Day 54: Jesus Chose to be a Learner

Every year his parents traveled to Jerusalem for the Passover Festival. When he was twelve years old, they went up according to the custom of the festival. After those days were over, as they were returning, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but his parents did not know it. Assuming he was in the traveling party, they went a day’s journey. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they returned to Jerusalem to search for him. After three days, they found him in the temple sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all those who heard him were astounded at his understanding and his answers. LUKE 2:41–47

WHEN MISSY WAS ABOUT six or seven years old, she asked me why Jesus had to die. I began to, once again, carefully explain how our disobedience causes us to be separated from the holiness of God—all the while inwardly berating myself that my daughter still didn’t understand the Gospel even though I’m a Bible teacher by vocation! But Missy quickly interrupted me with this astute observation: “Mama, I know why Jesus had to die, I just want to know why God the Father picked His Son to be killed, because if one of us had to die, you wouldn’t let it be me, you’d die so that I wouldn’t have to.” Her compelling question is one of the reasons I applied for a doctoral candidacy at Denver Seminary because it reminded me that I still have so many wonderful things left to learn in life. Studying our respective subjects while sitting side by side at the kitchen island has become one of my favorite parts of parenting. And I’m increasingly convinced that becoming a lifelong learner is more than just a pleasant pastime; it’s an outgrowth of humility modeled by Christ Himself.

After camping in Jerusalem for a week or so and celebrating both Passover and the Feast of Unleavened Bread with friends and family, Joseph and Mary packed up the tent and began the long walk home to Galilee. Because caravans to and from the temple were normally made up of people from the same city or village,52 Joseph and Mary assumed Jesus was somewhere amidst the crowd of dusty travelers as they hiked out of Jerusalem. They probably thought He was tossing a football around with some of His cousins. They didn’t realize He was missing for an entire day.

I bet Mary’s face was tense with worry on the trek back to Jerusalem to find her misplaced son. As soon as she and Joseph got to the edge of the Holy City, she pulled Jesus’s middle school picture—the one that showed His cowlick and braces—out of her wallet and began asking everyone if they’d seen Him. She and Joseph anxiously knocked on doors, retraced their steps, and put flyers on windshields. By late afternoon they’d exhausted every lead and her mother’s heart was heavy. She sat down wearily on a rock wall and began to weep.

Suddenly Joe leapt to his feet and cried, “Hey Mar—I’ll bet He’s at the temple because you know how much our boy loves school!” So they hurried across town, raced up the uneven temple steps two at a time, and burst into a classroom to finally find their son sitting cross-legged on the floor discussing theology with a group of dumbfounded men five and six times His age!

If I was the smartest person in the world, I’d want at least a few people to be impressed. Not that I would necessarily post my academic stats on social media, but I probably wouldn’t mind if someone else did! Thank heaven, Jesus is nothing like me and didn’t feel the need to flaunt His unprecedented brainpower:

But they did not understand what he said to them.

Then he went down with them and came to Nazareth and was obedient to them. His mother kept all these things in her heart. And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and with people. (Luke 2:50–52, emphasis mine)

In other words, although Jesus was infinitely smarter than His parents—who did not understand what He said to them—He still submitted to them. According to Luke’s account (which Mary probably described to him53), Jesus got up, followed His confused parents back home to Nazareth, and continued acquiescing to their altogether ordinary authority. And while Jesus likely understood His divine calling and identity before He even started shaving, He didn’t groan when Mary mispronounced a big word, and He didn’t try to tutor Joseph in the physics of carpentry and construction. Nor should we forget that as Mary and Joe’s beloved firstborn son, the Master of the Universe condescended to master the art of rolling over, then crawling, and ultimately walking and talking like a normal child. Our Redeemer has always been omniscient—His beautiful mind contains the wisdom of the ages—yet He humbly chose to engage in His incarnate life as a learner.

• READ HEBREWS 5:8. What have you learned through suffering? Have you learned/grown spiritually more during easy seasons (when most of the relationships in your life are free from contention and things are going smoothly) or during difficult, suffering kind of seasons?
• READ PSALM 139:1–4, Job 21:22, and Hebrews 4:13. What’s the main point these verses make about God’s “mind”?
• READ ROMANS 11:33–36. How has being mentally awed by who God is led to worship in your own life?