoulburn.)
Christ’s increase in the favour of God
We may compare our Lord’s period of growth, during which He was
prepared for His work, to the gradual executionof some greatpiece of
sculpture, a bust or a statue. Let us say that the marble chosenfor the work is
a piece without flaw, spotless white, without a single vein running through it.
Thus our Lord’s human nature, unlike that which all of us inherit, was
perfectly free from all tendency to evil; holy, harmless, undefiled at His very
birth. But a white block of marble, though white when it is drawn from the
quarry, can be made a more perfectly beautiful thing by being chiselledinto
an exquisite form. And a human nature, which was originally sinless, may be
made a more perfectly beautiful thing by being disciplined through grace, and
through the experience of suffering, into the perfect likeness of God. And you
can quite understand how a sculptor, who is daily at work upon a statue, has
an increasing satisfactionin it, as the work becomes more and more perfect,
views it with greaterpleasure and complacencyto-day, when it has receivedso
many flourishing touches, than he did some months ago, whenit was a mere
resemblance ofthe human form in outline. The work increases in favour with
him daily; and when it is finished, he is then perfectly satisfied. Thus it was
that Jesus, as a man, “increasedin favour with God.” (DeanGoulburn.)
On the education of children
It is not, alas, according to this model, that the generality of Christians form
their children. We behold them principally intent on procuring for them

worldly accomplishments, while they totally neglectto make them acquainted
with the greatduties of Christianity.
1. The human mind cannot be too early impressed with religious principles.
The prudent will, indeed, be carefulnot to make that a burden which should
be a pleasure; they will be contentto unfold the gospelprinciples by degrees,
as the youthful mind is able to receive them.
2. Nature only requires a little gentle assistance to perfectall her productions.
You have seena tender plant springing upon a fertile soil, what though tall
and straight, and promising to become the pride of the forest, since one
unlucky stroke may have crushed its aspiring head, and forced it from its
natural direction, from that moment it bended and grew downwards to the
earth, instead of towering to the skies. Thus, the human mind while young and
pliable, is in perpetual danger of growing luxuriant by too much indulgence,
or losing all its strength by the unnatural restraint of too much severity, to be
suppressedby misfortune, checkedby disappointment, or chilled by penury.
How liable is it to deviate from the straight line of rectitude and honour, by
the fascinationof example, and the influence of imitation; to folly, vice, and
ruin. It is the pleasing but important task of parents and guardians, to direct
and defend this young and delicate production; leading it from lower degrees
of perfection to higher, from the nursery to the field of action, till it is adorned
with the fairesthonours, enriched with the most precious fruit, and ripe for
transplanting to the paradise of God, where it shall bloom afresh under the
immediate sunshine of heaven, and flourish for ever in immortal beauty and
perfection.
3. The prejudices receivedin youth are sometimes so violent and inveterate,
that even maturity of years, the admonition of friends, the principles of hope,
fear, honour, and religion, are unable too often to restrain them. Nay, the best
of all teachers, experience, frequently attempts, but in vain, to cure the
maladies of a wrong education. It is nonsense to expecta harvest, where the
seedtime has been lost, and you must be disappointed, who wish to reap
where you have not sown.

4. The leastindulgence of the bad inclinations of children, sometimes produces
the most fatal effects in society. Witness David’s indulgence of Amnon--it
produced incest; of Absalom--it produced assassinationand a civil war; of
Adonijah--it produced a usurpation of the throne and crown. Observe, again,
how God punished Eli, who neglectedto correctduly the crimes of his
children. Can you, O parents, hear these awful truths, and not shudder at the
idea of indulging the leastvicious propensity in your children? But let me turn
from those gloomy images, to hold up to your view the picture of a parent’s
care, rewardedin a wise and virtuous offspring. These will be your pride and
glory in the day of your health and strength; but in the gloomy and
melancholy seasonof sicknessand old age, they will be the light of your eyes,
and the cordial of your fainting spirits; and as once with tender care you
watchedtheir tender infancy, so shall they with pious duty support your
failing strength, soften the pangs of a dying hour, close your eyes in peace, and
eventually follow you to that world where love and bliss immortal reign. (B.
Murphy.)
God’s favour to be sought
Jesus wonthe favour of man by seeking the favour of God. It is not so
important that man should be pleasedwith us as that Godshould. But man’s
favour is more likely to be won through seeking God’s favourthan in any
other way. If we are always asking how those about us will look at us; if we
give large weight in our thoughts to the opinion of our fellows;if we
endeavour to so shape our course as to win popular approval, we are by no
means sure to have what we strive for; we may fall far short of the coveted
favour of man; and, moreover, may utterly lack God’s approval, whether man
likes or dislikes us. But if we are always asking how God will look at our
course;if we give large weight in our thoughts to His opinion and His
commandments; if we seek to shape our course to win His approval, we are
sure to get what we most long for; and we are surer of having also the favour
of man than we could be through any other course. If Godis our friend, He
can secure to us man’s approval. The best of human friends cannot win for us
God’s favour. (H. C.Trumbull.)
The secretofthe growth of Jesus

