Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Luke 2:49
And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?
49. about my Father’s business ] Rather, in my Father’s house. See Excursus I. These words are very memorable as being the first recorded words of Jesus. They bear with them the stamp of authenticity in their half-vexed astonishment, and perfect mixture of dignity and humility. It is remarkable too, that He does not accept the phrase “Thy father” which Mary had employed. “Did ye not know?” recalls their fading memory of Who He was; and the “I must” lays down the law of devotion to His Father by which He was to walk even to the Cross. Psa 40:7-9. “My meat is to do the will of Him that sent Me and to finish His work,” Joh 4:34. For His last recorded words, see Act 1:7-8.
my Father’s ] it is remarkable that Christ always says (with the article) but teaches us to say (without the article): e. g. in Joh 20:17 it is, “I ascend unto the Father of me and Father of you.” God is His Father in a different way from that in which He is ours. He is our Father only because He is His Father. See Pearson On the Creed, Art. i.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
How is it … – Why have ye sought me with so much anxiety? Mary should have known that the Son of God was safe; that his heavenly Father would take care of him, and that he could do nothing amiss.
Wist ye not – Know ye not. You had reason to know. You knew my design in coming into the world, and that design was superior to the duty of obeying earthly parents, and they should be willing always to give me up to the proper business for which I live.
My Fathers business – Some think that this should be translated in my Fathers house – that is, in the temple. Jesus reminded them here that he came down from heaven; that he had a higher Father than an earthly parent; and that, even in early life, it was proper that he should be engaged in the work for which he came. He did not enter, indeed, upon his public work for eighteen years after this; yet still the work of God was his work, and always, even in childhood, it was proper for him to be engaged in the great business for which he came down from heaven.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Luk 2:49
Wist ye not that I must be about My Fathers business
The Epiphany of work
1.
The Epiphany before us is, in the first place, that of the two lives, the seen and the unseen, the relative and the personal, the human relationship to the Divine. Let us try to place ourselves in imagination in those Temple precincts, and picture the entrance of the distressed and bewildered mother after two days and nights of weary and watchful searching. Regardless of His mothers anxiety, He has been sitting in the Temple courts. Son, why hast Thou thus dealt with us? was a natural question; and it fell not on a deaf ear, but on an unupbraiding conscience. How is it that ye sought Me? The rebuke is turned back upon herself. Wist ye not that I must be about My Fathers business? (Original: In the things of My Father. I prefer here the Authorized Version to the Revised.) It was a hard stern lesson for the heart of the mother. She lives only in Him; but He has now another life, and another being. Such is her first lesson in the mystery of the two lives, the twofold relationship. This lesson we have all to learn for ourselves, and to learn also for one another. What a unity does this give to the human being, to have a life above this life, a business, a home, a Father, away from the desultoriness, the dissipation, which are so wearying and deteriorating to all that is the man in us. My Father,–a word of concentration, a word significant of the gathering into one of all the interests and affections which before were scattered abroad. This the one purpose of all education with the name, to make real to the young life this spiritual sonship; and this the one principle of all true human dealing, so to recognize in one another the secret of the Divine relationship, that we neither seek to engross for ourselves hearts which belong to another, nor run any risk of seducing from their rightful allegiance those whom God has appropriated to His own possession. Yet, secondly, of Him who has just spoken of this as a matter of course, that He shall be absorbed in His Fathers business, it is written in the other half of the text that, He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them. We are brought here into the very heart of the great mystery–God manifest in the flesh. And this is all that is told us of the boyhood of the Saviour–this and one brief hint besides, as to the occupation of His time in manual labour. This, then, as to its outward shape and form, was His Fathers business; the inner life went on unknown and unnoticed. He was growing all this time in wisdom; but the one feature of the thirty years is the SUBJECTION. All else is taken for granted–the industry and the piety and the beautiful example–and this only is dwelt upon. He was subject unto them. He humbled Himself, St. Paul writes, as the characteristic of the whole of His earthly life–He humbled Himself, and became obedient. From this beginning it was but a natural process to the long self-repression of the village-home and the drudging workshop; thence to the baptism in Jordan, and the temptation in the desert; thence into the homeless unrests of the ministry, the scorn and rejection of men, the dulness and coldness even of His own, and at last the agony of Calvary, and the shameful death of the cross. Though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered. After Him let us struggle, living the life of faith which realizes the Father in heaven, feeling it His business as our business which makes the knowledge of Him our one submission, and suffers no other allegiance to interfere or compete with this; yet, on the other hand, counts no human subordination, and no personal sacrifice misplaced or undignified, may it but reproduce in faintest reflection the great Epiphany when He went down with them, &c. Let your light so shine before men, &c. (Dean Vanghan.)
A grand purpose
A measureless weight of conviction is in that Boys word, I must. A Divine necessity, recognized with blended awe and joy, has Him in its grip. I must do My Fathers work. A grand purpose fills His being, and His whole nature is bent on its accomplishment, a purpose exalting duty above all human ties and all human pleasures, and embracing within itself the highest ideal of being and doing. Difference of purpose marks man from man. Men take rank in the scale of manhood according to the elevation and purity of their aims. It is a sign of unique capability that the Boy Jesus should soar to the Divine, and embrace it with His whole soul. I must be about My Fathers house and work. (J. Clifford, D. D.)
A plea for a rejected translation
The necessity of our Lords being in His Fathers house could hardly have been intended by Him as absolutely regulating all His movements, and determining where He should be found, seeing that He had scarcely uttered the words in question before tie withdrew Himself with His parents from that house, and spent the next eighteen years substantially away from it. On the other hand, the claim to be engaged in His Fathers concerns had doubtless frequently been alleged both explicitly and implicitly in respect of the occupations of His previous home life, and continued to be so during the subsequent periods of His eighteen years subjection to the parental rule; His acknowledgment of that claim being in no wise intermitted by His withdrawal with His parents from His Fathers house. Intimations of a more general kind seem to the writer easily capable of being read between the lines of the inspired narrative, which increase the probability that the Authorized translation, rather than the rendering of the Revisers, expresses the meaning of the evangelist. (R. E. Wallis, Ph. D.)
The spiritual development of Christ
I. THE FIRST DAWNING CONSCIOUSNESS OF HIS MESSIAHSHIP.
II. THE FIRST DAWNING CONSCIOUSNESS OF HIS PECULIAR RELATION TO HIS FATHER.
III. THE RESULTS OF THESE THOUGHTS UPON HIS LIFE. Eighteen years of silence, and then–the regeneration of the world accomplished, His Fathers business done. (Stopford A. Brooke, M. A.)
The first recorded words of Jesus
We are grateful that the Spirit of God has given us this first word of our Lord Jesus, and we love it none the less because it is a deep word. We are not surprised that even as a child the Son of God should give forth mysterious sayings. Stier, to whom I am much indebted for thoughts upon this subject, calls this text the solitary floweret out of the enclosed garden of thirty years. What fragrance it exhales I It is a bud, but how lovely! It is not the utterance of His ripe manhood, but the question of His youth; yet this half-opened bud discovers delicious sweets and delightful colours worthy of our admiring meditation. We might call these questions of Jesus the prophecy of His character, and the programme of His life. In this our text He set before His mother all that He came into the world to do; revealing His high and lofty nature, and disclosing His glorious errand. This verse is one of those which Luther would call his little Bibles, with the whole gospel compressed into it.
I. Here we see THE HOLY CHILDS PERCEPTION.
1. He evidently perceived most clearly His high relationship.
2. He perceived the constraints of this relationship. Here we have the first appearing of an imperious must which swayed the Saviour all along. We find it written of Him that He must need go through Samaria, and He Himself said, I must preach the kingdom of God; and again to Zaccheus, I must abide in thy house; and again, I must work the works of Him that sent his. The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders. The Son of Man must be lifted up. It behoved Christ to suffer. As a Son He must learn obedience by the things which He suffered. This Firstborn among many brethren must feel all the drawings of His sonship–the sacred instincts of the holy nature, therefore He must be about HisFathers business. Now I put this to you again, for I want to be practical all along: Do you and I feel this Divine must as we ought? Is necessity laid upon us, yea, woe laid upon us unless we serve our Divine Father? Do we ever feel a hungering and a thirsting after Him, so that we must draw nigh to Him, and must come to His house, and approach His feet, and must speak with Him, and must hear His voice, and must behold Him face to face? We are not truly subdued to the son-spirit unless it be so; but when our sonship shall have become our master idea, then shall this Divine necessity be felt by us also, impelling us to seek our Fathers face. As the sparks fly upward to the central fire, so must we draw nigh unto God, our Father and our all.
3. He perceived the forgetfulness of Mary and Joseph, and He wondered.
4. He perceived that He Himself personally had a work to do.
II. THE HOLY CHILDS HOME. Where should Jesus be but in His Fathers dwelling-place?
1. His Father was worshipped there.
2. There His Fathers work went on.
3. There His Fathers name was taught.
III. THE HOLY CHILDS OCCUPATION.
He spent His time in learning and inquiring. How I pant to be doing good, says some young man. You are right, but you must not be impatient. Go you among the teachers, and learn a bit. You cannot teach yet, for you do not know: go and learn before you think of teaching. Hot spirits think that they are not serving God when they are learning; but in this they err. Beloved, Mary at Jesus feet was commended rather than Martha, cumbered with much service. But, says one, we ought not to be always hearing sermons. No, I do not know that any of you are. We ought to get to work at once, cries another. Certainly you ought, after you have first learned what the work is: but if everybody that is converted begins to teach we shall soon have a mass of heresies, and many raw and undigested dogmas taught which will rather do damage than good. Run, messenger, run! The Kings business requireth haste. Nay, rather stop a little. Have you any tidings to tell?
1. Learn your message, and then run as fast as you please.
2. This Holy Child is about His Fathers business, for He is engrossed in it lids whole heart is in the hearing and asking questions. There is a force, to my mind, in the Greek, which is lost in the translation, which drags in the word about. There is nothing parallel to that word in the Greek, which is, Wist ye not that I must be in My Fathers? The way to worship God is to get heartily into it.
3. The Holy Child declares that He was under a necessity to be in it. I must be. He could not help Himself. Other things did not interest the Holy Child, but this thing absorbed Him. You know the story of Alexander, that when the Persian ambassadors came to his fathers court, little Alexander asked them many questions, but they were not at all such as boys generally think of. He did not ask them to describe to him the throne of ivory, nor the hanging gardens of Babylon, nor anything as to the gorgeous apparel of the king; but he asked what weapons the Persians used in battle, in what form they marched, and how far it was to their country; for the boy Alexander felt the man Alexander within him, and he had presentiments that he was the man who would conquer Persia, and show them another way of fighting that would make them turn their backs before him. It is a singular parallel to the case of the Child Jesus, who is taken up with nothing but what is His Fathers; because it was for Him to do His Fathers work, and to live for His Fathers glory, and to execute His Fathers purpose even to the last.
IV. Let us, lastly, learn This HOLY CHILDS SPECIAL LESSON TO THOSE. OF US WHO ARE SEEKERS.
1. DO I address any children of God who have test sight of Christ? Mark, dearly beloved ones, if you and I want to find our Lord we know where He is. Do we not? He is at His Fathers. Let us go unto His Fathers: let us go to our Father and His Father, and let us speak with God, and ask Him where Jesus is if we have lost His company.
2. One more word, and that is to sinners who are seeking Christ. It will all come right if you will just think of this–
(1) that Jesus Christ is not far away; He is in His Fathers house, and that is everywhere;
(2) that He is always about His Fathers business, and that is, saving sinners. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The motto of Christs life
We have heard of a custom, kept up by some good men, of choosing, each New Years morning, a word or a sentence which should be their motto for the twelvemonth they had commenced. But Jesus of Nazareth seems to have made this choice once for all early in His career. He has recorded it; and we now ought to give it a full recognition as the prevailing and controlling principle of His wonderful life; Wist ye not ?
I. THIS CONCERNS OURSELVES ONLY SO FAR AS WE ADMIT HIM TO RE THE MASTER AND MODEL OF OUR EXISTENCE. If it be true, as we so often assert, that the Christian life is merely Christs life imitated and reproduced, then His motto is ours also. We write it up over our doorway; we make it the seal of our correspondence; we emblazon it upon our carriage panels; we engrave in on our plate; we stamp it upon our coin; even the ring on our finger, and the buckle on our shoes latchet, bears the same inscription and device. Each devout and true Christian, that is, gives himself and signs himself over unto God.
II. Hence, here is a TEST OF THE GENUINENESS OF OUR RELIGION.
III. There is an EMPLOYMENT FOR SUCH A MOTTO in the interpreting of ones occupation in life. Many a man works in his vocation, without looking on it as a calling at all. Remember, your business is not yours only, but your Fathers too.
IV. This motto likewise will serve admirably to exhibit what is THE EARLIEST NEED OF A SOUL disturbed with the discovery of its sins and exposure. Write across any merely moral and correct life this saying of Jesus. It will make you think of the line in red ink merchants sometimes print on their cards when they have changed their address; it is on the card, not in it. A worldly life requires not regulation only, but regeneration. The change must be radical. It is not the twist of the threads, but the threads which make the fabric of the character wrong.
V. This motto will settle what are ones SAFE RELATIONS TO THE WORLD AROUND. The line must be drawn at the point where the world yields wholly to the Fathers business.
VI. Right here comes the decision, also, concerning the PROPRIETY OF QUOTING CHURCH MEMBERS FOR PATTERNS. The imperfections of others are no excuse for oneself. Being a Christian does not consist in proving other people to be hypocrites. The motto of Jesus says nothing about church members business, but the Fathers.
VII. This motto will show, in like manner, THE REASON FOR SUCH SORE DISAPPOINTMENTS AS WE SOMETIMES EXPERIENCE, when those who promise well for a while fall away suddenly into sin. They have only been living a surface life of dependence on self. Their purpose has gone no higher than mere conduct. Whereas the end of Christian life in all its outgoings is Jesus Christ Himself. Wealth is gained that the owner may use it for Christ. Learning is acquired in order to teach our fellow-men about Christ. Out from the plane of human history springs one mysterious life, the model of all worthy existence. There it stands in the Scriptures out against the clear sky, visible to a hundred generations. The pattern of our life is found in the characteristics of that: the motive of our life is to be found in the love we bear for that: the corrective of our life is to be found in laying it alongside of that: and the stability of our Christian life is to be found in the unfailing help it receives from that. We are held up from falling, not by our hold upon Jesus hand, but by His hold upon ours; we love Him because He first loved us; united to Him we can be sure He will sustain us in temptation.
