THE SUBJECTION OF JESUS
“And He went down with them, and came to Nazareth and was subject to them.”
Luke 2:51
1. He had finished this particular work which His Father had given Him to do. He had sanctified religious instruction; He had, in this simple event, provided for all time a proof that indeed He was more than man, that His discovery of Himself, as some modern critics would assert, was no gradual process, but that He knew Himself and His mission from the beginning; to go on from that moment teaching, to begin His public life at the age of twelve, would not have been in accordance with His fixed plan, of living the complete life of man, of bearing all man’s burdens, of being “in all things like to man, sin alone excepted.” Most men must live out their lives in hiddenness and seclusion; then our Lord must let men see that He would do the same. He has left us a complete account of these eighteen years–eighteen years, let us reckon it in our own lives, is a long time–but He has left it complete in only two short sentences.
2. He went down to Nazareth, and was subject to them.” In this, then, there was no change of plan. He was still “about His Father’s business”; that is the one consistent thread that runs through His whole life; the one and only claim He makes at the end when He cries: “Father, I have finished the work Thou gavest Me to do.” But there is a change of another kind. “When I was a child,” says St. Paul of himself, “I thought as a child; but when I became a man I put away the things of a child.” And the same is true of Jesus. Hitherto He had been subject to His parents, but now for the first time is it said that He “was subject to them.” And rightly, for the subjection of a child to its parents scarcely deserves that name; it is rather affectionate dependence. But when the child has grown up and still obeys; when the boy, the youth, the full-grown man still keeps his parents in the first place, considering them, serving them, working for them, then we have free obedience. And this we have from this time forward in our Lord; at the age of twelve He “put away the things of a child” but He “was subject to them” none the less.
3. We look into human hearts, we look through history, we look at the first disaster of all, and we ask ourselves the cause of all the misery, in individual souls, in the whole world. Detailed and detached causes are many; but the one great disorder underlies them all; it is that of insubordination, disobedience. Adam disobeyed and fell; mankind disobeys and falls; the nations bring themselves to grief by encouraging disobedience; however sweet the fruits of liberty, however noble the ideal of freedom, still the heart is a corrupted heart, and a source of hopeless misery, to itself and to all who come under its influence, which acknowledges no master, which obeys no law. Obedience is the bond of union, the source of strength, the safeguard of peace, the power in action, the tree that bears fruit both material and spiritual. But it is a hard lesson for independent human nature to learn; no wonder, then, that the Saviour of the world chose to teach it at such great expense.
Summary Meditation Points:
- Our Lord above all things wished to be “in all things like to man.”
- Hence, like man, He was subject; not only as a Child, but also of His own free choice.
- At this cost He taught the lesson that most needs to be learned, obedience.
Editor’s Note: This meditation is from Archbishop Alban Goodier’s “The Prince of Peace” (1913).
