I. The Christ Life
To Israel as a nation had been intrusted the sacred gift of teaching; but the power had departed from this people because they had mingled their educational ideas with the heathen, and had so far forgotten the commands of Jehovah that they were sending their children to heathen teachers, inviting into their midst the prophets of Baal.[45] That nation whose prophets had more than once warned the kings of the earth of impending danger, heard no longer the voice of God. For nearly four hundred years no prophet had arisen in Israel. “Prophecy had become so completely extinct—the Spirit had so utterly departed from Israel—that it was apparently assumed by many that a new prophet was an impossibility.” Had the God who brought their fathers out of Egypt, who had driven out the nations before their face,—the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,—had He forsaken His people? Often the question was asked, as the family circle formed around the table. Almost with bated breath mothers awaited the birth of a child, hoping it might be the chosen of God, but still no prophet came.
Israel prior to birth of Christ
The priests in Israel went on in their formal round of duties; yearly the nation assembled at Jerusalem for the annual feasts. Thousands of victims were slain, and the blood ran freely from the altar; but there was no answering fire, no glow of the Shekinah. Jewish children sat day after day at the feet of masters in Israel, listening to the repetition of tradition and the words of the Talmud; but the life had departed from the instruction, and there was no response in the souls of men. Heaven waited anxiously for the opening of some soul to the inflow of God’s Spirit, but the avenues through which it should have come were closed. Teachers who should have been “under the full control of the Spirit,” knew not what it was to hear the voice of God; and children, fed only with physical and mental food, grew to manhood with shriveled spiritual natures, to become in turn the teachers of the next generation. As Israel’s governmental prosperity was due to her educational system, as her land produced abundantly when the children were properly taught, and as the nations round them bowed in respect to the chosen of God so long as they adhered to the system of education once offered, it is no wonder that the year 5 B.C., following centuries of departure from these truths, found Palestine in the iron grasp of Rome, and its people scarce able to pay the necessary tribute. Heaven’s eye saw this and more.
John the Baptist
Among the priests who ministered in the temple was one who looked for a deliverer, and to him the angel Gabriel came with the words: “Thy prayer is heard; and thy wife Elizabeth shall bear thee a son, and thou shalt call his name John.” Although this man had touched the chord on which angels sang, and was enabled to feel the pulse-beat of the Eternal, the angel’s words startled him, and he believed them not. And that the sounds of earth might for a time be shut out, and Zacharias be enabled to listen only to the voice of God, the angel laid his hand upon him, and he remained speechless until the day of the fulfillment of Gabriel’s words.
The education of the forerunner
A prophet was born who was to turn the hearts of Israel to their God. He came in the spirit and power of Elias, preaching repentance. His life was one of loneliness and poverty. His time was spent away from the cities and multitudes; for Jerusalem, the appointed leader of nations, no longer offered an education fitted for her own prophets. And so God trained John. Of those born of women there is none greater than John the Baptist.
Jesus of Nazareth
Once more heaven and earth were linked. How small the chain! Only, as it were, the size of a thread, and the connecting link was the heart of a woman! But in the town of Nazareth, the lowly and the despised, lived a young woman, betrothed to Joseph, a carpenter of Galilee. Looking into the future, little more than dreaming of life and its hopes, she lifted her eyes, and beheld an angel. The soul longing to be in tune with God, brings angelic hosts to earth. If that yearning be but a mother’s longing, heaven bows a listening ear; the throb is felt throughout creation. So close is God to man! The words, “Hail, highly favored, the Lord is with thee,” startled Mary, for she had not expected such a quick response. She was troubled, but the angel said, “Fear not, Mary.” “The power of the Highest shall overshadow thee; therefore also that holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.” “The fullness of time had come.” God, having waited years for Israel to return to Him, now accomplished the master stroke of the Godhead. Creation wondered.
The Spirit overshadowed Mary; it thrilled her nerves, and touched to life the germ of a new being. To humanity was given the power to form a body for the indwelling of the God of heaven. “A body hast Thou prepared Me.” The treasure was in an earthen vessel, that the more glory might abound to God. “Christ set up His tabernacle in the midst of our human encampment. He pitched His tent by the side of the tents of men, that He might dwell among us, and make us familiar with His divine character and life.”[46]
Early Education of Christ
The early years of the Christ child found Him sitting at His mother’s knee. From her lips and from the scrolls of the prophets, He learned of heavenly things! Nature was His unwearied teacher; from her He gathered stores of scientific knowledge. He studied the life of plants and animals, and the life of man. “The parables by which, during His ministry, He loved to teach His lessons of truth, show how open His spirit was to the influences of nature, and how He had gathered the spiritual teaching from the surroundings of His daily life.” “As the hart panteth after the waterbrooks,” so panted His soul for spiritual intercourse with the Father; and that longing which led Him to listen attentively for the voice of God in nature, developed the highest powers of His mind.
