Luke 2:40 And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was on him. Christ might have been made full-grown at once. Adam was, and our Lord is called "the last Adam," "the second man"; that is to say, Adam was a type or figure of Christ. One might have expected, therefore, that our Lord would be what Adam had been, a man sent into the world full-grown. Infancy, childhood, boyhood, are very humbling conditions. Why did Christ submit to them? 1. Our Lord's condescension is infinite, and therefore, in coming into the world, He desired to stoop as low as possible, in order to set us the more striking example of lowliness of mind. Therefore tie preferred, for His entrance into the world, the condition of an unconscious babe, and of a child dependent upon its parents, to that of a full-grown and independent man. 2. Our Lord, out of His infinite compassion for us, earnestly desired to sympathize with men in all their trials, and in every condition in which they can be placed, in eider that He might bless and comfort them by His sympathy. So He came in by the usual gate — infancy. 3. One can quite see this, that for a grown-up person never to have known childhood, a home, or a mother's care, would cut them off from all the most beautiful and tender associations of our nature. It makes a man tender, as no other thought can, to look back on his childhood and early home, on the strong interest which his parents used to take in him, and on the sacrifices which they were at all times ready to make for him. Now our Lord was to be infinitely tender, in order that He might attract the miserable and suffering to Himself; and He was to exhibit all the beauties and graces of which human nature is capable; and therefore it was that He willed to have a home of childhood, and to be dependent upon a mother's care, and to lisp His earliest prayers at a mother's knee, which is the way in which all of us first learn to pray. These experiences contributed to make His human soul tender.Concluding lessons: 1. Take to Him all your little troubles and trials in prayer, and assure yourselves that He is most ready to hear and help you. Why did He become a child, but to assure children of His sympathy with them? 2. Take Him for your example. Observe His love of God's house, His teachableness, His desire for instruction, His submission to His parents (while all the while He was their God), His growth in wisdom and in favour with God and man; and try to copy Him in these points. 3. Trust with all your heart in the goodness which He as a child exhibited, and which was perfect goodness, such as yours can never be. Only for the sake of that goodness of His will God forgive your faults. (Dean Goulburn.) Parallel Verses KJV: And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him. |
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