See the daisy. It opens its petals when the light dawns, and closes themat
sunset. It is in the right place to absorbout of earth and atmosphere the
nutritive forces it needs, and it grows. Go into a garden and ask what all these
various plants are doing. They toil not neither do they spin; they have no
visible machinery and yet they are all capturing sunbeams and converting
them into fragrances, essences,flowers and fruits for the welfare of the world.
Does your boy trouble about growth as he eats and drinks and plays? No!He
takes no thought for the morrow’s growth. Flowers and children, rightly
placed, grow. Get a piston and place it where the steam is and it will go. Put
your water-wheelin the stream, and it turns. Man takes advantage ofthe
energies closeto hand and multiplies his forces a million-fold. So long as we
are in the wrong place we cannotgrow. The secretofthe growth of Jesus is
that He starts in the right place and keeps in it to the very end; He lives in and
for God; is bathed with the warm light, and refreshedby the pure breath and
nourished by the sweetfellowshipwith, and work for, the Father. (J. Clifford,
D. D.)
The silent growth of Jesus
It is perplexing to some of us that there should be eighteenyears of unbroken
silence in such a life as Christ’s. We have askedwhatwas Jesus at 17, 20, and
at 25? and though no audible voice responds to us, yet the silence, read in the
light of the wonderful work accomplishedin His brief ministry, is itself a sign
of the depth, continuity, and fulness of the moral growth. All growthis silent.
When nature is baptized in the fulness of spring forces, you hear not a rustle.
The whole movement takes place secretlyand silently, and the world comes up
anew without the sound of trumpet or the message ofherald: God builds His
temples without the sound of hammer. His great moral structures go up from
day to day without noise, His kingdoms come without observation,
notwithstanding the moment of their arrival may be one of tempest and
storm. Tyndall says” “All greatthings come slowlyto birth. Copernicus
pondered his greatwork for thirty-three years;Newton, for nearly twenty
years, kept the idea of gravitation before His mind; for twenty years also, he
dwelt upon his discoveryof fluxions; Darwin, for twenty-two years pondered
on the problem of the origin of species, and doubtless he would have
continued to do so had he not found Wallace upon his track.” So Jesus stayed

in His place, did His carpentry, was obedient to His parents, acceptedthe
restraints of His position, silently devoured the many chagrins of His lot, met
His cares with a transcendentdisdain, drank in the sunlight of His Father’s
face, and possessedHis soul in perfect patience, though urged by deep
sympathy and throbbing desire to save men. No boasting, no hurry, no
impatience, but a quiet maturing of power, and then so clad was He in
strength that He never lostan opportunity through delay or marred a bit of
His work by haste. When Perseus told Pallas Athene that he was ready to go
forth, young as he was, againstthe fabled monster Medusa the Gorgon, the
strange lady smiled and said, “Notyet; you are too young, and too unskilled:
for this is Medusa the Gorgon, the mother of a monstrous brood. Return to
your home and do the work which awaits you there. You must play the man in
that before I can think you worthy to go in searchof the Gorgon.” It is hurry
that enfeebles us. (J. Clifford, D. D. )
The three ages ofChristian life
God in Christ has appeared among men to raise up againfallen humanity. In
order to do this, He laid hold upon it, in the cradle, and left it only at the
tomb; passing through all the stages ofits growth, traversing in successionall
the ages oflife, sanctifying our nature at all periods of our existence, and
causing us to see in His person, from the moment when He came into the
world till that of His exaltationin glory, the perfecttype of innocence and
holiness. It is thus that He became in turn an infant, youth, man; an infant,
obedient and submissive; a young man without reproach and keeping Himself
pure from all defilement of the flesh and of the world: a full-grown man
showing us in His characterand in His conduct the model of absolute
perfection. He stopped there; for He by whom and for whom are all things
ought: not to fail; it was necessarythat He should offer Himself a sacrifice in
all the vigour of age and in all the fulness of life: it was not becoming that He
should presentto us the picture of decrepitude and old age. But as there has
been a birth of the Son of God in the Man Jesus, a growthof the God-man in
the personof the Redeemer, so there has been, there is, and there will be, to
the end of time, a birth and growth of Christ in all the souls belonging to Him.
Christ is truly born. He grows up, He developes Himself in His people. There
is in turn, in their case, the infant, the youth, and the grown-up man, and He

