Development of Christ Through the Influences of Home
Stopford A. Brooke, M. A. Luke 2:50-51 And they understood not the saying which he spoke to them.… In the life of Christ we have the actual union of pure Divinity with ordinary human life. He traversed all its stages — childhood, boyhood, youth, and manhood; He touched all that was universally common to pure humanity in each, and from henceforth there is no life, even to the very lowest, in which the real may not become what it is in its purity — the ideal; no office, no work, which, done in His spirit, the making of a book or the digging of a garden, may not accord with the highest imagination of your spirit, and chime in with your most poetical vision of perfection. Trace the influence of His home-life upon the character of Christ. I. IT ESTABLISHED HIS LOVE OF MAN UPON A SURE FOUNDATION. He grew naturally in love. It was a normal, slow development of the affection which was to die for the world. II. IT ESTABLISHED IN HIS MIND A DEEP SENSE OF THE WORTHINESS OF DOMESTIC AND SOCIAL RELATIONS. He gives no sanction to the error of those who think that in separation from all domestic and social ties they can live more purely and worship God with a more entire devotion; that a systematic contempt for all the bonds which bind mother to son, and wife to husband, is a proof of the highest spirituality; whose spiritual religion consists in a denial of the natural piety of the heart, and whose efforts for a reformation of human nature are founded on a denial of human nature. Think of Him at the marriage feast; at the grave of Lazarus; see how tenderly He deals with the widow of Nain, and afterwards with His own mother at the Cross. III. FRIENDSHIP. IV. PATRIOTISM. The source of the tears He shed over Jerusalem arose, humanly speaking, in the heart of His mother. (Stopford A. Brooke, M. A.) Parallel Verses KJV: And they understood not the saying which he spake unto them. WEB: They didn't understand the saying which he spoke to them.