Early life
Before the crowds
A birth under empire, a flight, a small town, and a river. The King James account of his early life is short. It is also stubbornly ordinary.
Bethlehem
The life
Both Matthew and Luke place the birth in Bethlehem, the town of David, while Augustus is emperor and Herod is still king. Luke’s scene is not a court. A firstborn son is wrapped in cloth and laid in a manger because there is no room in the inn.
Historians usually set the birth a few years before Herod’s death in 4 BC. Luke also names the census of Cyrenius (Quirinius), and fitting that census to Herod’s last years is a real question in Roman chronology. The text’s own claim is narrower: the child was born at Bethlehem, under that empire, in want of a room.
King James Version
And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.
King James Version
And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord.
King James Version
But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.
Matthew 2 reads this line with the birth. In the King James Bible it is prophecy, not a civil certificate.
What the text concludes
The night is poor and local. The words spoken over it are not. The child is called Saviour, and Christ the Lord.
Exile and Nazareth
The life
Matthew says Herod meant to kill the child, and that Joseph took the mother and the boy to Egypt until the king was dead. They did not settle in Jerusalem. They went to Nazareth in Galilee.
Nazareth was a village, not a capital. The neighbors, when he is grown, do not remember a prince. They remember a carpenter, Mary’s son, with brothers and sisters in the same town. The early life the Gospels are willing to tell is displacement, then work.
King James Version
And when they were departed, behold, the angel of the Lord appeareth to Joseph in a dream, saying, Arise, and take the young child and his mother, and flee into Egypt, and be thou there until I bring thee word: for Herod will seek the young child to destroy him.
King James Version
Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary, the brother of James, and Joses, and of Juda, and Simon? and are not his sisters here with us? And they were offended at him.
James, named here among the brothers, is the man Josephus later calls the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ.
A lesson
Greatness does not begin in a palace
The record refuses a sheltered childhood. If the lesson is allowed to stay as plain as the text, it is this: the life God owns in these pages starts in danger, in a subject people, and in a working house.
Twelve, then silence
The life
One scene breaks the silence of the growing years. At twelve he is in the temple, listening to the teachers and asking them questions, and he answers his parents with his Father’s business. Then the Gospel sends him home.
Luke does not fill the next eighteen years with wonders. He says the child grew, and that Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man. The human look is growth, not a halo pasted over a boy.
King James Version
And it came to pass, that after three days they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the doctors, both hearing them, and asking them questions.
King James Version
And he said unto them, How is it that ye sought me? wist ye not that I must be about my Father’s business?
King James Version
And Jesus increased in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.
A lesson
Growth is part of the record
Wisdom that increases is learned wisdom. Stature is a body that has to get older. The verse is short because a true human life does not need to be decorated to be real.
The river
The life
The public life opens at the Jordan, not in a school. John is baptizing. Jesus comes to him, is baptized, and comes up out of the water. Luke says he began to be about thirty years of age. A working man from Nazareth steps into a prophet’s river.
King James Version
And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove, and lighting upon him: And lo a voice from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.
King James Version
And Jesus himself began to be about thirty years of age…
The verse continues with the genealogy. The clause quoted is the age Luke gives as the public work begins.
Outside the Gospels
Josephus, a Jewish historian writing near the end of the first century, describes John as a man who called the people to virtue and to baptism, and says Herod put John to death. Josephus is not telling the Gospel. He does show that the preacher at the river was a public figure outside the Christian books.
What the text concludes
Over a man standing in a river, the voice in this text says: This is my beloved Son. The early life ends where the name is spoken in public.