completes in them the work of His grace till they come to the height of His
perfect stature. (J. H. Grandpierre, D. D.)
The humanity of Christ
That Jesus was reallya man. Here it may be observed,
I. That He was really man BECAUSE HE HAD A HUMAN BODY. It was
formed and fashionedin His mother’s womb by the greatParentof all flesh.
So it was, says the inspired writer, that while His mother was at Bethlehem,
“the days were accomplishedthat she should be delivered.”
II. He was really man BECAUSE HE HAD A HUMAN SOUL AS WELL AS
A HUMAN BODY. This is necessarilyimplied in what is said of Him in the
text. He “increasedin wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.”
Here both His wisdom and piety are asserted;and we know that these are
properties of the soul, and not of the body.
III. That Christ was properly a human person will appear, if we consider
THE STATE AND CIRCUMSTANCESIN WHICH HE WAS PLACED
WHILE HE LIVED IN THIS WORLD. For--
1. He was fixed in a state of dependence.
2. He was placedunder law, which implies that He was a human moral agent,
and accountable to God like other men. We are told that “when the fulness of
the time was come, God sent forth His Son, made of a woman, made under the
law, to redeemthem that were under the law.”
3. That Christ was placed, like all other men, in a state of probation from His
birth to His death.
I now proceedto improve the subject.

1. If Christ was really man, then the Arian notion of His pre-existence before
He came into the world is entirely unscriptural and absurd. The Arians
suppose that Christ was the first and noblest of createdbeings, and existed
before the foundation of the world. Forit is absurd to suppose that Christ had
both a human soul and a super-angelic soul, and that both these were
personally united with the SecondPersonin the Trinity, and so constituted
Him a Divine Person. The true scriptural doctrine of Christ’s divinity is
founded upon the true scriptural doctrine of Christ’s having a human body
and a human soul, which was personally united with the secondperson in the
Godhead. It is necessary, therefore, to believe the real humanity, in order to
believe the real divinity of Christ. It has been found by observationand
experience, that the denial of Christ’s humanity directly leads to the denial of
His divinity.
2. If Christ had a human body and a human soul, then we cannot accountfor
the early depravity of children through the mere influence of bad examples, or
bodily instincts and appetites. He was an infant, but He did not sin in infancy.
He had a frail, mortal body, but it did not corrupt His heart. He lived in a
wickedworld, where He saw many bad examples, but they did not lead Him
to follow them. He was a free moral agent, but He never chose to sin.
3. If Christ was really a man, then there is no natural impossibility of men’s
becoming perfectly holy in this life.
4. If Christ was really man, then God is able to keepmen from sinning
consistentlywith their moral agency.
5. If Christ was really man, then there is no absurdity in the doctrine of the
final perseverance ofsaints.
6. If Christ was really man, then there is no reasonto suppose that men
possessa self-determining power, or a power to actindependently of the
Divine influence and control.
7. If Christ was really man, then His conduct is a proper example for all men
to follow.

8. If Christ was really man, then He is wellqualified to perform all the
remaining parts for His mediatorial office. In particular, to perform the part
of an intercessor.
9. If Christ be really a man, then they will be unspeakablyhappy, who shall be
admitted into His visible presence, and dwell with Him for ever. (N. Emmons,
D. D.)
.
Copyright Statement
Text Courtesyof BibleSupport.com. Used by Permission.
Bibliography
Exell, JosephS. "Commentary on "Luke 2:52". The Biblical Illustrator.
https:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/tbi/luke-2.html. 1905-1909.
New York.
Coffman's Commentaries on the Bible
And Jesus advancedin wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and men.
The fourfold development of Christ: mentally, physically, socially, and
spiritually is here affirmed, exactlythe type of growth and development that is
inherent in the very fact of the incarnation. He who "emptied himself" and
became a man found it needful to pass through the helplessnessofinfancy, the
ignorance of babyhood, and the incompetence of adolescencejust like all men.
The true humanity of our Lord is thus brilliantly presentedby Luke, no less

