04 The Growth of the Holy Child in Stature and Spirit
IV THE GROWTH OF THE HOLY CHILD IN STATURE AND IN SPIRIT
"And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon Him." These words contain and cover what was, in some respects, the most important period of our Lord’s life. For these words contain and cover that all-important period of His earthly life during which His intellectual and moral and spiritual character was first formed. When the early years of any child’s life are neglected, and wasted, and mismanaged, all the after years of that child’s life are bound in shallows and in miseries. But our Lord’s whole earthly life escaped all our stagnations, and all our shipwrecks, because it was, as we may say, so well steered in the tides of His youth.
Now, to begin with, "the child grew." As the evangelist says again, "Jesus increased in stature." I think I am safe in saying that this exactest of writers would never have said about the youth of our Lord what he does say, and says over again, unless he had had before his mind’s eye the figure of a young man conspicuous among His fellows for His stateliness and His strength. The sacred writer tells us that he had the most perfect understanding of the very beginnings of our Lord’s life, because he had himself seen, and had interrogated with a view to his gospel, the most trusty eye-witnesses of our Lord’s childhood, and boyhood, and youth. Till in this text we ourselves become as good as eye-witnesses of the laying of the first foundation stones of our Lord’s whole subsequent life, and character, and work. And the very first foundation stone of them all was laid in that body which the Holy Ghost prepared for our Lord as the instrumenturn Deitatis; the organ and the instrument of His Godhead. You may depend upon it that a writer like Luke would never have repeatedly expressed himself, as he has here repeatedly expressed himself, about the growth and the stature of our Lord’s body, if our Lord’s bodily presence had been weak, as was the case, to some extent, with the apostle Paul. In his famous essay on "Decision of Character," John Foster has a most striking passage on the matter in hand. Decision of Character, the great essayist argues, beyond all doubt, depends very much on the constitution of the body. There is some quality in the bodily organization of some men, which increases, if it does not create, both the stability of their resolutions and the energy of their undertakings and endear-ours. There is something in some men’s very bodies, which, like the ligatures that the Olympic wrestlers bound on their hands and on their arms, braces up the very powers of their mind, Men of a strong moral character will, as a rule, be found to possess something correspondingly strong in their very bodies; just as massive engines demand to have their stand taken on a firm foundation. "Accordingly," says Foster, "it will be found that those men who have been remarkable among their fellows for the decisiveness of their characters, and for the success of their great endeavors, have, as a rule, been the possessors of great constitutional strength. Till the body has become the inseparable companion and the fit coworker with the mind." It is an ancient proverb--Mens sana in corpore sano; a sound mind in a sound body; a stately mind and character in a corresponding bodily stature.
"And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit." You have as much understanding yourselves in all these matters as any of your teachers. Well, then, what exactly would you understand if it was said to you about some youth in the family, or in the school, or in the office, or in the workshop, that he grew and waxed strong in spirit? Would you not at once make a picture to yourself of a lad full of life, full of feeling, and full of sensibility. Quick-witted, as we say; high-mettled, as we say; full of courage, and of a warm heart. You would see before yourself a keen-minded, intelligent, affectionate, sparkling-eyed youth. Well, all that undoubtedly enters into the evangelist’s intention as he sets this strong spirited child, called Jesus, before his readers. There is nothing supernatural here. The successive features that Luke here lays down as belonging to our Lord’s early days are not at all impossible to your own children to imitate and to which to attain. There is nothing here that might not be said with the most perfect truth about one of your own eminently intelligent, and eminently warm-hearted sons. As a matter of fact, the very same thing is said to the letter about Elizabeth’s son also. "And the child grew," writes Luke about the young Baptist also, "and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the desert till the day of his showing unto Israel." Only, no doubt; indeed, to a certainty, there was in Mary’s son a strength of spirit, and a keenness of feeling, and a quickness of response to everything that was honest, and just, and pure, and lovely, and of good report that was not seen in the same degree in the youthful Baptist, nor will be seen in your very best sons. And all that was so, because it was His Father’s purpose that in the stature of His body, and in the strength of His spirit, as well as in everything else, this Holy Child was to be the first Adam over again. As far as these things went Paradise was restored in Nazareth, as long as Mary and her first-born son lived in that favored town. And, as Adam would have been the first father of a whole world full of such strong-spirited children, had he stood in his first estate; even so, the second Adam had now come to restore, and in these things also, what He took not away.
And, then, that is a delightfully well-chosen word, He "waxed strong in spirit." That is to say, just as He grew in the number of His years, and in the stateliness of His bodily presence, so He waxed strong in His spirit; in the endowments of His mind, and in the affections of His heart. There was not one atom of what we censure as precocity and prematurely about the Holy Child. Not one atom. At eight days old, He was just what an eight days old child should be. And at twelve years old, He was just what a twelve, or, say, sixteen years old lad should be. Take Him at any year of His life you like, and He was neither a year younger, nor a year older, than that. When He was a child, He spake as a child, He understood as a child, He thought as a child. And it was only when He became a man that He put away childish things. There was first the blade, and then the ear, and then the full corn in the ear. And it was not till the fruit was brought forth, that the sickle was put in, because the harvest was come.
