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]