VIII. This saying will AID US IN ESTABLISHING OPEN ISSUES wherever we are. Compromises are an invention of the devil. Keep up the boundaries between good and evil. On the one side is right, on the other is wrong; on the one peril, on the other safety; on the one truth, on the other falsehood; on the one those who are of the world, worldly, on the other those who are about the Fathers business. (G. S. Robinson, D. D.)
Christ about His Fathers business
I. NOTE THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST, It was a spirit of undivided consecration to the will of God His Father. It was a spirit urged onward by an absolute necessity to serve God. Wist yet not that I must? There is a something in Me which prevents Me from doing other work. I feel an all-controlling, overwhelming influence which constrains Me at all times and in every place to be about My Fathers business; the spirit of high, holy, entire, sincere, determined consecration in heart to God.
1. What was the impelling power which made Christ say this?
(1) The spirit of obedience which thoroughly possessed itself of His bosom.
(2) A sacred will to the work which He had undertaken.
(3) He had a vow upon Him–the vow to do the work from all eternity.
2. What was His Fathers business?
(1) To send into the world a perfect example for our imitation.
(2) The establishment of a new dispensation.
(3) The great work of expiation.
II. IMITATE THE SPIRIT OF CHRIST. Be about your Fathers business with all earnestness, because that is the way of usefulness. You cannot do your own business and Gods too. You cannot serve God and self any more than you can serve God and mammon. If you make your own business Gods business, you will do your business well, and you will be useful in your day and generation. Again, would you be happy? Be about your Fathers business. Oh, it is a sweet employment to serve your Father. (C. H.Spurgeon.)
The Epiphany of Christs Childhood
Christ is thoroughly a child, thoroughly a youth, thoroughly a man. In every stage of His life He is a representative of human life at that stage. He is not an unnatural child or boy; but He shows His Divine nature in the natural ways and forms of childhood. His humanity is perfect; not marvellously or strangely precocious. We may draw all the usual features of human child-life out of this story.
I. Take first the ACTIVE DELIGHT IN A NEW EXPERIENCE, which so belongs to all children. Manhood loses it. Disappointment takes off the edge. It is Christs first visit to Jerusalem, and He is sensitively and zestfully full of it. He is alive to all the surroundings of His countrys capital and centre. Thus He is the champion of childhood, insisting that its natural features (such as inquisitiveness), must be met and gratified; showing that through them God was manifested in His life, that they are not wrong in themselves, that they may be channels of the Holy Spirits action. Delight and liberty are the simple creed of childhood. It would save many a young life from future excess; it would keep in the family many a prodigal and wanderer, and early emigrant, if this feature of a true, full child were at once recognized; if parents would not only look for a childs trust and obedience, but also for his activity.
II. IMPULSIVE TRUTHFULNESS TO SELF. Childhood never argues sophistically, contrary to the impulses of its nature, as a man delights to do often. How is it ? How could I help going into My Fathers temple and talking of Him and speaking for Him? It is the great impulse, and duty, and mission of My life. And I but obeyed it. Did you not know I would be here? How could you expect anything else? Here was a perfect, holy nature, saying in its childhood I must, and there was nothing more to be said in answer.
III. FILIALNESS: sense of Fatherhood, and of a family. Remember every child has a heavenly as well as an earthly father and home. Besides the second commandment in our Lords code there is the first. Religion is but a higher application of the principles of morality, the doing for God what you do for man; being filled with the sense of Gods Fatherhood as with that of earthly parentage; carrying dutifulness from the home of one to the higher home of the other. I remember going through a cave of stalactite, hung with glistening pendants, and capable of wonderful reflections, but shut away from all sunlight and gleam of heavens power. A simple torch won marvellous effects from those waiting walls. But it was a great longing all the while in ones mind. Oh for one stream of daylight through all this sleeping glory?! If earth, made light, will so lighten it, what would the light of heaven do? So one looks with regret on much of the sweetness of life: upon a filial son; upon a life whose earthly affection lights it up with gleams of bright beauty, but with none of heavens light streaming through its filial devotion, to give it the supreme glory of a life of a son of God, delighting in being about the Fathers business; flinging over it the life which you see in Christ, in this Epiphany of His childhood. (Frederick Brooks.)
Childhood to be dedicated to God
Life must be wholly a manifestation of God. Every age is of value. Each section of life brings its own contribution to the perfected Christian character. Childhood has its own forces, its own kinds of strength and power, which other parts of life do not furnish; and they must be used in developing the man of God. You lose something if you put off religion to your later years. Your religious character never feels the benefit and power of these child forces, which do not belong to later life. You know the value of an overture in music; how its simplicity helps all the remainder of the more elaborate variations and movements. You could not start at once into the midst of the symphony or oratorio, and intelligently enjoy and use it. So youth brings its own peculiar contribution to the harmony of godly, Christly living. That is the teaching of the Boyhood of Christ. As the day without its dewy morning and all its influences; as the day beginning with hot noon; so is a life which begins for God at late years. We disjoint our religious lives, not seeing that the child is the father of the man, and that all our days must be bound each to each by natural piety. Christ puts them altogether again, shows God in and through all of them, even in and through boyhood, and says, It is not merely that you may be Gods at the end; it is that all from the beginning may be His; and that at the end you may have a product towards which every stage of living has assisted. Oh, may Christ, the truest human child that has ever lived, win all the freshness and young strength there is yet in us for His Father. (Frederick Brooks.)
The constraining motive
What could compel the God who was equal to the Father? Was it not the constraint of His own loving and obedient heart? He must be about His Fathers business, because He could not help it. To obey the Father was to obey the impulse of His own heart. He had undertaken to do His Fathers will, and in doing it He did what was emphatically His own will. They were so completely one, theft Christ was compelled to be about His Fathers business. This word must is no strange word to us women. We know well enough what it means. We, too, have rendered the obedience of love, which is the only kind of obedience worth the name. Is there any sweetness in all the world that can equal that which comes from obedience to our souls beloved? The must is not a yoke which other hands have laid upon us; it is the outcome of our own hearts. It never thinks of possible reward or possible punishment, There is no need of a set of rules, or of verbal commands, much less of urging words. We obey because we must; because otherwise the hunger of our love could never be satisfied; because if there were a must not instead of a must, all the joy and gladness would go out of our life. We should not know what to do with our lips, and hands, and hearts, if we might not employ them for our dearest. But think what this must means in the text. I must be about My Fathers business. Is the Divine love within us less strong than the human? Are we Christ-like in this respect? Can we say, I delight to do Thy will, O God? Would it not change our lives a little if we felt this must as Jesus felt it? Would it not make of us better women, because better Christians? We feel that we must be about the business of our husbands, our children, or our friends; bat we too often regard our Fathers business as something for our leisure moments only, to be taken up or left according to convenience.
There is too often no must in this case. And this is the reason of much of the sorrow which is in our lives. We know so little of Christian joy, because we know so little of perfect obedience. We are Marthas, who are cumbered about much serving, rather than Marys, whose whole souls go out in love to the Master. Let us start afresh, and begin at the beginning.
Let us abide with our Father, until, knowing Him better, we love Him more; and then say to all the hindering influences that are round about us,
Wist ye not that I must be about my Fathers business?
(Marianne Farningham.)
The earthly and the heavenly parentage
It was a hard, stern lesson for the heart of the mother; she lives only in Him, but He has now another life and another being. Such is her first lessons in the mystery of the two lives, the twofold relationship. For a considerable portion of the life of all men, the two relationships are at one. The parent represents God to the child, and the child sees God through the parent. It is a sweet and lovely time for the mother, which nature perhaps would bid her protract. She feels that only good can come of it, so pure and so heavenward are her own aspirations for her child. Cannot the son continue to seek heaven only through her? is there any moral blank, is there any spiritual necessity to forbid her saying as a thing for all time and for all life, So be it, it is good for us to be thus? Yes, she must learn the great lesson, All souls are
Mine; as the soul of the parent, so also the soul of the son is Mine; and
God is the speaker. She must bend her neck to this discipline, or it will be the worse for her and for her child. The child has a Father in heaven, and at the first dawn of reason he must be about his Fathers business. There are parents who have sought to perpetuate the spiritual infancy, to stand between God and the boy, to be still the conscience keeper and the mediator even when the open consciousness of the relationships direct and immediate should have warned them off as from holy ground. They have done so, and the Nemesis has been sharp and swift, the devotion diverted from God has found its object in Belial or Mammon. The mother may divert, but she cannot retain it. (Dean Vaughan.)
Gods business the only work for man
Here is the true thought for us, not only that all true work which we do is Gods work, but that work which is not of God is net work, does not properly exist in the universe at all. There is no work but Thine. When we first take up our place and labour, we mistake the meaning of our life. We think we are born to do our own will, and we act upon our thought. Straightway all our work becomes selfish: we toil and struggle for ourselves, we are an end unto ourselves; and the result is that we find our work becoming mean; our view of life contemptuous; ourselves ignoble. But when the root idea of life is changed, when we know that we are here to do Gods will, and that His will is love to us and all, the impulse and end of our work are altered. We accept the duties laid upon us, and are not anxious to make them into advantages to self. We think, God has placed me here and told me to do this. He is right, and knowledge and good must flow to all if I am faithful. I am His instrument; through me He is making a phase of Himself known to man; through me He is doing a portion of His mighty labour. The thought transfigures our view of the universe; immediately work becomes unselfish and sanctified, life is ennobled, the commonest drudgery is rendered beautiful, suffering is gladly borne. Men call us aside to the pursuit of pleasure, to the passion of excitement, to the fame and honour we may win, to seek our own will and gain it. Hush, we say, we live now in deeper joy than you can know, we have loftier excitements. Fame, honour, they are in His hand and not in ours. My own will! I have my will when I do His will. How magnificent a thing might life become could we but turn away from all temptations to do our own will, and say to the tempters, were they even father or mother–say in the strength of Christ–I cannot; wist ye not that I must be about my Fathers business? (Stopford A. Brooke, M. A.)
About His Fathers business
At His mothers tender reproach He turns, and lifts His dreamy eyes towards her–eyes that have been only intent on the sacred scroll before Him, and raised only to the grave faces of the official teachers around Him. For the first time He is aware of His own absorption. It seems incredible to Him that those nearest and dearest should be out of sympathy with Him at such a moment–unconscious of the spiritual influences which to Him were all in all–of the fascination of the law–of the solemnities of the Temple, from which He had not been able to tear Himself. He stands still, rooted to the spot; He has one more question to ask, not of the priest, but of His parents: Wist ye not that I must be about My Fathers business? It sounded like a simple home appeal–had He not always been zealous about the carpentering business in the workshop of His reputed father at Nazareth–should He be less zealous about the work the heavenly Father was carrying on in Him at Jerusalem? A call so distinct–an opportunity so unique–a combination so complete–in the Temple–sitting in the midst of doctors, both hearing them and asking them questions; there was indeed business–more profitable beyond compare than anything to be found at Nazareth; there was at last edification beyond all human handicraft. He could not choose but be there–until called back. I must, He said–such moments of spiritual constraint fashion our lives. I must speak out, I must give it up, I must strike the blow, make the sacrifice, sound the matter to its depths, be alone in prayer, search out one who can teach or guide me, if only for a single brief hour, or for one fugitive day at a certain crisis–under the constraint of guiding events, a spiritual voice, a Divine leading. I must sit in the Temple, hear, inquire. I feel this leap into the future, this sudden growth in wisdom. I can make no mistake–the revelation is too cogent, too inward, too harmonious. I am being dealt with. I cannot choose, but hear and be as I am. I must be about My Fathers business. (H. R.Haweis, M. A.)
Earnestness exemplified
The Rev. N. Haycroft, in urging earnestness as an essential qualification in a Sunday-school teacher, says:–The narrative of a colporteur in Spain, on one occasion, will best illustrate this point. He was travelling on foot through the provinces, selling Bibles. At the close of a long and weary days journey, he approached, hungry and footsore, the outskirts of a village, where he met a Roman Catholic priest, who asked him what he had in his pack. The colporteur replied, Bibles and Testaments; and I shall be happy to sell you one. Can you sell me a real Bible? Yes; a real Bible for real money. He unshouldered his pack, and the priest purchased a Testament. Just as he was about to depart he said to the colportuer, You seem to have travelled far to-day! Yes, I have, was the answer; but it is about my Masters business. You are footsore and wayworn. Yes; but it is all about my Masters business. Your Master must have a very faithful servant in you, said the priest. The colporteur, not liking to expatiate on his own merits, was inclined to cut the conversation short, anal prepared to pursue his journey. The priest interposed, and pressed him to remain and lodge with him all night. No, said the colporteur; I cannot accept your hospitality, for I must be about my Masters business. But you must lodge somewhere, so that you may as well come with me. After some persuasion he went. Having spent a useful hour or two together, they retired for the night. The priest was an early riser, and at six oclock in the morning he called to his housekeeper to know wether the stranger was up yet. Oh yes! said she, he has been gone from here this three hours; and the last words he said were, I must be about my Masters business. Here was earnestness;–and remember there is no qualification for a high pursuit like earnestness. Luther was in earnest; and he pressed on till he had secured the glorious Reformation.
Howard was in earnest; and he rested not till he had visited all the prisons of Europe, and made their sorrows patent to the world. Wilberforce, and Clarkson, and Buxton were in earnest; and they persevered till they had obtained the liberation of the slave. Napoleon was in earnest in his ambitious projects; and step by step he dashed on to victory, nor rested till he had trampled under foot the thrones of Europe, and made himself the arbiter of the destinies of the world. His one saving quality was earnestness.
Need of diligence in Gods service
What a lesson for all young people! You think you need not begin serving God just yet. You have plenty of years before you. How do you know that? Do people never die young–suddenly, without warning? Begin at once to redeem the time. Say to yourself each morning- My soul, thou hast to-day a God to glorify, a Christ to imitate, a soul to save, a body to keep under, time to redeem, temptation to overcome–verily, I must be about my Fathers business. (Dean Goulburn.)
Attending to Gods business
Dr. Parr, in his Life of Archbishop Ussher, relates that while that prelate was once preaching in the church at Covent Garden, a message arrived from the Court that the king wished immediately to see him. He descended from the pulpit, listened to the command, and told the messenger that he was then, as he saw, employed in Gods business, but as soon as he had done he would attend upon the king to understand his pleasure; and then continued his sermon. (Baxendales Anecdotes.)