than his true deity. That this is the greatestmysteryof all ages is a fact; but
that has not prevented the full acceptanceofit by the faithful of all ages.
Copyright Statement
James Burton Coffman Commentaries reproduced by permission of Abilene
Christian University Press, Abilene, Texas, USA. All other rights reserved.
Bibliography
Coffman, James Burton. "Commentary on Luke 2:52". "Coffman
Commentaries on the Old and New Testament".
https:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/bcc/luke-2.html. Abilene
Christian University Press, Abilene, Texas, USA. 1983-1999.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible
And Jesus increasedin wisdom,.... As man; for neither his divine wisdom, nor
the treasures ofwisdom and knowledge in him, as mediator, could admit of
any increase;but as he grew in body, the faculties of his soul opened, and
receivedgradually large measures ofwisdom and knowledge, in things
natural and spiritual, through the in dwelling of his divine nature in him, and
the Holy Spirit that was, without measure, on him:
and stature: the word signifies age also;and so the Vulgate Latin has
rendered it: but that is not the meaning of it here, since it would have been
entirely unnecessaryto have observed, that he increasedin age, which must be
unavoidable: but the sense is, that as he increasedin the wisdom and
knowledge ofhis human soul, so he likewise increasedin the stature of his
body: and in favour with God and man: he appearedby the grace that was in
him, and the gifts bestowedonhim, to be high in the love and favour of God;
and had a large share in the esteemand affections of all goodmen, who had
the honour and happiness of knowing him, and of being acquainted with him.

Copyright Statement
The New John Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible Modernisedand adapted
for the computer by Larry Pierce of Online Bible. All Rightes Reserved,
Larry Pierce, Winterbourne, Ontario.
A printed copy of this work can be ordered from: The Baptist Standard
Bearer, 1 Iron Oaks Dr, Paris, AR, 72855
Bibliography
Gill, John. "Commentary on Luke 2:52". "The New John Gill Expositionof
the Entire Bible". https:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/geb/luke-
2.html. 1999.
Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
See on Luke 2:40.
stature — or better, perhaps, as in the Margin, “age,”whichimplies the other.
This is all the record we have of the next eighteenyears of that wondrous life.
What seasonsoftranquil meditation over the lively oracles, andholy
fellowship with His Father; what inlettings, on the one hand, of light, and love,
and powerfrom on high, and outgoings of filial supplication, freedom, love,
and joy on the other, would these eighteenyears contain! And would they not
seem“but a few days” if they were so passed, howeverardently He might long
to be more directly “aboutHis Father‘s business?”
Copyright Statement
These files are a derivative of an electronic edition prepared from text
scannedby Woodside Bible Fellowship.
This expanded edition of the Jameison-Faussett-BrownCommentary is in the
public domain and may be freely used and distributed.

Bibliography
Jamieson, Robert, D.D.;Fausset,A. R.; Brown, David. "Commentary on
Luke 2:52". "Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible".
https:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/jfb/luke-2.html. 1871-8.
People's New Testament
Jesus increased. Jesus grew up among a people seldom and only
contemptuously named by the ancient classics,and subjectedat the time to the
yoke of a foreign oppressor;in a remote and conquered province of the
Roman empire; in the darkestdistrict of Palestine;in a little country town of
proverbial insignificance;in poverty and manual labor; in the obscurity of a
carpenter's shop; far awayfrom universities, academies,libraries, and
literary or polished society;without any help, as far as we know, exceptthe
parental care, the daily wonders of nature, the Old TestamentScriptures, the
weeklySabbath service of the synagogue atNazareth(Luke 4:16), the annual
festivities in the temple of Jerusalem(Luke 2:42), and the secretintercourse of
his soulwith God, his heavenly Father.--{Schaff}.
Copyright Statement
These files are public domain and are a derivative of an electronic edition that
is available on the Christian ClassicsEtherealLibrary Website.
Original work done by Ernie Stefanik. First published online in 1996 atThe
RestorationMovementPages.
Bibliography
Johnson, BartonW. "Commentary on Luke 2:52". "People's New
Testament". https:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/pnt/luke-2.html.
1891.

Robertson's WordPictures in the New Testament
Advanced in wisdom and stature (προεκοπτεντηι σοπιαι και ηλικιαι —
proekoptentēi sophiāi kai hēlikiāi). Imperfect active, he kept cutting his way
forward as through a forest or jungle as pioneers did. He keptgrowing in
stature (ηλικια — hēlikia may mean age, as in Luke 12:25, but stature here)
and in wisdom (more than mere knowledge). His physical, intellectual, moral,
spiritual development was perfect. “At eachstage he was perfectfor that
stage” (Plummer).
In favour (χαριτι — chariti). Or grace. This is ideal manhood to have the
favour of God and men.
Copyright Statement
The Robertson's WordPictures of the New Testament. Copyright �
Broadman Press 1932,33,Renewal1960. All rights reserved. Used by
permission of Broadman Press (Southern BaptistSunday SchoolBoard)
Bibliography
Robertson, A.T. "Commentary on Luke 2:52". "Robertson'sWord Pictures
of the New Testament".
https:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/rwp/luke-2.html. Broadman
Press 1932,33. Renewal1960.
Vincent's Word Studies
Stature ( ἡλικία )
Which Rev. rightly retains. The word may be rendered age, which would be
superfluous here.