"Filled with wisdom." You will yourselves have remarked and meditated on this; how it is not said that He was filled with knowledge, or with learning, or with great talents, or with great promise of great eloquence, though all that would have been true, in the measure of His years. But wisdom is far better than all these things taken together. Wisdom is the principal thing, says the wise man, therefore get wisdom. Knowledge is good; knowledge is absolutely necessary. But, then, knowledge so often puffs up; but never wisdom. Wisdom always edifies. He grew in knowledge, you may be sure, every day. He passed no day without learning something He did not know yesterday. He listened and paid attention when old men spake. He attended with all His might to His lessons in day-school and in Sabbath-school. He read every good book He could lay His hands on. He went up as His custom was to the Synagogue every Sabbath day. And, then, all that was turned on the spot into wisdom to Him; like water turned into wine. Everything He learned in His head, straightway descended into His heart, and then out of His heart were the issues of His wise, and holy, and heavenly life. " And when the Sabbath day was come, He began to teach in the Synagogue; and many hearing Him were astonished, saying, From whence hath this man these things? And what wisdom is this which is given to Him?" When the same thing was asked at the wisest man in another dispensation, he answered them that if they had given their hearts wholly up to wisdom, as he had done, she would have come and dwelt in their hearts as well as in his heart. And our Wise Man made much the same answer when He said, My doctrine is not mine, but His that sent Me. And if any man will do His will that man also shall know of the doctrine. The Holy Child had this greatest of all happiness that His heart always turned instinctively to know and to do His Father’s will. Whatsoever things were true, whatsoever things were honest, whatsoever things were just, whatsoever things were pure, whatsoever things were lovely, and of good report, He instinctively and immediately thought of those things. That was His whole wisdom both as a child and as a youth. And He grew every day in that wisdom, till He was filled with that wisdom every day. The light of wisdom that lighteth every man that cometh into the world, lighted up this young man’s whole inner life with a clearness, and with a strength, and with a beauty, that all ended in making Him the Light of the world. He was so full of wisdom that His Father, for His reward, has taken Him and has made Him of God to us our wisdom, as well as our righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption.
All that makes us think shame at our own folly. What born fools we have all been! And what incurable fools we still are! How foolish is so much of our walk and conversation to this day! How ashamed we continually are at the things we daily do, and at the words we daily speak! Foolishness is bound up in our heart from a child, even as wisdom was bound up in Jesus’ heart. We have plenty of talents, and plenty of knowledge, and plenty of learning, and plenty of eloquence; it is in wisdom that we are. all so bankrupt. So bankrupt that all our other gifts and possessions are lost upon us for want of wisdom to direct us in them. We are ever learning at great outlay, but we are never coming to that knowledge of the truth that is the end of all learning. Our very learning is fatal to us, if it is alone, as it so often is. It lands us continually in the ditches of life, because the eye, and the hand, and the heart of wisdom do not lead us in the road of life. How common a thing is all learning, and all knowledge, and all eloquence; and how rare a thing is a little wisdom to direct them! How few men among our great men are wise men! Really wise men. How few among our own relations and friends are really wise men. If you have one wise man in your family, or in the whole circle of your friendship, grapple that mere to your heart with a hook of gold.
"And the grace of God was upon Him." "Even in the Scriptures," says Clement, "the distinction of names and things breeds great light in the soul." Now, you are to make a careful distinction here. You are not to think of "grace" here in its ordinary evangelical acceptation. But there is no fear, surely, of your making that mistake here. You think every day and every hour of God’s grace to you as the chief of sinners. And though our Lord thought without ceasing of the grace of God that had come to Him; it was not the same kind of grace as that is which has come to you. The grace of God has come to you bringing salvation. But the Savior of men did not for Himself need salvation. More than one kind of grace came to Him, first and last. But not among them all the grace that has come so graciously to you. And it breeds great light on the kind of grace that came to the Holy Child when we turn from the fortieth verse of this chapter to the fifty-second verse, and there read that He increased in favor with God and man. The true sense here is the same as when a voice came from heaven to the Jordan, and elsewhere, and said: "This is My Beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." "The good pleasure of God was upon Him," that would be the best way to render the text. And not only was the grace, and the favor, and the good pleasure of God upon the Holy Child and the Holy Man, but for thirty years it was the same with all men also. No child, no boy, no lad, no young man, in all Galilee was in such universal favor; was so popular, and so universally beloved for thirty years as was Jesus of Nazareth. And no wonder. It could not have been otherwise. It seemed good to the Holy Ghost, and to the four evangelists, not to dwell at any length on the early life and character of our Lord. But we do not much miss that omission of theirs. No reader of theirs, with a spark of love and imagination, needs one syllable more than he has in the text to set his mind to think and his heart to burn. He went about doing good every day of his life. Paul said in a hyperbole that as touching the law he himself was blameless. But it was literally true, and was no hyperbole, of his Master, Jesus of Nazareth. He did no sin against God or man. Neither was there any youthful folly in His snow-white life to break any father’s or mother’s heart. And so on, till the evangelist sums up the days of our Lord’s youth with these so beautiful words--And in favor with God and man.