Self-forgetfulness in the Lords work
There is in New York a Christian lady, who surely is one of the bravest of the brave. It was found necessary that the surgeons should perform upon her a severe and dangerous operation, and for that purpose she was taken from her home to a private room in the City Hospital. The probabilities were against her living through the operation, but it was the only hope of relief. She stood face to face with probable death under the surgeons knife, to say nothing of her great suffering from her disease. It might have been supposed that her anxiety for her children, her own suffering, and her great danger would have so filled her mind, that she would have done well had she fixed her thoughts on heaven, borne her sufferings meekly, and waited in unshaken faith for her summons home. But she was one of Gods heroines. She found that the skilled nurse who had charge of her was not a Christian, and she lost sight of herself, in the desire to bless the soul of this stranger. She requested the nurse to read the Bible aloud to her, and selected such passages as she believed most likely to rouse the nurse to repentance. She talked to her about religion, prayed with her and asked God to give her this soul before He called her home; and the prayer was answered. We are glad to be able to add that the lady recovered, and it is likely she owed her life, humanly speaking, to her zeal for her Lords work. For her thoughts were thus withdrawn from herself, so that sorrow for her loved ones and shrinking from suffering and dangers did not wear her nerves and exhaust her vitality.
The spirit of Christs life
Such a sentence at this time in His career is solitary in its grandeur, and rears its head like a sunlit peak, flashing its golden light backward along His infancy and boyhood, revealing its hidden progress and interpreting its experiences; reaching forward to the day of His baptism, and even to the hour in which He offers Himself a sacrifice for the sins of the world; and proving that the element present in this early utterance makes this but one of a series of luminous summits of the same mountain range. Look into the consciousness out of which that saying leaps. It bespeaks a soul that lies like an unruffled lake in the broad and beaming sunshine of the Fathers face. It is as surprising in its frankness as it is marvellous in its fulness. As if it were a flash of a divinely religious genius, we listen and ponder and admire; as when, for the first time, the spirit is spell-bound before Angelos Moses, or when Milan Cathedral, a splendid mass of perfected thought and finished loveliness, first stands out revealed to our gaze in theclear sunlight of heaven. (J. Clifford, D. D.)
Christ our example
Wist ye not that I must be about My Fathers business? Let us then–First, state the circumstances in which He now was. Secondly, concede what was peculiar in His case. And thirdly, explain what is common between Him and you on this subject.
I. And, first, WITH REGARD TO THE CIRCUMSTANCES IN WHICH HE NOW WAS. A remarkable veil is thrown over the Saviours infancy, His childhood, His youth, and His private life. But there is a difference between Him and us, and I therefore pass on–
II. Secondly, TO CONCEDE WHAT WAS PECULIAR IN HIS CASE. There was much that was peculiar.
1. His relation was peculiar. God was His Father in such a sense, as He is not ours.
2. The business He had to accomplish for His Father was peculiar. He said in His intercessory prayer, I have glorified Thee on earth, I have finished the work which Thou gavest Me to do. This was, to interpose as a Mediator between God and us; to lay His hands on us both; to finish transgression. No, He trod the wine-press alone, and of the people there was none to help Him.
3. His obligations were peculiar. I must be about My Fathers business. He was not originally under this obligation. He incurred it for our sakes. Lastly, His answer was peculiar. Never was there before, and never can there be again, a child to be addressed in a state like this. Though, therefore, His reply was exactly pertinent as regarded Himself, yet it is not proper in all respects for others. Yet where there is no equality, there may be a likeness. Though in all things He has the pre-eminence, He is the model of the new creation, and we are predestinated as Christians to be conformed to the image of Gods own Son. And now I come to the–
III. Third part of my subject, in which I purpose TO EXPLAIN WHAT IS COMMON BETWEEN HIM AND YOU ON THIS SUBJECT.
1. God is your Father.
2. That there is a business which your Father has assigned you. We call it your Fathers business, because He will punish all who neglect it, and graciously reward those who observe it. What is this business? You have the Scriptures; search the Scriptures. There you will find it described both negatively and positively. There you will learn that it is to avoid that which is evil and to cling to what is right.
3. Remember that this business you are under an obligation to regard and pursue. It is not to be observed as a thing of indifference; not as an optional thing; but you must be about your Fathers business. You are under the obligation of justice in this business. Whatever talents you possess, or blessings you enjoy, they come from Him, and He never relinquished His property in any one of them.
4. His answer is to be your answer, to all those who would interfere with your concern in this cause, you must say as He did, Wist ye not that I must be about my Fathers business? There are many who will in various ways do this; but for the present we may rank them under five classes. And in the first class we put those whom I shall call wonderers. The apostle says, The natural man knoweth not the things of God, because they are spiritually discerned. They wonder with regard to your conduct. Second class, we put reproachers. That which you do from the conviction of conscience many will ascribe to obstinacy or hypocrisy, or to a wish to excite notice and to distinguish yourself. Third class, I put the hinderers. There are some persons who have nothing in the world to do themselves, and very naturally judge of others by themselves. Fourth class, I put bigots. There are some persons who seem to possess nothing like judgment, and are never able to distinguish between things that differ. Fifth and last class are complainers. But to conclude. Here is a beautiful example to the young. The youthful Redeemer, my dear children, of twelve years old, is saying, I must be about My Fathers business. Oh! be influenced by this example; and remember what He says, They that seek Me early shall find Me. (W. Jay.)
How we must make religion our business
From this example of our blessed Saviour, in making His Fathers work His business, we learn this great truth:–That it is the duty of every Christian to make religion his business. For the illustrating and unfolding of this, there are three questions to be resolved:–
I. What is meant by religion?
II. Why we must make religion our business?
III. What it is to make religion our business?
QUESTION
I. WHAT IS MEANT BY RELIGION?
QUESTION
II. The second question is, why WE MUST MAKE RELIGION OUR BUSINESS? I answer, because religion is a matter of the highest nature; while we are serving God, we are doing angels work.
QUESTION
III. The third question is, WHAT IT IS TO MAKE RELIGION OUR BUSINESS? I answer: it consists principally in these seven things:–
1. We make religion our business, when we wholly devote ourselves to religion. Stablish thy word unto thy servant, who is devoted to thy fear Psa 119:38); as a scholar who devotes himself to his studies makes learning his business.
2. We make religion our business, when we intend the business of religion chiefly. It doth principatum obtinere [gain the pre-eminence] Seek ye first the kingdom of God (Mat 6:33); first in time, before all things, and first in affection, above all things.
3. We make religion our business, when our thoughts are most busied about religion.
4. We make religion our business when our main end and scope is to serve God.
5. We make religion our business, when we do trade with God every day. Our conversation is in heaven (Php 3:20).
6. We make religion our business, when we redeem time from secular things for the service of God. A good Christian is the greatest monopolizer: he doth hoard up all the time he can for religion: At midnight I will rise to give thanks unto Thee (Psa 119:62).
7. We make religion our business when we serve God with all our might.
USE.
I. INFORMATION.
BRANCH
I. Hence learn, that there are few good Christians. Oh, how few make religion their business t Is he an artificer that never wrought in the trade? Is he Christian that never wrought in the trade of godliness t How few make religion their business!
1. Some make religion a complement, but not their business.
2. Others make the world their business. Who mind earthly things Php 3:19).
BRANCH
II. Hence see how hard it is to be saved.
USE
II. TRIAL. Let us deal impartially with our own souls, and put ourselves upon a strict trial before the Lord, whether we make religion our business. And for our better progress herein, I shall lay down ten signs and characters of a man that makes religion his business, and by these as by a gospel-touchstone, we may try ourselves:–
CHARACTER
I. He who makes religion his business cloth not place his religion only in externals. He is not a Jew who is one outwardly Rom 2:28).
CHARACTER
II. He who makes religion his business avoids everything that may be a hindrance to him in his work.
CHARACTER
III. He who makes religion his business hath a care to preserve conscience inviolable, and had rather offend all the world than offend his conscience. I thank God, whom I serve from my forefathers with pure conscience (2Ti 1:3).
CHARACTER
IV. He who makes religion his business, religion hath an influence upon all his civil actions.
CHARACTER
V. He who makes religion his business, is good in his calling and relation. Relative grace cloth much grace religion.
CHARACTER
VI. He who makes religion his business hath a care of his company. He dares not twist into a cord of friendship with sinners: I have not sat with vain persons (Psa 26:4). Diamonds will not cement with rubbish.
CHARACTER
VII. He who makes religion his business keeps his spiritual watch always by him. The good Christian keeps his watch candle always burning.
CHARACTER
VIII. He who makes religion his business, every day casts up his accounts to see how things go in his soul.
CHARACTER
IX. He who makes religion his business will be religious, whatever it cost him.
CHARACTER
X. He that makes religion his business lives every day as his last day.
RULES FOR MAKING RELIGION OUR BUSINESS.
RULE
I. If you would make religion your business, possess yourselves with this maxim, that religion is the end of your creation.
RULE
II. If you would make religion your business, get a change of heart wrought.
RULE
III. If you would make religion your business, set yourselves always under the eye of God.
RULE
IV. If you would make religion your business, think often of the shortness of time.
RULE
V. If you would make religion your business, get an understanding heart.
RULE
VI. If you would make religion your business, implore the help of Gods Spirit.
MOTIVE
I. The sweetness that is in religion. All her paths are pleasantness Pro 3:17).
MOTIVE
II. The second and last consideration is, that millions of persons have miscarried to eternity, for want of making religion their business. They have done something in religion, but not to purpose: they have begun, but have made too many stops and pauses. ( T. Watson, M. A.)
The business of youth
1. To regain the knowledge of God.
2. To renew intercourse with God. The business of youth is–
3. To return to the service of God, All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way. Ye were as sheep going astray, but are now returned unto the shepherd and to the bishop of souls. By the service of God, I intend, a life of filial obedience to Gods will. His service does not consist in mere prayers and praises, in reading Scripture, and in attending public worship; even activity in spreading religion, blended with devotional exercises, does not compass Gods service; that service consists in doing and in suffering all Gods will, and His will embraces every act, and claims every hour. The business and the service in which you are occupied, may be made a course of duty to God: perform what you have to do, as unto God; do it according to Gods will; do it in the spirit of obedience to God; and in your worldly calling you will glorify Him; your conduct will exhibit the holiness, the justice, and the goodness of His will; your spirit will manifest His nature; your circumstances will display His power and His love; the place of your daily labour will be as much the temple of your ministrations, as the place where the seraphs cry; and your avocations as truly worship, as is their song of Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord Almighty. This is the business of youth: through the provisions of the gospel, to regain the knowledge of God–to renew intercourse with God–to return to the service of God–in one word, to Remember the Creator. Youth are expected to be thus occupied, by the highest authority and by the holiest beings.
This expectation is reasonable:–Because,
1. The season of youth is the right time for the commencement of this business–it is the right time, because the youth is as much the creature of God as he ever can be–it is the right time, because the time in which God requires it to be begun. In the days of thy youth, remember thy Creator. I do not deny that religion is often entered upon during manhood, and sometimes in old age; but it is too late; not too late for salvation, but too late to be right. God has not given men a discharge from His service during youth delay is, therefore, sin. Are mid-day and evening only ruled by the sun? does the earth nourish only the full-grown tree, or the full-blown flower? then why should lifes morning be without God, and the plants of youth without a place in Gods vineyard? The expectation is reasonable:–
2. Because, in the youthful stage of life, there is no peculiar impediment to the pursuit of this business. There are impediments, and they are great, and they are many: a fallen nature, an adversary in Satan, and an evil world, involve them. But these sources of opposition exist in every stage of life; and, I ask, when are they most full and powerful? Youth has nothing in it, as youth, presenting impediments. The peculiar features of early life are these:–The character is unformed–habits are not fixed–the spirits are buoyant–cares are not heavy; but in these features of youth we find facilities, not obstacles. The Scriptures and the ordinances of religion are as adapted to youth as to old age; if they supply strong meat for men, they yield also milk for babes. God is not slow to be found of the young, to hold fellowship with them, and to introduce them to His service. I love, saith God, them that love Me, and them that seek Me early shall find Me. The expectation is reasonable:–
3. Because, nothing so promotes the happiness of life, as the early pursuit of this business. Distinguish happiness from mere pleasurable feeling: the latter is not always the state of a godly man. But if a quickened intellect, if shelter from many moral evils, if fellowship with that Being whose wisdom and knowledge and influence are infinite, if peace of mind, if securing the chief end of life, if the love and care of God, if the prospect of a glorious immortality can constitute happiness, then it is found in the knowledge, in the fellowship, and in the service of God. The season of youth is the time in which happiness is most ardently sought; and if the young but become occupied with that which we have called the business of life, they not only secure in youth the purest and most solid enjoyment which can be found on earth, but they treasure up happiness for manhood and old age, yea, even to eternity. Godliness will promote the welfare of the young in their business. The godly youth attends to business with diligence and fidelity, and (performing his duties in the spirit of prayer) with the prospect of success. He performs everything as unto God–he acts by Gods guidance, he inherits Gods blessing. Any wise master will value greatly a pious apprentice, a godly assistant, a religious servant. Sunday religion–mere Bible-reading religion–mere church- and chapel-going religion, all employers, pious and profane, agree to abhor, but the reality in a youth all must prefer. (S. Martin, D. D.)
My Fathers business
Once, a great Roman emperor had conquered a great country and he had come back to Rome, and he was having what is called a triumph. He was going up with great pomp, chariots, and soldiers, and great hosts of people! A very little boy ran out of the crowd that was looking at the emperor, and was running up to him, when the crowd put him back, and said, Dont you know it is the emperor? The boy replied, Yes, he is your emperor, but he is my father! My father! That great king is your emperor, but he is my father! A man once said, Life is a thread; but the thread is in my Fathers hand, so it is all rightQ Do you understand that? What a blessed thing it is to be able to say, My Father! Beautiful words, arent they? I dont know any words like them. My Father! It is no use unless you can say, My. My dear boys and girls, can you look up into that great Fathers face, and say, He is my Father? I must be about my Fathers business. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)
Busy
I have read a little fable about a hard frost. When everything was frozen there was one little stream running still. It was not frozen, and somebody said to the little stream, Little stream, why arent you frozen? The reply was, I am too busy to be frozen. I am going too fast, too quickly, to be frozen. The best way is to be very busy–have plenty to do. (J. Vaughan, M. A. )
Fathers business
I should like to say something about a man who wrote a very clever book. At one time he did not believe in God. One day he was wanting a little water, and he knocked at a cottage door and asked for some water. A little girl opened the door, and he said to her, Will your mother give me a little water to drink? She replied, Come in, sir; my mother will be happy to give you some water. He went in, and saw the little girl had been reading the Bible; and he said to her, What, getting your task done? She said, No, sir, no task. I am reading my Bible.