Copyright Statement
The text of this work is public domain.
Bibliography
Vincent, Marvin R. DD. "Commentaryon Luke 2:52". "Vincent's Word
Studies in the New Testament".
https:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/vnt/luke-2.html. Charles
Schribner's Sons. New York, USA. 1887.
Wesley's ExplanatoryNotes
And Jesus increasedin wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.
Jesus increasedin wisdom — As to his human nature, and in favour with God
- In proportion to that increase. It plainly follows, that though a man were
pure, even as Christ was pure, still he would have room to increase in holiness,
and in consequence thereofto increase in the favour, as wellas in the love of
God.
Copyright Statement
is available on the Christian ClassicsEtherealLibrary Website.
Bibliography
Wesley, John. "Commentary on Luke 2:52". "JohnWesley's Explanatory
Notes on the Whole Bible".
https:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/wen/luke-2.html. 1765.
The Fourfold Gospel

And Jesus advancedin wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men1.
And Jesus advancedin wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.
He did not "literally" grow in favor with God. This is a phenomenal
expression. The favor of God and man kept company for quite awhile; but the
favor of God abode with Jesus whenman's goodwill was utterly withdrawn.
Men admire holiness until it becomes aggressive,and then they fell an
antagonismagainstit as great, or intense, as their previous admiration.
Copyright Statement
is available on the Christian ClassicsEtherealLibrary Website. These files
were made available by Mr. Ernie Stefanik. First published online in 1996 at
The RestorationMovementPages.
Bibliography
J. W. McGarveyand Philip Y. Pendleton. "Commentaryon Luke 2:52". "The
Fourfold Gospel". https:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/tfg/luke-
2.html. Standard Publishing Company, Cincinnati, Ohio. 1914.
James Nisbet's Church Pulpit Commentary
INCREASING IN WISDOM
‘Jesus increasedin wisdom.’
Luke 2:52

The Gospels do not give us, nor do they attempt to give us, a detailed history
of our Lord’s wondrous life. A few stories of the infancy, one lovely little
narrative of the Child among the doctors, anoutline sketchof the brief
activities of the last three years—this, strangelyenough, is absolutely all that
our authorities supply. By far the greaterportion of the life of our blessed
Lord is a simple blank.
And yet, after all, can we say nothing of those hidden years? Maywe not, at
leastwith a reasonable probability, conjecture somewhatof the blossoming
and unfolding of Christ’s perfect life? Is it not possible from His later words
and actions to divine just a little of what went before?
In following this path, we must tread with caution. We cannotbelieve that the
mind of the Man, Who is also God, can have opened, enlarged, matured in
preciselythe way that merely human minds mature. We cannot admit that,
even in the days of His flesh, the inner experience of Christ was exactlythe
same as ours. Surely from the very beginning He must have had some special,
some Divine endowment—some consciousness atleastof His unique relation
to His heavenly Father—whichit is not given to mere man to harbour. And
yet, howevercarefully we may guard the statement, the indubitable fact
remains that Jesus grew. There was nothing portentous about Him. Sin only
excepted, He was perfectly human. Hallowing all the stages ofour human
progress, the Lord Incarnate, with the ripening of His years, ‘increasedin
wisdom.’
‘Jesus increasedin wisdom.’
I. Through intercourse with books.—He wasnot what the people of the period
would have called a scholar. He never was sent to a rabbinic college, orsat,
like St. Paul, as a regularpupil in ‘the House of the Midrash.’ He was only a
poor countryman. Yet you must not conceive the fancy that our Saviour was
untaught. The Jews ofHis day were exceedinglyzealous in the cause of
education. Some kind of instruction, therefore, Jesus surely had. And,
moreover, He studied. He was thoroughly acquainted with the history, the
law, the poetry of His people; He was not unversed even in the curious
learning of the scribalschools. At a later time, indeed, men said to one

