And when they saw him they were amazed and his mother said to him, Child, why hast thou dealt thus with us? behold, thy father and I have sought thee distressed.
Joseph and Mary find the twelve-year-old Jesus in the temple after three days of searching, and His mother speaks first. Her few words raise large questions. What did she call Him? Why did she give Joseph the place of His Father? Why had they not looked here first?
Behind "Son" here lies a Greek word meaning "child." It is a warm, family word. No other passage in the Bible uses it of Jesus.
There is one use of the word teknon (child) worth noting, because it bears on the person of the Lord. We use it in the same affectionate way ourselves: "My child, go and do such-and-such" (see Matthew 9:2; Matthew 21:28). His mother speaks to the Lord this way in Luke 2:48: "Child, why have you treated us so?" But no other passage applies this word to Him. Perhaps it is not used of Him because He was never less than "God over all." It would be inconsistent to use a word that implies life and nature derived from another.
Mary's question is not neutral. One writer looks first at the three lost days, then at what her words reveal.
For three days He was lost to them. May this not be a reminder of the three days He was thought lost by His disciples? Here the human weakness of Mary comes to light. She was nervously anxious. Her words have an accusing tone. Her greatest mistake was to name Joseph as "your Father." … He corrects His fallible mother, who had said, "your Father and I." His Father, He declares, is the One whose house He had entered. It is the first self-witness to His Deity.
Commentators differ on how far to press this. Another writer sees the same two details but will not call them failures. He traces them to natural feeling, and to her deep love for her Child.
Two things stand out in her words to Jesus. The first is the implied reproach in them. The second is that she includes Joseph with herself: "your father." We need not mark these things as failures, though we cannot doubt that they sprang from purely natural feelings and relationships. On the other hand, it is just as clear that the manner of her speech came out of her intense affection for her perfect Child.
Her distress was real. But the Lord's answer turned her question back on the search itself.
He could not accept any reproof. His two questions were gentle reproofs in return. What was the reason they had sought Him? If God's will had been their concern, it would have led them straight to Him. Did they not realise that He would occupy Himself with His Father's interests? … Most children at that age would have only slight interest in the temple, or in the learning of the teachers of the law. But did they not expect Him to have a vital interest in it? This should have been the first place they looked for Him.
So why was He in the temple? One writer points to a claim that outweighed every other. He cites the Lord's reply in older wording — "about my Father's business," where the ESV reads "in my Father's house."
Our blessed Lord was devoted to the glory of God and to the interests of His house. This devotion lifted Him above every natural claim that anyone might urge against Him. So when Mary found Him in the temple and asked why He had treated them so, He replied, "Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be about my Father's business?" The Father's claim was absolute in His soul. He had come to do His Father's will, and that claim shut out every other. Acknowledging it always was His unceasing delight. It was His daily food.
That higher claim did not cancel the lower one. He went home with Joseph and Mary and lived under their authority.
From early youth our Lord had the consciousness of being the Son of God above all earthly claims. But exactly as grace acknowledges the law, so the eternal Son acknowledges His human place as the child of Mary. He declared and proved that in His own consciousness He was truly the Son of the Father, and that He must therefore be about His Father's business. It was neither open to Him nor possible for Him to set aside His Father's will. That will was the first object before His heart. Yet with all this devotion as Son of God, and though His parents did not understand what He said, He went down with them to Nazareth and was in subjection to them.
- The word. Mary calls Him by the tender family word for "child" — the only place in the Bible where it is used of Him.
- The slip. In "your father and I" she gives Joseph a place that belongs to another. His reply corrects her.
- The search. They searched everywhere but the temple. Had God's will been their concern, they would have gone there first.
- The claim. One claim was absolute in Him: His Father's will. It lifted Him above every natural tie.
- The return. The same claim sent Him home to Nazareth in subjection. The higher relationship never cancelled the lower duty.
And he said to them, Why [is it] that ye have sought me? did ye not know that I ought to be [occupied] in my Father's business?
Luke gives us one scene from the childhood of Jesus: a boy of twelve, left behind in Jerusalem and found three days later among the teachers in the temple. His reply to His mother is the first thing Luke records Him saying, and it raises the question that shapes the whole Gospel: whose Son is He?
One writer sets His first recorded words beside His last.
He came, not to do His own will, but the will of Him who sent Him. His "Father's business" is His first recorded saying (see Luke 2:49). "It is finished" fell last from His blessed lips, before He bowed His head and gave up His spirit (see John 19:30).
Mary's words in the previous verse carry a reproach. He answers with questions of His own.
Joseph and Mary were amazed. Mary reproached Him for having been absent from them all this time. But He could not accept any reproof. He answered with two questions that were reproofs to them, though gentle. What was the reason they had sought Him? If they had been exercised as to the will of God, they would have been unerringly led to Him. … The temple should have been the first place they looked for Him, for it was His first chance to ask the learned men about matters of vital importance.
Mary had spoken of Joseph as His father. His answer replaces that word with another.
Here the human weakness of Mary comes to light. She was nervously anxious. Her words have an accusing tone. The greatest mistake she made was mentioning Joseph as "your father." But how wonderful the answer of the twelve-year-old boy! He is astonished that they should have sought Him; He came to seek them. He is astonished that they did not know that He had to be about His Father's business. What an answer it is! These are His first words recorded in the Gospels. He corrects His fallible mother, who had said, "your father and I." His Father, He declares, is the One in whose house He had gone. It is the first self-witness to His Deity.
The ESV reads "in my Father's house." Older versions read "about my Father's business." Commentators differ over which is right. One held that the second is the plain sense.
In Luke 2:49 they translate "I must be in my Father's house," putting the evident sense "about my Father's business" in the margin.
Another writer gives the literal sense, then points to what the boy did next.
The literal meaning is, "Did you not know that I must be in the things of My Father?" His Father's 'things' were the very atmosphere in which He lived. Yet see Him, the Lord of Glory, return with His parents to that humble home; and there He "was submissive to them."
Here Jesus claims a place above His family. The next verse has Him go home under their authority.
From His early youth our Lord had the consciousness of being the Son of God above all earthly claims. But just as grace acknowledges the law, so the eternal Son acknowledges His human place as the child of Mary. He asserted and proved that in His own consciousness He was really the Son of the Father. So He must be about His Father's business. It was not open to Him, nor possible for Him, to set aside His Father's will. This was the first object before His heart. He was devoted as the Son of God, and His parents did not understand what He said. Still, He comes down with them "to Nazareth and was submissive to them."
Luke says His parents did not understand Him. That was not the end of the matter.
When Jesus, at the age of twelve, said to His parents, "Did you not know that I must be about My Father's business," it must have been a riddle to them. As it says, "They did not understand the saying that He spoke to them." But "His mother treasured up all these things in her heart." The time came when she received, with His disciples, the gift of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of sonship. Then she would be able to cry with all His own, "Abba, Father," and enter into the meaning of what Jesus had said so long before.
- First words. His first recorded saying is about His Father's business. His last, on the cross, is "It is finished" — one purpose begun and finished.
- First Father. Mary said "your father and I." He answered "My Father" — His first witness to His own Deity.
- First business. The phrase literally means being "in the things of My Father" — not a task He picked up, but the air He lived in.
- First place, not the only place. Knowing Himself the Son of God did not loosen the claims of home. He went back to Nazareth and was subject to Joseph and Mary.
- First lesson kept. His parents did not understand Him. Mary kept the words until the Spirit of sonship taught her to say "Abba, Father" for herself.