Yes, he said, you are getting your tank out of the Bible. No, sir, she repeated, I am reading the Bible. He said to her, Do you love the Bible? In a childish way she replied, I thought everybody loved the Bible. This struck him very much. This little girl loved her Bible; it was no task to her, but a pleasure. He went home and read the Bible for himself. That was the beginning of it. She was doing her Fathers business. How did it become Gods business? And it is the great business of our day, to be reading the Bible, praying, thinking; and in our private devotions. (J. Vaughan, M. A. )
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 49. How is it that ye sought me?] Is not this intended as a gentle reproof? Why had ye me to seek? Ye should not have left my company, when ye knew I am constantly employed in performing the will of the Most High.
My Father’s business?] , My Father’s concerns. Some think that these words should be translated, In my Father’s house; which was a reason that they should have sought him in the temple only. As if he had said, Where should a child be found, but in his father’s house? This translation is defended by Grotius, Pearce, and others; and is the reading of the Syriac, later Persic, and Armenian versions. Our Lord took this opportunity to instruct Joseph and Mary concerning his Divine nature and mission. My Father’s concerns. This saying, one would think, could not have been easily misunderstood. It shows at once that he came down from heaven. Joseph had no concerns in the temple; and yet we find they did not fully comprehend it. How slow of heart is man to credit any thing that comes from God!
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
Some read itthat I must be in my Fathers house? Then the sense must be, why did you seek me in any other place than the temple, that is, my Fathers house, there lieth my business. But the phrase seemeth rather to signify as we translate it. He doth here signify that God was his Father: that Mary might have known, not only from the revelation of the angel, but because she had not known man; but she did not yet fully understand his Divine office as Mediator, and the great Prophet promised, that should reveal the will of God to people; much less did she yet fully and distinctly understand, that he was by nature the eternal Son of God: she believed so much as was revealed to her clearly concerning Christ.
It is said,
they understood not the saying which he spake unto them; they had not a clear and distinct understanding of it. In the mean time, from these words of our Saviour, and this fact of his, we may learn, that inferiors are not in all things under the power of their most natural superiors; particularly not in such things wherein they cannot yield obedience to them without a disobedience unto God. There are some cases wherein, instead of obeying, we are bound to hate both father and mother by our Saviours precept.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
49. about my Father’sbusinessliterally, “in” or “at My Fathers,”that is, either “about My Father’s affairs,” or “inMy Father’s courts“where He dwells and is to befoundabout His hand, so to speak. This latter shade ofmeaning, which includes the former, is perhaps the true one, Here Hefelt Himself at home, breathing His own proper air. His wordsconvey a gentle rebuke of their obtuseness in requiring Him toexplain this. “Once here, thought ye I should so readilyhasten away? Let ordinary worshippers be content to keep the feastand be gone; but is this all ye have learnt of Me?” Methinks weare here let into the holy privacies of Nazareth; for what He saysthey should have known, He must have given them groundto know. She tells Him of the sorrow with which His father andshe had sought Him. He speaks of no Father but one, saying, ineffect, My Father has not been seeking Me; I have been withHim all this time; “the King hath brought me into His chambers .. . His left hand is under my head, and His right hand doth embraceme” (Son 1:4; Son 2:6).How is it that ye do not understand? (Mr8:21).
Fuente: Jamieson, Fausset and Brown’s Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible
And he said unto them, how is it that ye sought me?…. That is, with so much uneasiness and distress of mind, not trusting in the power and providence of God, to take care of him; and in other places, besides the temple, where they had been inquiring for him:
wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business? or “in my Father’s house”, as the Syriac and Persic versions render it; where, as soon as you missed me, you might, at once, have concluded I was, and not have put yourselves to so much trouble and pains in seeking for me. Christ seems to tax them with ignorance, or, at least, forgetfulness of his having a Father in heaven, whose business he came to do on earth; and which they should have thought in their own minds he was now about, and so have made themselves easy. The business that Christ came about was to preach the Gospel, and which he afterwards performed with great clearness and fulness, with much power, majesty, and authority, with great constancy and diligence, with much concern for the souls of men, arid with great awfulness; and in which he took great delight, though he went through many dangers and risks of life; as also to work miracles in proof of his deity and Messiahship, and for the good of the bodies of men, and in which he was very assiduous, going about every where doing good this way: but the main, and principal part of his business was, to work out salvation for his people, by fulfilling the law, making reconciliation and atonement for their sins, and obtaining eternal redemption: this was a business which neither angels nor men could do; was very toilsome and laborious, and yet he delighted in it; nor did he desist from it until it was accomplished: and this is called his Father’s business, because he contrived and assigned it to him; he called him to it, and sent him to perform; he enjoined it to him as man and mediator, and the glory of his perfections was concerned in it, and secured by it: and it was a business that Christ must be about, be concerned in, and perform, because he engaged to do it from all eternity; and because it was the will of his Father, which must be done, and was necessary in order to show himself dutiful and obedient; and because it was foretold in prophecy again and again and promised that it should be done; and because it could not be done by another. Now our Lord’s conversing with the doctors, and which was a branch of his prophetic office, and was, no doubt, with a view to the good of the souls of men, and nothing less than miraculous, was a show, a prelude of, and a sort of an entrance upon the business he came about.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
Son (). Child, literally. It was natural for Mary to be the first to speak.
Why (). The mother’s reproach of the boy is followed by a confession of negligence on her part and of Joseph (sorrowing , ).
Thy father ( ). No contradiction in this. Alford says: “Up to this time Joseph had been so called by the holy child himself, but from this time never.”
Sought (). Imperfect tense describing the long drawn out search for three days.
How is it that ( ). The first words of Jesus preserved to us. This crisp Greek idiom without copula expresses the boy’s amazement that his parents should not know that there was only one possible place in Jerusalem for him.
I must be ( ). Messianic consciousness of the necessity laid on him. Jesus often uses (must) about his work. Of all the golden dreams of any boy of twelve here is the greatest.
In my Father’s house ( ). Not “about my Father’s business,” but “in my Father’s house” (cf. Ge 41:51). Common Greek idiom. And note “my,” not “our.” When the boy first became conscious of his peculiar relation to the Father in heaven we do not know. But he has it now at twelve and it will grow within him through the years ahead in Nazareth.
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
And he said. The first saying of Jesus which is preserved to us. Must [] . Lit., it is necessary, or it behoves. A word often used by Jesus concerning his own appointed work, and expressing both the inevitable fulfilment of the divine counsels and the absolute constraint of the principle of duty upon himself. See Mt 16:21; Mt 26:54; Mr 8:31; Luk 4:43; Luk 9:22; Luk 13:33; Luk 24:7, 26, 46; Joh 3:14; Joh 4:4; Joh 12:34. About my Father ‘s business [ ] . Lit., in the things of my Father. The words will bear this rendering; but the Rev. is better, in my Father ‘s house. Mary ‘s question was not as to what her son had been doing, but as to where he had been. Jesus, in effect, answers, “Where is a child to be found but in his Father ‘s house ?”
Fuente: Vincent’s Word Studies in the New Testament
1) “And he said unto them,” (kai eipen pros autous) and he replied or responded directly to them.”
2) “How is it that ye sought me?” (ti hote ezeteite me) “Why is it that you all sought me?” or how come?
3) “Wist ye not,” (ouk edeite) “Did you all not realize,” or perceive, that I feel at home here, in breathing the air in this place? Mar 8:21.
4) “That I must be about my Father’s business.” (hoti en tois tou patros mou dei einai me) “That I must be involved in the affairs of my Father?” He was not away from His true home, or that of His Father, in the activities of my Father’s house, Joh 2:16-17. These are the first recorded words uttered by Jesus in private or public, as He engaged in the study of the law, in His Father’s house, Psa 40:7-9; Joh 4:31-34; Joh 9:4; Mat 9:37-38.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
49. Did ye not know? Our Lord justly blames his mother, though he does it in a gentle and indirect manner. The amount of what he says is, that the duty which he owes to God his Father, ought to be immeasurably preferred to all human duties; and that, consequently, earthly parents do wrong in taking it amiss, that they have been neglected in comparison of God. And hence we may infer the general doctrine, that whatever we owe to men must yield to the first table of the law, that God’s authority over us may remain untouched. (240) Thus we ought to obey kings, and parents, and masters, (241) but only in subjection to God: that is, we must not, for the sake of men, lessen or take away any thing from God. And, indeed, a regard to the superior claims of God does not imply a violation of the duties which we owe to men.
In those things which belong to my Father This expression intimates, that there is something about him greater than man. It points out also the chief design of his being sent into the world, which was, that he might discharge the office enjoined upon him by his heavenly Father. But is it not astonishing, that Joseph and Mary did not understand this answer, who had been instructed by many proofs, that Jesus is the Son of God? I reply: Though they were not wholly unacquainted with Christ’s heavenly origin, yet they did not comprehend, in every respect, how he was intent on executing his heavenly Father’s commands: for his calling had not yet been expressly revealed to them. Mary kept in her heart those things which she did not fully understand. Let us learn from this, to receive with reverence, and to lay up in our minds, (like the seed, which is allowed to remain for some time under grounds) those mysteries of God which exceed our capacity.
(240) “ Que tout ce qui est deu aux hommes, est au dessous de la premiere Table de la Loy, et doit tenir le second lieu, afin que toujours Dieu ait sa puissance et son authorite entiere.” — “That all that is due to men is below the first Table of the Law, and ought to hold the second plane, in order that God may always have his power and his authority entire.”
(241) “ Dominis;” — “ maistres et seigneurs;” — “masters and lords.”
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
(49) Wist ye not . . .?This is, as it were, the holy Childs defence against the implied reproach in. His mothers question. Had they reflected, there need have been no seeking; they would have known what He was doing and where He was.
About my Fathers business.Literally, in the things that are My Fathersi.e., in His work, the vague width of the words covering also, perhaps, the meaning in My Fathers house, the rendering adopted in the old Syriac version. The words are the first recorded utterance of the Son of Man, and they are a prophecy of that consciousness of direct Sonship, closer and more ineffable than that of any other of the sons of men, which is afterwards the dominant idea of which His whole life is a manifestation. We find in a Gospel in other respects very unlike St. Johns, the germ of what there comes out so fully in such words as, My Father worketh hitherto, and I also work (Joh. 5:17), I and My Father are One (Joh. 10:30). The words are obviously emphasised as an answer to Marys words, Thy father. Subject unto His parents as He had been before and was afterwards, there was a higher Fatherhood for Him than that of any earthly adoption.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
49. How is it The first word of Jesus’s utterance on record. It exhibits even in this his childhood the characteristics of his style of discourses even in his later years. Especially do we find those characteristics which belong to the discourses preserved by John, and which are by rationalists pretended to be John’s own composition. We find the same parabolic force, which conceals the meaning under the figure; for the moment not understood, yet so remembered as to be understood hereafter.
How is it that ye sought me? Why did ye not come directly here? Where else could I be than in this holy, blessed spot? Strange that so beautiful a gush of childlike holy joy, at the delightfulness of his present place, should be interpreted into an expression of disrespect to his parents!
Wist Knew.
My Father’s business There seems to be a strong reason for giving this the meaning assigned by many scholars, Know ye not that I must be in my Father’s house? Why seek me? There is one sole blessed place suitable for me, and where I might be expected to linger. Yet both the terms house and business come in fact to the same thing. If he was in his Father’s house it must be on his Father’s business. If on his Father’s business where but in his Father’s house?
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘And he said to them, “How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?” ’
But Jesus was equally astonished. He too uttered a kind of rebuke. Why had they had to search for Him? Surely they must have known where He was? How could they possibly have needed to look for Him? Surely they must have realised that it was necessary for Him to be in His Father’s house? (It was so obvious to Him that He could not believe that it was not obvious to them).
There is an interesting parallel between this question ‘how is it that you sought Me?’ and the question of the angels in Luk 24:5, ‘why do you seek the living among the dead?’ There too they sought Him where they should have known He would not be. Both indicate how blind were the eyes of those who loved Him most, because He was so much beyond their understanding.
There is here a contrast between ‘your father and I sought you’ and ‘I must be in MY Father’s house’. He is by this making it clear that supremely God is His Father and He must obey Him, and that it is that filial obedience to His Father which must come first. And the implication is that He would expect His parents to agree with Him. The word ‘it is necessary’ regularly indicates the divine necessity, as it does here. He was not here by chance. Jesus had felt that He had no option but to be here. He was hungry to learn about His Father. That surely was the purpose in coming to the Feast, that He might take every opportunity of learning about His Father. And He had expected them to realise it. He had yet to realise that others were not guided by the Spirit in the same way as He was.
His astonishment releases Him from blame. It was not that He had been careless or selfish. During the festivities of the Feast many young boys of His age apparently stayed away from their parents days at a time in order to enjoy the festival atmosphere. Their parents knew that they would not get into any trouble and that they were with their friends and that there were relatives all over the place to whom they could look, and generous-hearted people always ready to help youngsters who were hungry. They let them go and enjoy themselves (they were seen as the equivalent of older teenagers today, almost adults). They would come home when they were ready to. And to such boys time would seem to stand still. They would not realise how the days were passing. It had been the same for Him. The only difference between Him and them was where they spent their time. But He had been sure that His parents would know exactly where He must be, and what He must be doing, and that they would therefore have sent for Him when they wanted Him. He just could not understand how they could have been so misguided as to not to have known. He was genuinely puzzled. He did not feel that He was to blame.