another, in astonishmentat His wisdom, ‘Is not this the Carpenter? Whence
hath this Man these things?’ But let us go still further. Researchcanpoint out
for our edification what were the very books the Masterstudied while he lived
on earth. The beginning of His training was, undoubtedly, the law, and the
first text that He ever learned was takenfrom the Book of Deuteronomy. As a
very little child, almostas soonas He could speak, He was taught by His
mother to repeatby heart that solemn affirmation of the unity of God and the
absolute devotion that His people owe Him. ‘Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God
is one Lord. And thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with
all thy soul, and with all thy might.’ That was our Lord’s first text. As He
grew older He masteredother passages,and from the age of twelve He was
accustomed, like every other pious Jew, to recite eachmorning and evening a
portion of nineteen verses, selectedfrom the Books ofDeuteronomyand
Numbers. But the books ascribedto Moses were notthe only ones that Jesus
knew. He must have been familiar with the earlier histories of the Bible and
with severalof the prophets—with Jeremiahand Hosea, with Jonahand
Zechariah and Malachi. But the favourites of all—the books which our Lord
pre-eminently studied and most dearly loved—appearto have been three. The
first was the hymn-book of the synagogue, the Psalms. And the secondwas
Isaiah, particularly that part which tells of that innocent Servant of Jehovah
Who ‘hath borne our griefs,’Who ‘was bruised for our iniquities,’ and by
Whose ‘stripes we are healed.’ The third was the prophet Daniel. These
three—so far as it is possible to form a judgment—were the chosenbooks of
Jesus.
II. Through intercourse with nature.—His eyes were continually open to the
glories of nature round Him, and His mind was peculiarly sensitive to the
truths that nature taught. The wholesome airof the hills and fields of Galilee
breathes ever in His utterance. Nor shall we wonder at it when we recallthe
fact that Nazarethitself, no doubt, was a mean enough place, yet spreading all
round were lands of such rich fertility that an old-time traveller likened them
to Paradise. Here were greengardens and luxuriant cornfields. Here was
abundance of olives and fig-trees and vines. Here, too, were streams, and
variegatedflowers, and herbs of sweetperfume. Above and behind the town
there rose a hill, which Jesus in His youth must many a time have climbed.

And from its summit one might gaze on a magnificent panorama of plain and
vine-clad valley, of mountain-peaks and river gorge, andthe blue of a distant
sea. Forthirty years it was the prospectof our Lord.
III. Through intercourse with men and women.—OurLord was not denied
such means of self-educationas companionship affords. He never was a
solitary. He loved, indeed, the quietness of the deserts and the hills, but He
also loved the breathing crowds, the eagerpopulations of the villages and
towns, the busy life of the streets. He was bred, you must remember, in a
country town. At fountain and in market-place He mingled with the people,
and with searching, questioning gaze He studied them. The farmer, the slave,
the officerof justice, the dealer in pearls on the sea, the long-robed Pharisee
and the anxious housewife, the labourer waiting to be hired, and the criminal
dragging along his heavy cross—allthe types He knew. And was it not fitting
that He Who became pre-eminently the Friend of man should first Himself
have gained experience of man? Was it not right that He Who became, as no
other may become, man’s Teacher, shouldfirst have taught Himself by
accurate observationwhatman’s spirit is? For thirty years Jesus satpatiently
with open eyes and watchedthe world pass by. ‘He needed not that any should
testify of man; for He knew what was in man.’
IV. Other influences.—Letus notice two of the most important of these
human influences on the growing life of Jesus.
(a) The home. May we not imagine that the beautiful allusions which our
Saviour later made to family life and family affectionwere tinged with the
colourof a tender reminiscence? and, further, that His doctrine of service, of
mutual subjectionand subordination in love, embalmed some experiences of
those early years, when He Himself was subjectto His ‘parents,’ and was glad
to do their will?
(b) The synagogue. Here ruled the Pharisees. Sabbathby Sabbath Jesus would
listen to their skilled disputes, mark their fantastic explanations of the law,
hear them expound, with deep yet childish wisdom, their favourite dogmas of
a resurrection, predestination, of the coming Messiahand the triumph of
Jehovah. And as He listened to those earthly teachers, whattrains of Divine

ideas must have swept with an awful grandeur through the temple of His soul!
Yet still He waitedquietly for thirty years—listened, andlearned, and
pondered while the doctors taught. Then, at the very last, He went His way,
sweeping aside the chaff and dust of Rabbinism, bursting the fetters of its
forms outworn, and pouring from the depths of His immeasurable
consciousnessa doctrine fresh as the light, sublime as the heaven, Divine as
God.
Rev. F. Homes Dudden.
Copyright Statement
Bibliography
Nisbet, James. "Commentaryon Luke 2:52". Church Pulpit Commentary.
https:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/cpc/luke-2.html. 1876.
John Trapp Complete Commentary
52 And Jesus increasedin wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and
man.
Ver. 52. Increasedin wisdom] Being παιδαριογερων, as Macarius was called,
while a child, for his extraordinary grace and gravity. The exercise ofhis
wisdom, as it was more enlarged, became more lovely in the sight of God and
man.