The spiritual first in Christ’s education
His was not a sudden growth, but gradual, as with other children; and while developing a strong physical body, “the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom.” The secret of the difference between Jesus and His companions is revealed in this verse. Most children develop mentally and physically, especially during their first twelve years; but the spiritual nature of Christ was the leading one and in His threefold nature the mental and physical were always well balanced by the spiritual. As Hinsdale says: “The divine mind, the human heart, and nature are closely united” in Him. He did not seek instruction in the rabbinical schools, for they had lost the spirit which to him was life.
Christ recognized his life work
At an early age, probably not later than twelve, He recognized His life work, and henceforth every energy was bent in one direction. His lot was to reveal the divinity of God, to show the possibilities of the God-man, to prove to the world that it is possible for God and man to unite and for the spiritual nature to rule; and proving this, to show that the heavenly instituted system of education was not a failure, although at that time it was in disrepute.
Christ chose the spiritual plane
The age of twelve was a critical period in the life of a Jewish child, for it was then that the physical nature was approaching maturity. The next few years meant much to the youth, for he then had it within his power to choose for life the plane upon which he expected to live. If physical strength and the gratification of the natural senses are the height of ambition, by yielding to temptations of this nature at about this age the life-habits are fixed. Perhaps in other countries the development is somewhat slower, owing to climatic influences, but from twelve to sixteen every youth struggles against tendencies and ambitions which a few years later cease to be temptations. It was so with Christ; but as He stood watching the paschal services at the time of His first visit to the temple, “day by day He saw their meaning more clearly. Every act seemed to be bound up with His own life. New impulses were awakening within Him.” For years, that service, established to appeal to the spiritual nature, had degenerated into the mere slaying of beasts. For the first time a soul was touched, and heavenly impulses were awakened. It was then that the temptation to pass a life in physical ease was met and overcome. Heaven seemed to open to the child’s eyes, and He heard the call of God to a life with Him. He sought to be alone, and in the silence His heart caught the vibrations of heavenly beings, and the grosser physical nature was abandoned forever.
Christ and the rabbis
The resolve formed, a new light and power seemed to take possession of His mind, and entering the school conducted in the temple, He listened eagerly to hear from the lips of the rabbis some spiritual lesson. “The doctors turned upon Him with questions, and they were amazed at His answers.” He manifested such deep piety, and His questions opened to the minds of His listeners such depths of truth, that wonder filled their minds. A harp swept by heavenly zephyrs was before them, and the music fell on untrained ears. The first work of the heaven-sent teacher had begun. “Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’s business?” He asked, as Joseph and Mary met Him at the temple gate. They saw Him with physical eyes, and thought Him all their own; but the eye of the child had pierced the cloud which hung between heaven and earth.
Manual training in Christ’s life
From Jerusalem He returned with His parents, and aided them in their life of toil. “He hid in His own heart the mystery of His mission, waiting submissively for the appointed time for Him to enter upon His work.” Those eighteen years were years of toil and study. Each day drew Him nearer to the time when a voice from heaven should proclaim Him a divine teacher. He was not impatient, but as a carpenter did thorough work; as a son, He was obedient; and as a subject, He was law-abiding.
The age of strongest spirituality
He never lost sight of the fact that He had a mission, and that it took a spiritual life to fulfill that mission. He was tempted in all points, and suffered in the temptation; but each resistance was a round added in the ladder He was building toward heaven. There was a law in Israel calling the priests to their sacred office at the age of thirty. This statute was based upon a law of human nature. The allotted time of man’s life is divided into two portions. The first forty years is a time of growth, the last thirty a period of decline. Of the first half we have the age of physical development, then a time when the intellectual powers are in the ascendency, and from twenty-five to thirty or thirty-five is the time of special development in the spiritual nature. Every man has three chances in life; and the choice made, whether for worldly honor, for intellectual powers, or a life of faith, depends wholly upon the object constantly kept before the child by its educators. Had Christ been under the influence of the teachers of His day, the probability is that He would have chosen to live either on the physical or the intellectual plane, for this was the choice made by all the pupils of those schools, but His early training by Mary, who, as a mother, had yielded herself as the “handmaid of the Lord,” and His close communion with God through the works of nature, guided Him into right channels, and at the auspicious moment He voluntarily offered Himself to His Father to fulfill the mission which it lay in His power to reject. Of His later struggles the record is silent. There came a period, however, when He might have posed as an intellectual leader, but His earlier decision led Him to pass this temptation unsullied. To prove this true, we need only to study the nature of the temptations presented in the wilderness. That He remained true to His mission is due to early training. This will not be controverted, for it is a divine law seen everywhere in nature.[47]