‘My Father’s House.’ The Greek is literally ‘the — of My Father’ but is an expression regularly signifying someone’s house. See Gen 41:51 LXX where we find the same phrase. However we translate it the significance is the same. ‘The things of His Father’ were to be discovered at ‘His Father’s House’, the Temple. He still at this stage saw the Temple from the viewpoint of a young boy who had heard stories about the Temple in his synagogue, and therefore saw it as something wonderful where all was good. He had not yet learned about its darker side. So how could anyone have not known that if He was in Jerusalem that was where He must be, spending His time in order to learn about His Father and in getting to know His Father? Was that not what the Passover was all about? Why then had they not come for Him? Why had they not realised where he was?
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Luk 2:49. Wist ye not, &c. Some render this, Know ye not that I must be in my Father’s house? With this translation the Syriac version agrees: and it is certain that the Greek will well bear this translation, and that the reply appears with peculiar propriety, if it be supposed to signify, that though they thought him lost, yet he was at home; he was in his Father’s house. He calls the temple his Father’s house, Joh 2:16 and thus gives a tacit hint, that in staying behind at Jerusalem, he had not left his true Father. It is to be remembered, that this is the first visit Christ had ever made to the temple since he was a child in arms; it is no wonder, therefore, that the delight he found here inclined him to prolong it. How happy those children, who, like the Holy Jesus, love the house and ordinances of God, and thirst for the instructions of his good word!
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
DISCOURSE: 1479
CHRISTS EARLY HABITS
Luk 2:49. And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me. wist ye not that I mutt be about my Fathers business?
THE prophets and apostles of old are proposed to us as examples in a variety of respects: but we are to follow men no further than they themselves followed Christ. Christ is the great pattern, to which all are to be conformed: and so fully is his character delineated in the Holy Scriptures, that we can scarcely ever be at a loss to know either what he did, or what he would have done, in any circumstances of life. The account we have indeed of his early days is very concise. There is little related of him to gratify our curiosity, but enough to regulate our conduct. The only authentic record which we have of the transactions of his childhood, is that before us.
His parents had carried him up at twelve years of age to Jerusalem, where all the males were obliged to assemble thrice in the year. After the paschal solemnities were completed, his parents set out on their journey homeward, and proceeded for one whole day, concluding that Jesus was in the company together with them. In the evening, to their great surprise, they sought for him in vain among all his kinsfolk and acquaintance; and therefore they returned the next day with their hearts full of sorrow and anxiety to Jerusalem, to search for their beloved child: but there they could hear no tidings of him all that night. Prosecuting their inquiries the third day, they found him at last, conversing with the doctors in the temple. Joseph being only his reputed father, left the task of reproving him to Mary his mother. She, gently chiding him for the distress he had occasioned them, received from him the reply which we have just read; in which he vindicated his conduct, from the superior obligations which he owed to his heavenly Father, and shewed, that their anxieties had arisen from their own ignorance and unbelief. They, we are told, understood not his saying: but we understand it: and from a sense of the vast importance of it, we will,
I.
Explain to you his reply
[This was probably the first time that he had ever been at Jerusalem since he was quite an infant: and he was solicitous to improve to the uttermost the opportunity which this season bad afforded him, of cultivating divine knowledge, and increasing in heavenly wisdom. Not wearied with the seven days that he had spent in spiritual exercises, he was happy to prolong the time, and to sit among the doctors (not with dictatorial forwardness, but with the modesty of a child) to answer any questions that were put to him, and to ask for information on those points, in which he found himself not yet sufficiently instructed [Note: ver. 4147.]. It was in the use of such means as these that the indwelling Godhead gradually irradiated his mind, and trained him up for the office, which at a more advanced age he was to fulfil. This was the business to which his heavenly Father had called him, at this time; and it was the delight of his soul to execute it: nor was he responsible to his earthly parents for overlooking on this occasion that attention to their feelings, which, in less urgent circumstances, he would have gladly shewn.
For all this he appealed to them: How is it that ye sought me with such anxiety? Wist ye not that I must be about my Fathers business? You know whence I am, that I am, in a way that no other child ever was, or ever will be, the Son of God. You know the end for which I was sent into the world, even to save my people from their sins. You know what marvellous interpositions have been vouchsafed me, insomuch that I was preserved, whilst all the children of Bethlehem, from two years old and under, were slain. You know also that the same heavenly Father who bade you carry me into Egypt, advertised you afterwards of Herods death, and directed you to return with me to our native land. And can you doubt that a child so born, and born for so great an end, and so miraculously preserved, shall be taken care of? Was not my heavenly Fathers care sufficient without yours?
Again, You have known my habits from my earliest infancy, and how entirely I have been devoted to my God, whilst in no single instance did I ever shew myself forgetful of you. You might well have concluded therefore, that I acted under the special direction of my heavenly Father, and might have been assured in your minds, that I was engaged in my Fathers business. You had abundant reason to be satisfied of all this; and therefore, though I cannot disapprove of your returning to search for me, I cannot altogether commend your sorrows and anxieties respecting me; since, if you had duly considered the circumstances I have referred to, your minds would have been comforted, being stayed on God.
Now, though his parents understood not this at the time, we, who enjoy a fuller revelation of Gods will, clearly comprehend it; and therefore may well, like Mary, treasure it up in our hearts. And being further informed, that during the whole of his youthful days he was subject to his parents, we see, that the construction we have put upon his words is true, and our vindication of his conduct is correct.]
Having explained his words, let me now,
II.
Commend to your attention the sentiments contained in them
Two things are here evidently insinuated;
1.
That the service of God is of paramount obligation
[Gods claims are infinitely superior to all that man can assert. We are to love and serve him with all our heart and soul and strength. In matters of mere arbitrary institution, he is pleased indeed to wave his claims, and to give a priority to ours; saying, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice [Note: Hos 6:6.]: but in the service of the heart and of the soul, he will never for a moment abandon his rights: He says, My Son, give me thine heart: and this we must give him at the peril of our souls. In comparison of him, our earthly parents, yea and our very life itself, are to be objects of hatred and contempt [Note: Luk 14:26.]. We are not to regard the authority of any superiors whatever, but to say, whether it be right to hearken unto you more than unto God, judge ye [Note: Act 4:19.]. Nor are we to be influenced by any examples, however numerous; but like Joshua, we must say, Whatever the whole nation may do, I and my house will serve the Lord [Note: Jos 24:15.]. This is strongly inculcated under the Christian dispensation: Give thyself wholly to these things [Note: 1Ti 4:15. See the force of the Greek.]. Rejoice evermore: pray without ceasing: in every thing give thanks: for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you [Note: 1Th 5:16-18.]. In a word, our whole life should be such, as, if any one shall inquire after us, to leave no doubt upon his mind, but that we are dutifully and diligently engaged in our Fathers business. It is not necessary that we should be always praying: our Lord himself was not praying at this time, but gaining instruction in the things of God. This was his duty. Ours is to perform the various offices of life in their season, combining in their due measure the services which our station in life calls for, with those which we owe more immediately to God. But in all that we do, we must have respect to Gods authority as appointing it, and seek Gods glory in the execution of it. We must live not unto ourselves, but solely and entirely unto God [Note: Rom 14:7-8.].]
2.
That in serving him, it is not possible for us to engage too early, or too earnestly
[Our Lord was only twelve years of age at this time: and now, after having fulfilled all his duties during the seven days of the feast, he persisted even till the tenth day in prosecuting what he judged to be for the improvement of his own mind, and for the honour of his heavenly Father. It is probable that, whilst all the males of Israel were at Jerusalem together, he, a little child, could not gain the attention of the great doctors at Jerusalem, who would almost of necessity be fully occupied with those who had come from every quarter of the land. But when the strangers were all gone, he might without difficulty gain access to the great and authorized instructors of the Lords people. This probably was one reason of his staying at that time, that so he might improve to the uttermost the only opportunity that had ever been afforded him. In like manner, when, in the course of his ministry, he had been labouring all the day, and praying all the night, and then, without taking any sustenance, was labouring also the next day, his friends sought him, fearing he was beside himself (as we translate it), or rather, that he was transported too far, so as irreparably to destroy his own health [Note: Mar 3:21. .] Now in all this he has shewn us, that, however we may be wearied in the Lords service, we are never to be weary of it; but are to prosecute it incessantly to the very utmost of our power. In short, whatever progress we may have made in our divine course, we are to forget the things which are behind, and to reach forth to those that are before, and never to pause till we have gained the prize [Note: Phill. 3:13. 14.].]
Address
1.
To parents
[You have a solicitude for your childrens welfare: you are anxious for the preservation of their health, and the advancement of their temporal prosperity. These feelings, if kept within due bounds, I by no means condemn. But your chief anxiety should be for the welfare of their souls; and your labour should be to engage them thoroughly in the business assigned them by their heavenly Father. If you neglect this, or shew a lukewarmness about it, you will involve yourselves in guilt of the deepest die. You remember how Eli was punished for this sin [Note: 1Sa 3:11-13.]: and his sons Hophni and Phinehas will reproach him in the last day as accessary to their destruction, Beware lest that reproach be vented against you by your children: for assuredly, if your souls will be required at the hand of your minister, much more will the blood of your children be required at your hands [Note: Eze 33:8.].]
2.
To young people
[You have from the moment you came into the world a business assigned you by your heavenly parent, and you are bound to execute it from the very beginning according to your capacity. If you commence it early, you have a special promise from God, that you shall succeed in your efforts [Note: Pro 8:17.]. And tell me, what period of life is there, in which you can be so well employed as in doing your Fathers will? You may think that youth and manhood are seasons rather for pleasure and for temporal pursuits: but the more you resemble Christ, the happier you will be. Who is there amongst you that does not congratulate Samuel, Obadiah, Timothy, on their early surrender of themselves to God. Be assured, that such a retrospect in your own case will, in a dying hour, be a source of much comfort to your souls. In the meantime you will greatly honour God by dedicating your whole lives to him, and will diffuse blessings through the world, instead of being, as alas! too many are, curses to all around them. And thus, it may be hoped, you will conciliate the favour both of God and man [Note: ver. 52.]. But if unhappily you be blamed for consecrating yourselves to God, then must you be ready to give a reason of your conduct with meekness and fear [Note: 1Pe 3:15.].]
Fuente: Charles Simeon’s Horae Homileticae (Old and New Testaments)
49 And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?
Ver. 49. Wist ye not ] Men, be they pleased or displeased, God must be obeyed.
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
Luk 2:49 . , in the things of my Father (“about my Father’s business,” A. V [36] ); therefore in the place or house of my Father (R. V [37] ); the former may be the verbal translation, but the latter is the real meaning Jesus wished to suggest. In this latter rendering patristic and modern interpreters in the main concur. Note the new name for God compared with the “Highest” and the “ Despotes ” in the foregoing narrative. The dawn of a new era is here.
[36] Authorised Version.
[37] Revised Version.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
Luke
THE BOY IN THE TEMPLE
Luk 2:49
A number of spurious gospels have come down to us, which are full of stories, most of them absurd and some of them worse, about the infancy of Jesus Christ. Their puerilities bring out more distinctly the simplicity, the nobleness, the worthiness of this one solitary incident of His early days, which has been preserved for us. How has it been preserved? If you will look over the narratives there will be very little difficulty, I think, in answering that question. Observing the prominence that is given to the parents, and how the story enlarges upon what they thought and felt, we shall not have much doubt in accepting the hypothesis that it was none other than Mary from whom Luke received such intimate details. Notice, for instance, ‘Joseph and His mother knew not of it.’ ‘They supposed Him to have been in the company.’ ‘And when they,’ i.e . Joseph and Mary, ‘saw Him, they were astonished’; and then that final touch, ‘He was subject to them,’ as if His mother would not have Luke or us think that this one act of independence meant that He had shaken off parental authority. And is it not a mother’s voice that says, ‘His mother kept all these things in her heart,’ and pondered all the traits of boyhood? Now it seems to me that, in these words of the twelve-year-old boy, there are two or three points full of interest and of teaching for us. There is-
I. That consciousness of Sonship.
Further, our Lord in these words, in the gentlest possible way, and yet most decisively, does what He did in all His intercourse with Mary, so far as it is recorded for us in Scripture-relegated her back within limits beyond which she tended to advance. For she said, ‘Thy father and I have sought Thee sorrowing,’ no doubt thus preserving what had been the usual form of speech in the household for all the previous years; and there is an emphasis that would fall upon her heart, as it fell upon none other, when He answered: ‘Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’s business?’ We are not warranted in affirming that the Child meant all which the Man afterwards meant by the claim to be the Son of God; nor are we any more warranted in denying that He did. We know too little about the mysteries of His growth to venture on definite statements of either kind. Our sounding-lines are not long enough to touch bottom in this great word from the lips of a boy of twelve; but this is clear, that as He grew into self-consciousness, there came with it the growing consciousness of His Sonship to His Father in heaven.
Now, dear brethren, whilst all that is unique, and parts Him off from us, do not let us forget that that same sense of Sonship and Fatherhood must be the very deepest thing in us, if we are Christian people after Christ’s pattern. We, too, can be sons through Him, and only through Him. I believe with all my heart in what we hear so much about now-’the universal Fatherhood of God.’ But I believe that there is also a special relation of Fatherhood and Sonship, which is constituted only, according to Scripture teaching in my apprehension, through faith in Jesus Christ, and the reception of His life as a supernatural life into our souls. God is Father of all men-thank God for it! And that means, that He gives life to all men; that in a very deep and precious sense the life which He gives to every man is not only derived from, but is kindred with, His own; and it means that His love reaches to all men, and that His authority extends over them. But there is an inner sanctuary, there is a better life than the life of nature, and the Fatherhood into which Christ introduces us means, that through faith in Him, and the entrance into our spirits of the Spirit of adoption, we receive a life derived from, and kindred with, the life of the Giver, and that we are bound to Him not only by the cords of love, but to obey the parental authority. Sonship is the deepest thought about the Christian life.
It was an entirely new thought when Jesus spoke to His disciples of their Father in heaven. It was a thrilling novelty when Paul bade servile worshippers realise that they were no longer slaves, but sons, and as such, heirs of God. It was the rapture of pointing to a new star flaming out, as it were, that swelled in John’s exclamation: ‘Beloved, now are we the sons of God!’ For even though in the Old Testament there are a few occasional references to Israel’s King or to Israel itself as being ‘God’s son,’ as far as I remember, there is only one reference in all the Old Testament to parental love towards each of us on the part of God, and that is the great saying in the Psa 103:13 : ‘Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.’ For the most part the idea connected in the Old Testament with the Fatherhood of God is authority: ‘If I be a Father, where is Mine honour?’ says the last of the prophets. But when we pass into the New, on the very threshold, here we get the germ, in these words, of the blessed thought that, as His disciples, we, too, may claim sonship to God through Him, and penetrate beyond the awe of Divine Majesty into the love of our Father God. Brethren, notwithstanding all that was unique in the Sonship of Jesus Christ, He welcomes us to a place beside Himself, and if we are the children of God by faith in Him, then are we ‘heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ.’