Copyright Statement
Bibliography
Trapp, John. "Commentary on Luke 2:52". John Trapp Complete
Commentary. https:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/jtc/luke-2.html.
1865-1868.
Sermon Bible Commentary
Luke 2:52
The text naturally divides itself into four heads. There is a twofold
development spokenof, and a twofold result or concomitant. We are called
upon to observe the growth of Jesus:(1) in bodily stature; (2) in wisdom, and
as a concomitantof these, to behold Him increasing;(3) in favour with men,
and (4) in favour with God.
I. We know that among the Jews no one was qualified to be a priest who had
any bodily defect or blemish. It behoved the sacredhistorian therefore to
show that our greatHigh Priesthad no bodily disqualification for His office.
He was destined, after thirty years' spiritual obscurity, to lead a life of
energetic labour and endurance of hardship for the space ofthree years. In
this a frame capable of ordinary fatigue was surely necessary. Even for the
toil of this daily employment, Jesus neededthose bodily powers of which St.
Luke briefly describes the increase.
II. We may assume that, whateverthe age ofour Lord was, His wisdom
correspondedto His age. There is a prescient wisdom, sometimes found in
early years, which gives way to and is succeededby the maturer wisdom of the

man, just as that in its turn passes onto the grave and retrospective wisdomof
the elder. Jesus increasedin growth and in that wisdom which suited His
years. He is represented to us, in the sacrednarrative, not only as receiving
wisdom from above, but as acquiring wisdom by communication with others.
In the development of Jesus there was nothing like forcing, no hurry or
impatience, no attempt either to produce a sensation, or to impress His
brethren and neighbours with an idea of His extraordinary powers.
III. We see the Child Jesus increasing in favour with men—all, that is, who
came into communication with Him. The favour of men is a test of certain
qualities, without which no Christian charactercanlay claim to even relative
perfection. No selfish, or ill-tempered, or peevish, or morose, or arrogant, or
deceitful person canever secure the favour even of relatives, much less that of
any mixed society. The Child Jesus commendedHimself to all who knew Him
by every amiable and lovely quality, and grew up like some tender plant in the
quiet vale of existence.
IV. And we are calledupon to regardHim as increasing in favour with His
heavenly Father. This is a sure concomitant of spiritual growth. We have to
contemplate the Child Jesus, not as possessing atonce the full favour of God,
but as increasing in favour with Him. This shows the Saviour to be one of us.
This marks His life on earth as progressive,passing through successive
stages—eachperfectof its kind, but one kind of perfectionbeing higher than
another.
G. Butler, Sermons in Cheltenham College,p. 27.
Silent Growth.
I. Times come to all when the greatrealities of life and death stand out clear,
if it is but for a moment, and the heart sees andfeels what is of value and
lasting and true. We want such times: the beginners want them to teachthem
how to begin; the older want them to encourage themto go on. But yet these
critical times are as nothing comparedto the daily, hourly, momentary appeal
that is being made to everyone. Whether we know it or not, not a moment

passes whichdoes not add or take awaysomething of our power of judging
and seeing the things of God. This powerof judging and seeing the things of
God is a power of the Spirit, and is given by the Holy Spirit of God to those
who open their hearts to God's truth, and live by it. This power of seeing, of
putting the feeling in accordwith higher feeling, of the getting the heart to
thrill with the thrilling of Divine truth, and the mind to think out God's
thoughts, is wisdom. It is the harvest gatheredfrom life. God's world is all
about us—God's world of creatednature, fields and trees, rivers and sky;
God's world of men and women, with all their hopes and fears;God's world of
right and wrong, with all the strange permitted evil, and all the wonderful
bringing out of good. To read God's thought in God's world is wisdom. "And
Jesus increasedin wisdom." The little valley and the country town, the lonely
life, the quiet village amongst the hills, the grass beneath, the stars above, the
life within the narrowing heights, the life views that streamedover them from
outside,— gave all the material wanted for wisdom. To Christ the sowerthat
went forth to sow was a presence touching the heart, the mustard-seed cast
into the ground a message ofheavenly power. Nota sparrow, but His eye
knew it as a part of God's alphabet. The womengrinding corn, the very
leavenin the daily bread, all were to Him thoughts thought out and passedon
to us, lighted up with the light of the everlasting.
II. What a lessonof patient waiting this gives!The mind feels a sort of
breathless awe when it tries to callup the idea of the Lord of lords, sitting a
poor Man on the hillside, and day by day, for thirty years, holding within His
heart the wondrous knowledge ofa Divine mission, and all the time treated by
the villagers as one of themselves. All the sense of inward power, the thoughts
that pierced the secrets ofthe world, the reformer's eye that saw through the
tangle of human life, of its sorrows and its sins, consciousofthe Redeemer's
powerto heal; the gathering greatness, the danger and the sacrifice grew
more and more distant day by day to the solitary unacknowledgedKing on
the hillside; and yet He waited and waited, and gatheredin new thoughts daily
where others saw nothing, and grew in wisdom and was strong in spirit; and
being strong in spirit did not move before His time.
E. Thring, Uppingham Sermons, vol. i., p. 213.

