Luke 2:40 Commentary - Whedon's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

§ 14. JESUS GOES TO THE PASSOVER AT TWELVE YEARS OF AGE, Luk 2:40-52 .

To the question, What sort of a boy was Jesus? this brief passage forms the whole scripture answer. We learn from it that he had a true human soul as well as body. He was a genuine natural child, infant, and boy. When as an infant the shepherds paid to him their homage, and the Magi presented their gifts, he was, perhaps, unconscious of the nature of the transactions. When, at the age of some two and a half years, his parents brought him from their flight into Egypt to the hills of Nazareth, his body grew: and amid the bold scenes of hill and dale, with the blue Mediterranean in the distance, his mind received its expansion. As the synagogue and the lessons at home unfolded the truths of the Old Testament to his view, telling of the Messiah to come, it is wonderful to think what might have been the first presentiments to his mind that he was himself that Messiah. Perhaps this passage tells us of the first distinct consciousness that God was his Father in the highest sense.