Now the second thought that I would suggest from these words is-
II. The sweet ‘must’ of filial duty.
Do people know where to find us? Is it unnecessary to go hunting for us? Is there a place where it is certain that we shall be? It was so with this child Jesus, and it should be so with all of us who profess to be His followers.
All through Christ’s life there runs, and occasionally there comes into utterance, that sense of a divine necessity laid upon Him; and here is its beginning, the very first time that the word occurs on His lips, ‘I must.’ There is as divine and as real a necessity shaping our lives because it lies upon and moulds our wills, if we have the child’s heart, and stand in the child’s position. In Jesus Christ the ‘must’ was not an external one, but He ‘must be about His Father’s business,’ because His whole inclination and will were submitted to the Father’s authority. And that is what will make any life sweet, calm, noble. ‘The love of Christ constraineth us.’ There is a necessity which presses upon men like iron fetters; there is a necessity which wells up within a man as a fountain of life, and does not so much drive as sweetly incline the will, so that it is impossible for him to be other than a loving, obedient child.
Dear friend, have we felt the joyful grip of that necessity? Is it impossible for me not to be doing God’s will? Do I feel myself laid hold of by a strong, loving hand that propels me, not unwillingly, along the path? Does inclination coincide with obligation? If it does, then no words can tell the freedom, the enlargement, the calmness, the deep blessedness of such a life. But when these pull in two different ways, as, alas! they often do, and I have to say, ‘I must be about my Father’s business, and I had rather be about my own if I durst,’ which is the condition of a great many so-called Christian people-then the necessity is miserable; and slavery, not freedom, is the characteristic of such Christianity. And there is a great deal of such to-day.
And now one last word. On this sweet ‘must,’ and blessed compulsion to be about the Father’s business, there follows:
III. The meek acceptance of the lowliest duties.
What a blessed transformation that would make of all lives! The psalmist long ago said: ‘One thing have I desired of the Lord, and that will I seek after, that I may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of my life.’ We may dwell in the house of the Lord all the days of our lives. We may be in one or other of the many mansions of the Father’s house where-ever we go, and may be doing the will of the Father in heaven in all that we do. Then we shall be at rest; then we shall be strong; then we shall be pure; then we shall have deep in our hearts the joyous consciousness, undisturbed by rebellious wills, that now ‘we are the sons of God,’ and the still more joyous hope, undimmed by doubts or mists, that ‘it doth not yet appear what we shall be’; but that wherever we go, it will be but passing from one room of the great home into another more glorious still. ‘I must be about my Father’s business’; let us make that the motto for earth, and He will say to us in His own good time ‘Come home from the field, and sit down beside Me in My house,’ and so we ‘shall dwell in the house of the Lord for ever.’
Fuente: Expositions Of Holy Scripture by Alexander MacLaren
wist ye not = knew ye not. Greek. oida. See App-132.
must. These are the first recorded words of the Lord. The reference is to Psa 40:5-11, Joh 4:34. Hence the Divine necessity. Compare Mat 16:21; Mat 26:54. Mar 8:31. Mar 4:43; Mar 9:22; Mar 13:33; Mar 24:7, Mar 24:26, Mar 24:46. Joh 3:14; Joh 4:4; Joh 12:34, &c. The last-recorded wordsthe Son of man were, “It is finished”: i.e. the Father’s business which He came to be about. Compare His first and last ministerial or official words. See note on Mat 4:4, “It is written”.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
Luk 2:49. , He said) In a kind tone, without any agitation.-, what,[33] why) This is the first recorded word of Jesus, [and contains a summary of all His actions.-V. g.] With it may be compared His last words, as well before His death, as also before His ascension, Act 1:7-8. He did not blame them, because they lost Him; but because they thought it necessary to seek for Him; and He intimates both that He was not lost, and that He could have been found anywhere else but in the temple.- , did ye not know) They ought to have known by the so many proofs which had been given. To know what is needful, tends to produce tranquillity of mind.-) Comp. Joh 16:32 [Ye shall be scattered every man to his own; where the Margin of Engl. Bible has to his own home], .- , of my Father) Whose claim on Jesus is of [infinitely] older standing than that of Joseph and Mary, [and Whom He had known from His tender years, without requiring any instruction in that respect on the part of His parents, who, we may take it for granted, were not aware of the fact.-V. g.] By that very fact, He declares Himself Lord of the temple: He afterwards avowed this more openly, Joh 2:16; Mat 21:12-13. [Moreover the same Being, whom He looked to (had regard to) in His first words as recorded by the Evangelist, He looked to also in His last, namely, His Father, saying, Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit (Luk 23:46).-Harm., p. 59.]-, it is necessary) He thus informs them that He has not violated the obedience due to them; and yet He thereby, in some measure, declares Himself emancipated from their control, and whets the attention of His parents; Luk 2:51.- , that I be) Comp. Heb 3:6.
[33] What reason was there that ye sought me: as she had asked ; so His reply begins with the same word.-ED.
Fuente: Gnomon of the New Testament
Always at Home
And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be in my Fathers house?Luk 2:49 (R.V.).
Few passages in the Gospels exhibit more vividly the mysterious combination of the natural and supernatural, the Divine and human, in our Lord, than the brief narrative in St. Luke from which the text is taken, and which tells us all that we know of our Lord from His infancy to the commencement of His ministry. Though this single incident is the only instance in which the veil is lifted by which those thirty years or so of His life are covered, it is sufficient to cast a clear and bright light upon the whole of that period, and to reveal to us the spirit in which He was living; and it will be found also to illustrate the manner in which those who would fain be of service to God and to their fellows should prepare themselves for such tasks.
1. The first point that strikes us in the narrative is the evidence it affords of the perfect naturalness and simplicity by which our Lords life at this period is marked. The picture of His tarrying behind in Jerusalem, Joseph and His mother not knowing of it, but going a days journey, supposing Him to have been in the company, exhibits Him as living a free and trustful life, like other children, mixing with those of His own age, and in affectionate intercourse with His parents kinsfolk and acquaintances. The perfect freedom from anxiety about the child shown by the conduct of Joseph and Mary at the outset implies an absence of any unusual strictness or formality in their relations with Him. It is a piece of child-life such as might have been seen in any other affectionate and pious Jewish household attending the feast at Jerusalem. Perhaps more suggestive still of the absence from our Lords character, at this period, of any of those unnatural features which characterize apocryphal accounts of His childhood is the fact of Joseph and His mother seeking for Him, for three days, in every place but that in which He was at last foundin the ordinary homes and haunts of children, as it would seem, and not in circles devoted to learning or pious meditation. His question, indeed, in answer to their remonstrance, implies that they might have known more of His character than this. Son, said His mother, why hast thou thus dealt with us? behold, thy father and I sought thee sorrowing. And He said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be in my Fathers house?
That Marys thoughts were not at once directed to the Temple is a striking illustration of the absenceif the word may be used for the purpose of contrastof unusual professions or pretensions in our Lords ordinary conduct. His parents seem to have expected Him throughout to do as other children did, and to be found where other children were; and even when He gave them the explanation just quoted they understood not the saying which he spake unto them. Nor did He even then pursue any special or unusual way of life. The fascination exercised over Him by His Fathers house, and by this interview with the great teachers of the law, did not divert Him from the ordinary paths of a childs or a young mans life; but he went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them; and He increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.
O happy pair of Nazareth,
Who saw the early light
Of Him who dawned upon the world
As dawns the day on night.
Within their home they saw the Child
That lived the perfect love,
A love like that which rules the heart
Of the great God above.
His childish voice and kindly tone,
His pure and patient face,
His tender mercies shown to all,
With never-ceasing grace;
The way He bore His youthful cross,
The reasons for His tears,
The kind of things which gave Him joy
Unchanged through growing years,
At home and in the playground throng,
They saw these heavenly ways,
And grew increasingly to speak
With words of reverent praise.
That simple, lovely, wondrous life
Betrayed itself from heaven;
He was the Child that should be born,
The Son that should be given.
He grew in stature and in praise,
By honest hearts adored,
Till in that home where He was born
His brothers called Him Lord.1 [Note: B. Waugh, in Hymns of Faith and Life, 95.]
2. How is the text to be translated? The Authorized Version is Wist ye not that I must be about my Fathers business? The Revisers have changed this into Wist ye not that I must be in my Fathers house? The Greek, taken literally, says, Wist ye not that I must be in theof my Father? The Authorized Version supplies business; the Revised, house. There is no noun in the Greek, and the article the is in the plural. To translate it as literally as it can be translated, making of it an English sentence, the saying stands, Wist ye not that I must be in the things of my Father? The plural article implies the English things; and the question is then, What things does He mean? The word might mean affairs or business. On the other hand we might translate, Wist ye not that I must be in my Fathers? Then, in almost all languages house would be understood. We commonly say to one another, I am going down to my fathers, or I shall spend the evening at my brothers. Everybody knows that we mean house, and that is just how the Greek here runs.
(1) Both translations are linguistically correct, but the Greek phrase is most common in the sense of in my Fathers house; and this is the translation of the Syriac, of the Fathers, and of most modern commentators. My Fathers house seems also most relevant in this connexion, where the folly of seeking is emphasizedthe certainty of His place is more to the point than that of His occupation.
(2) But, as Alford properly enough says, we must not exclude the wider sense which embraces all places and employment of my Fathers. The locality carried the occupation with it, for why must He be in the Fathers house but to be about the Fathers business, to behold the beauty of the Lord, and to inquire in his temple?
At the same time it is not wise to attempt to combine both translations in one exposition. We shall find sufficient material here for two sermons. Then, if we take first the translation of the Revisers, we shall see that Jesus, by His question, Wist ye not that I must be in my Fathers house? claimed the freedom of a child of the law. But freedom from parental control was at the same moment recognized as a greater obedience and deeper responsibilitythe responsibility of a Son to the Divine Father. And so from that moment He is to be found at home, not with earthly parents, but with the Father in heaven, whether in His Temple, where worship is wont to be made, or in the wider universe of His presence.
I
Freedom
1. In the question of the text Jesus claimed His full liberty. He could not deny Himself the right to act for Himself, to inquire for Himself, to make good His own independence. The hour has struck for Him when He must break through the limitations and restraints of His childhood, and must choose His own way of going about His Fathers business. He has responsibilities towards that Father which He must fulfil, even though at the cost of some severance from the tender ties of home, yea, even at the cost of some pain to the mother whom He loves so dearly. Remember that, to a Jewish boy, reaching the age of twelve made an epoch, because He then became a son of the law, and took upon himself the religious responsibilities which had hitherto devolved upon his parents.
When He had completed His twelfth year, on His thirteenth birthday, Jesus would be recognized as a young man, and called a son of the law. For at this time every Hebrew lad had his fate put into his own hands, and became responsible for his own actions. Up to this time his parents were held to be responsible for him: now he had to answer for himself both to man and to God. On the morning of this day he put on for the first time the two phylacteries which every Jew wore when he prayed, one on the head, and the other on the left arm. These phylacteries were small square boxes made of parchment, which were attached to the arm and the forehead by long slender straps; in each box there were four tiny cells; and in each cell there was put a strip of vellum on which was written a passage from the books of Exodus and Deuteronomy (Exo 12:2-16 : and Deu 11:13-22; Deu 6:4-9). On this thirteenth birthday, before morning prayer, the lad put on, first, the phylactery for the left arm, saying: Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe, who hast sanctified us with Thy commandments, and enjoined us to put on phylacteries. Then he put on the phylactery for the forehead, and uttered a similar thanksgiving. From this moment he was regarded as a son of the law, or a son of the commandments; i.e. he was bound to keep all the commandments of God; bound, therefore, to be always about his Fathers business, doing Gods will in whatever he did; bound also to go up to Jerusalem at the annual Feasts, and to sit at the feet of the Temple doctors.1 [Note: Samuel Cox.]
2. Is this freedom which Christ claims the prerogative of His sole Sonshipof His unique relation to the Father? Have we no part or lot in that demand? Surely that Sonship of His has been made ours. Into its prerogatives we are baptized. In Christ, by Christ, we too are endowed with peculiar responsibilities. We are given authority to become the sons of God. We have rights in the Fathers house. In Him, in His body, each individual soul wins a higher value, a fuller freedom. Its freedom of development, its freedom of judgment, its freedom of thought, its freedom of actionthese are not lost or diminished; they are intensified, braced, enriched, by those who are born into that Spirit of liberty which bloweth, as the wind, where it listeth.
Mr. Frederic Harrison, with whom, as a fellow-teacher at the Working Mens College, Ruskin had become acquainted, was often at Denmark Hill in these years, and has thus described the father and the son:
John James Ruskin, the father, certainly seemed to me a man of rare force of character; shrewd, practical, generous, with pure ideals both in art and life. With unbounded trust in the genius of his son, he felt deeply how much the son had yet to learn. I heard the father ask an Oxford tutor if he could not put John in the way of some scientific study of Political Economy. John! John! I have heard him cry out, what nonsense you are talking! when John was off on one of his magnificent paradoxes, unintelligible as Pindar to the sober, Scotch merchant. There were moments when the father seemed the stronger in sense, breadth, and hold on realities. And when John was turned of forty, the father still seemed something of his tutor, his guide, his support. The relations between John Ruskin and his parents were among the most beautiful things that dwell in my memory. This man, well past middle life, in all the renown of his principal works, who, for a score of years, had been one of the chief forces in the literature of our century, continued to show an almost child-like docility towards his father and his mother, respecting their complaints and remonstrances, and gracefully submitting to be corrected by their worldly wisdom and larger experience. The consciousness of his own public mission and the boundless love and duty that he owed to his parents could not be expressed in a way more beautiful. One could almost imagine it was in the spirit of the youthful Christ when He said to His mother, Wist ye not that I must be about my Fathers business? 1 [Note: E. T. Cook, The Life of Ruskin, i. 482.]