References:Luke 2:52.—S. James, Churchof England Pulpit, vol. xiv., p. 76;
R. Heber, ParishSermons, vol. i., p. 112;H. G. Robinson, Man in the Image of
God, p. 167. Luke 3:1-23.—F. D. Maurice, The Gospelof the Kingdom of
Heaven, p. 37.
Copyright Statement
Bibliography
Nicoll, William R. "Commentary on Luke 2:52". "SermonBible
Commentary". https:https://www.studylight.org/commentaries/sbc/luke-
2.html.
Thomas Coke Commentary on the Holy Bible
Luke 2:52. And Jesus increasedin wisdomand stature— The word signifies
either age or stature; but the latter seems evidently to be here meant. Erasmus
remarks, (nearlyin these words) that all the endowments of the Man Christ
Jesus were owing to the divine beneficence, andthat his Deity communicated
itself in a gradual manner to that human nature which it had assumed. Some
perhaps may wish to know the history of our Lord's childhood and private
life; what early proofs he gave of his having the divine nature united to the
human; what proficiency he made in knowledge, and the methods by which he
advancedtherein; in what way he employed himself when he arrived at man's
estate;what notions his acquaintance formed of him; the manner of his
conversationwith them, and other things of a like nature,—which the Holy

Spirit has not thought fit to explain. The following particulars only are left
upon record:—that he had not the advantage of a liberal education, (John
7:15.) receiving no instructions, probably, but what his parents gave him
according to the law; (Deuteronomy 4:9-10; Deuteronomy6:7.) yet that at the
age of twelve years, when carried up to Jerusalem, he distinguished himself
among the doctors by such a degree of wisdom and penetration, as far
exceededhis years:—that he very early understood the designon which he
was come into the world;—Wist ye not that I must be about my Father's
business?—Thatas he grew in years, he became remarkable for his wisdom
and stature, advancing gradually in the former as well as in the latter; and
that by the comeliness ofhis person, the sweetnessofhis disposition, and the
uncommon vigour of his faculties, he engagedthe affections of all who had the
happiness to be acquainted with him:—that, as his mind was filled with
wisdom, and always serene, being perfectly free from those turbulent passions
which distract other men, his countenance no doubt must have been composed
and agreeable,suchas did betokenthe strength of his understanding, and the
goodness ofhis heart. This may be implied by the expression, the grace ofGod
was upon him, Luke 2:40 unless it be thought an explication of the preceding
clause, He waxedstrong in spirit, and was filled with wisdom, Raphelius, Not.
Polyb. p. 186 makes it probable, that the grace of God, in that passage,is the
highest Hebrew superlative, being an expressionof the same form with, the
mountains of God, that is to say, exceeding high mountains,—and so is
equivalent to the description which Stephen gave of Moses'sbeauty, Acts 7:20.
He was αστιεος τω Θεω, fair to God,—exceeding fair. Besides, we find the
word χαρις, grace, usedin a similar sense by St. Luke 4:22 and all—wondered
at the gracious words which proceededout of his mouth, επι τοις λογοι ; της
χαριτος, atthe harmony and beauty of his diction, as well as the importance of
his subject. Howeversingular this observationconcerning our Lord's form
may appear, yet a nearerview of it will conciliate our approbation: for if his
stature was so remarkable in his youth, that it twice deservedthe notice of the
evangelist, ver.40, 52 his comeliness might be so likewise. Noris any thing
which the prophets have said of him, as forinstance, Isaiah52:14 inconsistent
with this conjecture:for the meanness ofthe Messiah's condition, and the
disposition of the Jews towards him, are describedin that prophesy, rather
than the form of his person. Just as Psalms 45:3 describes the triumphs of his

Jesus was a growing boy.

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