In the world of practical affairs the mother of Phillips Brooks showed herself eminently sane and wise. Her home circle was itself a means of liberal education. Experience had instilled into her a strong respect for the individuality of her children. They must be left free to shape their own lives, to follow their own destiny. She would force no confidence that was not freely and spontaneously given. She studied her opportunities of approach to them. This is how she speaks to an anxious mother who sought her counsel as to the training of her sons: There is an age when it is not well to follow or question your boys too closely. The period of which I speak appears to be one in which the boy dies and the man is born; his individuality rises up before him and he is dazed and almost overwhelmed by his first consciousness of himself. I have always believed that it was then that the Creator was speaking with my sons, and that it was good for their souls to be left alone with Him, while I, their mother, stood trembling, praying and waiting, knowing that when the man was developed from the boy, I should have my sons again, and there would be a deeper sympathy than ever between us. And so it came about that in later years the sympathy between Phillips Brooks and his mother became more strong and complete than ever. The happiest part of my happy life, said the great preacher, has been my mother. When on his visit to England he was commanded to preach before Queen Victoria, some one asked him if he felt at all afraid. No, he replied, smiling, I have preached before my mother.1 [Note: J. Gregory, Phillips Brooks, 44.]
II
Responsibility
With the knowledge of His freedom there came also the conviction to Jesus that His first opportunity of obedience to His Father was now before Him, and that it must be instantly attended to, without reference to any other claims upon Him, such, for instance, as returning to Nazareth with His parents. Hitherto, in His quiet Nazareth home, neither such knowledge nor opportunity had presented itself. To do His mothers will and to please Joseph, His foster-father, was the full extent of His will and duty. That He did these well and truly goes without saying. Since coming to Jerusalem to attend the feast of Passover, a new crisis had come to Him, and He did not suffer that opportunity to recede from His obedient heart, but embraced it at once, and gave Himself up with calm and determined enthusiasm to attend to it.
Both Joseph and Mary were speechless as soon as the Holy Child let them see how full of folly their conduct had been and how much they had misunderstood Him and hurt Him. They had treated Him as if He had taken the Passover much too seriously. They found fault with Him for His devotion to His Fathers business, and they uttered aloud their complaint and grievance with Him before the whole temple. They said it till the astonished doctors heard them, that He should have been home in Nazareth by this time, and back at His proper work, The lamb had been slain, they said, and its blood had been sprinkled on them and on Him for another year,let Him come away home then, like all His kinsfolk and acquaintances. And if we will only look well, we shall see ourselves in all that as in a glass. For we are Joseph and Mary over again in all that. We also treat our Redeemer as if He had been religious over-much in the dreadful business of our redemption. We treat Him and His redemption of our souls as if He had taken us and our sins far too much to heart; almost as if He had been a martyr by mistake. They did Him the first wrong that week to suppose that He was in that home-hurrying company; and then they still more wronged and wounded Him by the places in which they sought Him; but above all, by their not seeking Him first in His Fathers house and about His Fathers business.1 [Note: A. Whyte, The Walk, Conversation, and Character of Jesus Christ our Lord, 64.]
I should like to speak for a moment to the young, about those feelings of capacity, and that conviction of being called to high duty, by which many are stirred in secretfeelings which too seldom find their justification in the facts of after life. If such thoughts are made known to other people, they are often smiled at as mere childish dreamings, or are chided as the evil fruit and sickly food of vanity, rather than the outcome of a heavenly impulse. But however crude and mixed with idle vanity these musings may be, they are the smoking flax which God will never quench, and which wise men will try to fan into a flame. We cannot possibly be wrong in thinking that we were sent into the world to be nobler and more useful than are most of those we see around. The sad thing is, not that such thoughts are common, but that they are so easily and generally lost. Some of the most degraded people now living, and thousands of miserable seekers after pleasure and pelf, once had these thoughts and feelings, and in sanest moments they know that it is their shame and sin that none of these great thoughts have been transmuted into deeds. Some have lost their aspirations because too indolent to cultivate and use their talents. Some gave themselves to pleasures which developed into vices. Some surrendered their hearts to the love of money, and, because determined to be rich, fell into a snare and became avaricious, deceitful and dishonest; then, ceasing to respect themselves, they sank into deserved contempt. Others in their impatient thirst for distinction wasted their strength in the pursuit of quickly won successes, cheap applause, and instant recognition; instead of resolving to do good work, and show themselves approved to God, content to leave their honours and rewards to Him. This last named cause of failure is probably one of the least contemptible, and therefore one of the most frequent and fatal of the forms under which temptation assails the young and ardent. Just as eager but inexperienced mountain climbers often weary themselves by hastening up the nearest slopes and peaks, and fail to win the true summit because the day is too far spent before the right path is found, so many noble and aspiring souls miss the attainment of true greatness, not through idleness or mean designs, but through headstrong haste to reach the goal without treading all the intermediate steps.1 [Note: T. V. Tymms, The Private Relationships of Christ, 59.]
1. Here, then, is a life which has already found its principle. Every life which has any value or any force finds a ruling principle or purpose which steadily guides it. It may be a principle of enjoyment, or of selfishness, or of ambition, or of usefulness; but whichever it is, it directs the energies. There are, indeed, lives more or less without any such principle at all, but they are feeble things; they drift rather than live, they aim at nothing and accomplish nothing. To take a wrong line strongly and consistently is almost better than such empty weakness.
Of the purpose he set before himself when beginning to study art he once said to me: From the very first I determined to do the very best possible to me; I did not hope to make a name, or think much about climbing to the top of the tree, I merely set myself to do the utmost I could, and I think I may say I have never relaxed; to this steady endeavour I owe everything. Hard work, and keeping the definite object of my life in view, has given me whatever position I now have. And I may add, what I think is an encouragement to others, that very few have begun life with fewer advantages, either of health, wealth or position, or any exceptional intellect. Any success I may have had is due entirely to steadiness of purpose.2 [Note: George Frederic Watts, i. 17.]
2. We may call this principle of life a sense of responsibility. The word is perhaps stiff and abstract, and yet I think it helps us to part of the truth. I must be about my Fathers business, or, if we take the R.V., in my Fathers house; it comes to nearly the same thing. I must be. He is not His own. He belongs to His Father. He owes to Him His life and its powers. How it reminds us of what He said afterwards to othersthat except a man become as a child he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God; and of what St. John said about Himthat He brought those who believed on Him to become sons of God! Responsibility, then, answerableness to another for His life and His use of it, but that other His Heavenly Father, whom it was the joy of His loving heart to servethere is the principle and purpose which we find at the heart of Him at twelve years old; it will go with Him through life. It will be there still when with dying lips He will cry, It is finished!finished, the work God gave Him to do; Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.
A few days before the first number of the War Cry was sent out to the world, General Booth gave a remarkable address at Darlington, which is recorded in this issue under the title of The Baptism of Fire, and in which he said: I want to say something this morning that will help you in the personal conflicts of your daily experience, and in the great warfare you are waging with the principles and principalities and devilries around you. You are the soldiers of Salvation, and the responsibilities of the war are all upon your heads. Now there is in English law a curious fiction by which no man who once becomes a clergyman of the Church of England can ever cease to be one. If he goes into the greengrocery line he is still a reverend: if he goes to prison he is still a clergyman: and I suppose, nay, I am sure, he will go up to the judgment-bar to be dealt with in the light of all the solemn responsibilities implied in such a position. Now, although by cowardice, or unfaithfulness, or disobedience, or other infamous action, you may be deemed unworthy of your position and drummed out of God Almightys Armycovered with disgrace and infamystill the memories of your position and the responsibilities of what you might have accomplished in it, will cleave to you, and grow upon you, and haunt you, and harrow you for evermore. How important, then, for you to be faithful.1 [Note: T. F. G. Coates, The Prophet of the Poor, 107.]
3. In the Son we are made free with the freedom of the Son. And, at certain special hours of our life, this freedom will assert itself. But then, let us be sure of thisthat this heightened freedom must heighten also the severe responsibility with which it is exercised. It is this that we are so apt to forget. Freedom, liberty,the words sound to us as if they set us loose from responsibilities. Yet, claimed as they are by us, not in our individual capacity, but as children of God, as members of Christs Body, they must be held in trust to the Father who gave them; in trust to the Son, the Head, in whose name we act.
Boys and girls, and for that matter grown folks too, sometimes have curious notions of liberty. To be free they think is to be able to do just what one pleases. But true freedom is the power to do what we ought to do. A dead leaf falling from a bough has power to do just what it pleases, because it is dead, and no one cares how much it eddies or where it falls. But the big earth in travelling round the sun is very careful not to get outside its appointed path, for if it should wander even a little from the path which God has marked out it would upset all the life upon its surface. The earth is far freer than an autumn leaf. It gets its freedom from the sun. If we were only dead autumn leaves we could drift and eddy hither and thither and do anything we pleased: but being immortal souls, created in Gods image, we have a mighty work to do and should keep the orbit which our Fathers love has traced.1 [Note: C. E. Jefferson, My Fathers Business, 113.]
4. Always to the free man must the concerns of God be paramount. What doth the Lord require of thee? is the first and last question. Still it cannot be denied in any thoughtful consideration of the subject that the concerns of men are the concerns of God. Our place is in a human world, and all our palpable relations are human relations. Our conceptions of duty can be framed only by the suggestions which our contact with men affords. But here we encounter the fact of individual responsibility. Life is serious. Each one must decide for himself, acting from the intuitions of his own soul, and in the light which comes from the circumstances by which he is surrounded. The seductive voices of ease or temporal advantage must be unheeded. Not even may public opinion in such exigencies control. The choice must be made under the behest of conscience. The voice of God is the only voice which may bid the soul be still and listen; and when the choice is made the interrogatory may be fearlessly put to all the world: Wist ye not that I must be in my Fathers house?
When men begin all their works with the thought of God, acting for His sake and to fulfil His will, when they ask His blessing on themselves and their life, pray to Him for the objects they desire, and see Him in the event, whether it be according to their prayers or not, they will find everything that happens tend to confirm them in the truths about Him which live in their imagination, varied and unearthly as those truths may be. Then they are brought into His presence as a Living Person, and are able to hold converse with Him, and that with a directness and simplicity, with a confidence and intimacy, mutatis mutandis, which we use towards an earthly superior; so that it is doubtful whether we realize the company of our fellow men with greater keenness than these favoured minds are able to contemplate and adore the Unseen Incomprehensible Creator.1 [Note: J. H. Newman, Grammar of Assent.]
III
Home
Wherever the Son is and whatever He is doing He is at home with the Father, He is in the Fathers house. What did He mean when He spoke of the Fathers house?
1. Did He mean the Temple? My Fathers house, He says; these are the very words with which our Lord describes the Temple on another occasion. He rebukes people for turning the Fathers house into a den of thieves. Christs name for the Temple; Christs name for the great central place of worship of the Jewish people, which had a sacredness that could not belong to any lesser place of worship; Christs name for the Temple was my Fathers house. This makes the translation in my Fathers house the more natural thing for Him to say. For the surprise of His parents was to find Him there; and His surprise was that they should have expected Him to be anywhere else: Wist ye not that I must be in my Fathers house? But, further, we feel that the words are more natural, because they are more childlike. It is hardly the saying of a child that He must be about the concerns or affairs or businesses of His Father. And with changing thought, we have come to think of Jesus, the Divine child, as the perfectly human, perfectly natural child. The simple wonder of His heart seems sufficiently and inimitably expressed in the question, Wist ye not that I must be in my Fathers house?
Wist ye not?He said in His deep distress at the unreasonable behaviour of Joseph and Mary that passover-week. It was the utter and inexcusable unreasonableness of His mothers behaviour to Him that so hurt and so humbled Him. A little consideration would surely have directed her steps straight to the Temple to seek for her Son there, and there alone. And having found Him in the Temple, a very little consideration would surely have restrained her from the precipitate words with which she assailed Him. If she had taken a little time to think of it the utter unreasonableness of her conduct could not but have struck her and made her ashamed of herself. To take the very lowest ground, it was not reasonable to think that the youthful Christ should hurry away from the passover ordinances at the earliest possible moment, and should spend His time gadding about up and down the city. It was but common sense and sound reason, as well as ordinary piety, in Him to do as He had done. The different magnitude of things is their reason to me, says William Law. And it was because His Fathers business was already beginning to be a matter of such immense magnitude to our Lord that He felt so acutely the unreasonableness and the injustice of His mothers treatment of that business and of Him that day. And in all that He teaches us also that if our mere reason were only but sound, if we but gave our wholly sane minds to the different magnitudes of things, that of itself would secure the salvation of our souls. Reason itself, He as good as says here, would never let us wander from the way of our salvation, nor would let us stop short of our Fathers house, or ever leave it. Only be reasonable men, He as good as says to us, and you will end in being saved men.1 [Note: A. Whyte, The Walk, Conversation, and Character of Jesus Christ our Lord, 63.]
(1) The Temple was the place of learning. In the Temple there were some schools in which good and learned men taught the Scriptures to anybody who wished to learn. They sat upon a high seat, and any person, old or young, might enter and join the class sitting on the floor around the teachers. Jesus had found this school. He wanted, like all good children, to know more of the Scriptures. He thought He could not serve God in any better way than by learning from these good old men, who welcomed a young child to their school. And here His parents found Him, sitting in the midst of the doctors (teachers), both hearing them and asking them questions.
It was in touch with the ancient wisdom, under the schooling of the authoritative voice of His Church, that He set His thoughts to work for themselves. He indeed asked questions. He set free His inquiring spirit, but He did it facing the fulness of the responsibility, bringing His inquiries into the light of the best learning, laying out His mind at the feet of them who sat in Moses seat. And not only asking questions, but hearing also. He listened; He heard. Ah! young hearts, aglow with newfound powers, with new-won liberty, is that your case? How often, in the excitement of asking our first questions, have we forgotten that there is any need to hear at all what others are saying! How often, in the sudden discovery of our own independence, we seem to be cut loose from every bond that binds us to others; above all, that binds us to the past! The wonder of thinking for ourselves seems to dismiss, to put out of court, what others have thought. It appears to depose all old authorities. All men before us seem to us to have been dreaming until we arrived on the scene. Now at last the truth is out, and their day is over.1 [Note: H. S. Holland, Pleas and Claims, 185.]
It is observedso far as inquiry is able to look back at this distance of timethat at his being a schoolboy he was an early questionist, quietly inquisitive, why this was, and that was not, to be remembered? Why this was granted, and that denied? This being mixed with a remarkable modesty, and a sweet serene quietness of nature, and with them a quick apprehension of many perplexed parts of learning, imposed then on him as a scholar, made his master and others to believe him to have an inward, blessed, Divine light, and therefore to consider him to be a little wonder. For in that, children were less pregnant, less confident and more malleable, than in this wiser but not better age.2 [Note: Izaak Walton, Life of Richard Hooker.]
(2) The Temple was the place of teaching. Is it improper to say that even then He had something to teach the doctors? He both heard them and asked them questions. There would be no more impropriety in the questionings of a child than there would be in a modern Bible class. It was no doubt unusual for boys of His age to join in the conversation at such times, but it is evident that the doctors were not displeased by His intervention, and were surprised, not by the fact that He addressed them, but by the freshness and force of what He said. We cannot be wrong in thinking that the startling effect of His words would be due, not to any display of precocious learning, but to the simplicity and directness of His questions and answers.
In after years He taught often in the Temple. Many of the lessons Jesus taught during the period to which He referred when He said to those who came to apprehend Him, I was daily with you in the temple teaching (Mar 14:49), are probably unrecorded, but there is in the New Testament quite a rich treasury of words that He uttered in the Temple at different periods.1 [Note: H. Thorne, Notable Sayings of the Great Teacher, 63.]
I will say no more of Irvings boyhood. He must have sat, often enough, in Ecclefechan Meeting-house along with me, but I never noticed or knew; and had not indeed heard of him till I went to Annan School, and Irving, perhaps two years before, had left for College. I must bid adieu also, to that poor Temple of my Childhood; to me more sacred at this moment than perhaps the biggest Cathedral then extant could have been. Rude, rustic, bare, no Temple in the world was more so; but there were sacred lambencies, tongues of authentic flame from Heaven, which kindled what was best in one, what has yet not gone out.2 [Note: Carlyle, Reminiscences, ii. 15.]
All other teachers words become feeble by age, as their persons become ghostly, wrapped in thickening folds of oblivion; but the progress of the Church consists in absorbing more and more of Christ, in understanding Him better, and becoming more and more moulded by His influence.3 [Note: A. Maclaren, The Holy of Holies.]
(3) And the Temple was a place of worship. He called it on one memorable occasion a house of prayer. He spoke in one of His parables of two men who went up to the Temple to pray. And after the Ascension, Peter and John went up to the Temple to pray.
But a Christian place of worship is not a temple, it is a Fathers house. That was what our Lord Himself felt about the Temple; He gave it a deeper, richer namemy Fathers house. Nothing is more distinctive of New Testament religion than this phrase, nothing distinguishes New Testament from Old Testament conceptions of religion better than the difference that there is in a Fathers house and a Temple. We come to Gods house, if we are Christian men, to worship, not an awful and distant God, but One who is near and intimate and loving as a father. Not only is Gods house a place of reverence, it is also a place of joy and gladness and shouting.
There is a power in public worship, in the utterance of common sorrows, needs, and hopes, in the prayer that is breathed and the praise that is sung in concert, not with the crowd that fills the sanctuary, but with the innumerable company of all lands and ages who have drunk of the same spring and gone strengthened on their way, which they strangely miss who teach that worship is a worn-out superstition, and that only in the clear light of law can men walk and be blest. While man sins and suffers, while there is blood-tinged sweat upon his brow, while there is weeping in his home and anguish in his heart, that voice can never lose its music which brings forth the comfort and inspiration of the gospel, which tells the sin-tormented spirit the tale of the infinite pity, and bids it lay its sobbing wretchedness to rest on the bosom of infinite love.1 [Note: J. Gregory, Phillips Brooks, 18.]
2. But the Temple was not His only place of learning, of teaching, or of prayer. He learned the Scriptures in Nazareth; He taught by the shore of the lake; He prayed on the mountaintop. Where does He find symbols whereby to speak of what goes on in the mind and before the face of His Father in heaven? Not in the Temple; not in its rites; not on its altars; not in its holy of holies; He finds them in the world and its lovely-lowly facts; on the roadside, in the field, in the vineyard, in the garden, in the house; in the family, and the commonest of its affairsthe lighting of the lamp, the leavening of the meal, the neighbours borrowing, the losing of the coin, the straying of the sheep. Even in the unlovely facts also of the world which He turns to holy use, such as the unjust judge, the false steward, the faithless labourers, He ignores the Temple. See how He drives the devils from the souls and bodies of men, as we the wolves from our sheepfolds! how before Him the diseases, scaly and spotted, hurry and flee! The world has for Him no chamber of terror. He walks to the door of the sepulchre, the sealed cellar of His Fathers house, and calls forth its four days dead. He rebukes the mourners, He stays the funeral, and gives back the departed children to their parents arms. The roughest of its servants do not make Him wince; none of them are so arrogant as to disobey His word; He falls asleep in the midst of the storm that threatens to swallow His boat. All His life He was among His Fathers things, either in heaven or in the worldnot only then when they found Him in the Temple at Jerusalem. He is still among His Fathers things, everywhere about in the world, everywhere throughout the wide universe.
Among my kinsfolk and my friends
I sought for Christ, but found Him not;
The joy of earth in sadness ends,
The love of hearts is oft forgot.
Each hath his own familiar cares,
And others burdens lightly bears!
I sought for Christ, but found Him not:
Sorrowing, O, whither shall I turn?
Lo! Zions gates, yon hallowed spot,
Where praise and prayer like incense burn,
Back to Thy temple Ill repair,
Secure, with joy, to find Thee there.
I seek for Christ, but find Him not
Even there, as yet I hope to find;
This long days march, lifes pilgrim lot,
Rolls on, and He seems oft behind.
But I shall find whom here I love
In Gods Jerusalem above.1 [Note: C. L. Ford.]
Always at Home
Literature
Holland (H. S.), Pleas and Claims for Christ, 173.
Jerdan (C.), Manna for Young Pilgrims, 308.
McClelland (T. C.), The Mind of Christ, 21.
MacDonald (G.), The Hope of the Gospel, 40.
Maclaren (A.), After the Resurrection, 193.
Spurgeon (C. H.), Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit, xxviii. (1882), No.1666.
Talbot (E. S.), Some Aspects of Christian Truth, 208.
Thorne (H.), Notable Sayings of the Great Teacher, 63.
Tymms (T. V.), The Private Relationships of Christ, 55.
Wilberforce (B.), New (?) Theology, 38.
Christian World Pulpit, lvi. 292 (C. S. Horne); Ixxxii. 388 (J. E. Rattenbury).
Church of England Pulpit, xxix. 73.
Church Pulpit Year Book, 1910, p. 18.
Churchmans Pulpit: First Sunday after the Epiphany, iii. 439 (G. Prevost).
Expositor, 2nd Ser., viii. 17 (R. E. Wallis).
Fuente: The Great Texts of the Bible
my: Luk 2:48, Psa 40:8, Mal 3:1, Mat 21:12, Joh 2:16, Joh 2:17, Joh 4:34, Joh 5:17, Joh 6:38, Joh 8:29, Joh 9:4
Reciprocal: Exo 34:29 – wist Psa 26:8 – Lord Mat 12:48 – Who is Mar 1:38 – for Mar 3:33 – Who Joh 2:4 – what Joh 4:4 – General
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
A DIVINE NECESSITY
Wist ye not that I must?
Luk 2:49
Our thoughts go out to Him Who is the founder and pattern of our religion, and the use He made in His life on earth of His opportunities of worship in Gods special house of prayer. His first recorded words, indeed, were spoken in self-defence in the house of prayer. The force of the question is altogether independent of its ending. Whether we prefer, with the revisers, In My Fathers house, or the Authorised Version, About my Fathers business, in either case appeal is made to necessity. The boy Jesus is surprised that His mother should have sought Him in such anxiety when He had tarried behind in the Temple, and in anticipation of criticism as being wayward and troublesome urges that He had only been doing what He was obliged.
Both these points are worth our careful attention.
I. His character for obedience was established.As they had trained Him, so He was, and even when His conduct seemed disobedient their general experience of Him ought to have prevented misjudgment.
II. Paramount as are the claims of the home and the narrower, more intimate circle, there are times when these must yield to something higher which the intellect fails to define, though the conscience cannot evade.
Rev. Dr. C. R. Davey Biggs.
Fuente: Church Pulpit Commentary
9
About my Father’s business is rendered “in the affairs of my Father” by the Englishman’s Greek New Testament. The wisdom mentioned in verse 40 taught Jesus that he was destined to perform some special work in the world that pertained to God. The temple was the official headquarters of the system of religion then in force for the Jews, hence Jesus was found in that building where his parents should have looked first.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Luk 2:49. How is it that ye sought me, or, were seeking me? A boy of twelve years would understand the mothers anxiety. (In Oriental countries maturity comes earlier than among us.) Were He only human, the answer would have been mocking. But in all the simplicity and boldness of holy childhood, He expresses astonishment that they had not known where He would be and where He ought to be. He knew and felt there was something in Him and in His previous history, which ought to be known to Mary and Joseph, that justified His being where He was and forbade their anxiety about Him. Marys reproach implies that she had not told Him of the things she had been pondering in her heart (Luk 2:19). This makes the answer the more remarkable, while its quiet repose shows that the child was superior to the mother.
Did ye not know. This, like the previous clause, implies that they ought to have known this.
That I must be. This points to a moral necessity, identical with perfect freedom. Our Lord afterwards uses it of His appointed and undertaken course (Alford). At this time when legal duty fell upon a Jewish boy, He would express His conviction of duty. It represents the time when children begin to feel that they have entered upon years of discretion, and assumed for themselves the moral responsibility hitherto largely resting upon their parents.
In my Fathers house. Lit., in the things of my Father. It may mean: abiding in, occupied in that which belongs to my Father, to His honor and glory, including all places and employments peculiarly His. The place in which He was, is in any case included. But it seems best to restrict the sense to the place. Greek usage favors this. The question about seeking Him makes it necessary to accept the reference to the temple as the primary one, even if the wider reference is not excluded. They need not have sought Him, they ought to have known where to find Him. At the same time it is true that He here suggests the sphere in which He lived, whether in or out of the temple. The words: my Father, assert what was implied, or only negatively expressed, in the previous part of the response. He claims God as His Father, and not only justifies His conduct by this claim, but expresses the conviction that they should have recognized it. There is a contrast with the phrase, Thy father (Luk 2:48). This is the first recorded utterance of Jesus, and in it the Divine-human self-consciousness is manifest. The narrative suggests that this was the first time words of this deep meaning had fallen from His lips. Christs first saying was not a moral precept, but a declaration concerning His relation to God. The calmness of the response confirms the view that the consciousness of this relation had previously existed.
Luk 2:50. And they understood not the saying. This was natural, even after the remarkable peculiarities of our Lords birth. Twelve years had passed since then, and their faith might have grown weaker. While they knew something as to His Person, they could not understand the deeper meaning which He seemed to comprehend so clearly and express so decidedly. Further, what He said came from Himself and not from their information; this obedient child deviated from His parents expectation and calmly justified His conduct. No wonder they did not understand. In these days men, after all the light from Christs life, after all the evidences of His power in the Christian centuries, fail to understand this saying of His, respecting His own Person.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Observe here, that Christ blames not his parents for their solicitous care of him, but shows them how able he was to live without any dependency upon them and their care; and also to let them understand, that higher respects had called him away; that as he had meat to eat, so he had work to do, which they knew not of. For, say he, Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business? As if he had said, “Although I owe respect to you as my natural parents, yet my duty to my heavenly Father must be preferred. I am about his work, promoting his glory, and propagating his truth.”
We have also a Father in heaven. O how good it is to steal away from our earthly distractions that we may employ ourselves immediately in his service! That when the world makes enquiry after us, we may say, as our Saviour did before us, Wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
Verse 49
Wist ye; knew ye.–About my Father’s business. In the original, it is, About, that is, at my Father’s; so that the meaning is this–How is it that you could not find me? Did you not suppose that I should be at my Father’s?–meaning that the temple, the house of God, his Father, was his natural and proper home, and the place where they should have expected to find him. We must suppose that his being left behind by his parents was not designed on his part, both because he at once returned with his parents when found, and also because his remaining at Jerusalem intentionally, without his parents’ knowledge or consent, could hardly be reconciled with his duty as a son. It was his principle, as he expressed it, to fulfil all righteousness; that is, to perform faithfully all the duties arising out of the human relations which he sustained.
Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament
Mary and Joseph’s anxiety contrasts with Jesus’ calmness. Mary’s reference to Jesus’ earthly father also contrasts with Jesus’ reference to His heavenly Father. Jesus’ first question prepared His parents for His significant statement that followed in His second question. Jesus’ response to Mary and Joseph showed that He regarded His duty to His heavenly Father and His house as taking precedence over His duty to His earthly father and his house.
"Jesus’ point is that his career must be about instruction on the way of God, for the temple was not only a place of worship, but was also a place of teaching. Jesus has a call to instruct the nation. Though he is twelve now, a day is coming when this will be his priority." [Note: Bock, Luke, pp. 100-1.]
Even as a boy, Jesus placed great importance on worshipping God and learning from and about God. However, Jesus’ obedience to God did not involve disobedience to Joseph. Jesus implied that His parents should have understood His priorities, but they did not grasp the true significance of His words.
Did Jesus not owe it to His parents to tell them beforehand that He planned to linger in the temple so they would not worry about Him? He may have done so and they may have forgotten, but this was not something Luke chose to explain. His purpose was to record Jesus’ response to Mary and Joseph that expressed His awareness of His unique relationship to God and His duty to God. [Note: See I. Howard Marshall, "The Divine Sonship of Jesus," Interpretation 21 (1967):87-103.]
"Jesus’ reply, though gentle in manner, suggests the establishment of a break between himself and his parents, although this will be modified in Luk 2:51. There is thus a tension between the necessity felt by Jesus to enter into closer relationship with his Father and the obedience which he continued to render to his parents." [Note: Idem, The Gospel . . ., p. 128.]
All committed young believers who live under their parents’ authority have struggled with this tension.
These are the first words that Luke recorded Jesus saying in his Gospel, and they set the tone for what follows. All of Jesus’ words and works testified to the priority He gave to the will of His heavenly Father. "Had to" (Gr. dei) reflects a key theme in Luke’s Gospel that highlights divine design. The Greek word occurs 99 times in the New Testament and 40 times in Luke-Acts. [Note: See Bock, "A Theology . . .," pp. 94-95, for further discussion of it.]