I am not going to plunge into a subject on which certainly a great
deal has been very confidently affirmed, and about which the less is
dogmatised by us, who must know next to nothing about it, the
better; viz. the inter-connection of the human and the divine
elements in the person of Jesus Christ. But the context leads us
straight to this thought--that there was in Jesus distinct growth in
wisdom as well as in stature, and in favour with God and man. And
now, suppose the peasant boy brought up to Jerusalem, seeing it for
the first time, and for the first time entering the sacred courts of
the Temple. Remember, that to a Jewish boy, his reaching the age of
twelve made an epoch, because he then became 'a son of the Law,' and
took upon himself the religious responsibilities which had hitherto
devolved upon his parents. If we will take that into account, and
remember that it was a true manhood which was growing up in the boy
Jesus, then we shall not feel it to be irreverent if we venture to
say, not that here and then, there began His consciousness of His
Divine Sonship, but that that visit made an epoch and a stage in the
development of that consciousness, just because it furthered the
growth of His manhood.
Further, our Lord in these words, in the gentlest possible way, and
yet most decisively, does what He did in all His intercourse with
Mary, so far as it is recorded for us in Scripture--relegated her
back within limits beyond which she tended to advance. For she said,
'Thy father and I have sought Thee sorrowing,' no doubt thus
preserving what had been the usual form of speech in the household
for all the previous years; and there is an emphasis that would fall
upon her heart, as it fell upon none other, when He answered: 'Wist
ye not that I must be about My Father's business?' We are not
warranted in affirming that the Child meant all which the Man
afterwards meant by the claim to be the Son of God; nor are we any
more warranted in denying that He did. We know too little about the
mysteries of His growth to venture on definite statements of either
kind. Our sounding-lines are not long enough to touch bottom in this
great word from the lips of a boy of twelve; but this is clear, that
as He grew into self-consciousness, there came with it the growing
consciousness of His Sonship to His Father in heaven.
Now, dear brethren, whilst all that is unique, and parts Him off
from us, do not let us forget that that same sense of Sonship and
Fatherhood must be the very deepest thing in us, if we are Christian
people after Christ's pattern. We, too, can be sons through Him, and
only through Him. I believe with all my heart in what we hear so
much about now--'the universal Fatherhood of God.' But I believe
that there is also a special relation of Fatherhood and Sonship,
which is constituted only, according to Scripture teaching in my
apprehension, through faith in Jesus Christ, and the reception of
His life as a supernatural life into our souls. God is Father of all
men--thank God for it! And that means, that He gives life to all
men; that in a very deep and precious sense the life which He gives
to every man is not only derived from, but is kindred with, His own;
and it means that His love reaches to all men, and that His
authority extends over them. But there is an inner sanctuary, there
is a better life than the life of nature, and the Fatherhood into
which Christ introduces us means, that through faith in Him, and the
entrance into our spirits of the Spirit of adoption, we receive a
life derived from, and kindred with, the life of the Giver, and that
we are bound to Him not only by the cords of love, but to obey the
parental authority. Sonship is the deepest thought about the
Christian life.
It was an entirely new thought when Jesus spoke to His disciples of
their Father in heaven. It was a thrilling novelty when Paul bade
servile worshippers realise that they were no longer slaves, but
sons, and as such, heirs of God. It was the rapture of pointing to a
new star flaming out, as it were, that swelled in John's
exclamation: 'Beloved, now are we the sons of God!' For even though
in the Old Testament there are a few occasional references to
Israel's King or to Israel itself as being 'God's son,' as far as I
remember, there is only one reference in all the Old Testament to
parental love towards each of us on the part of God, and that is the
great saying in the 103rd Psalm: 'Like as a father pitieth his
children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him.' For the most part
the idea connected in the Old Testament with the Fatherhood of God
is authority: 'If I be a Father, where is Mine honour?' says the
last of the prophets. But when we pass into the New, on the very
threshold, here we get the germ, in these words, of the blessed
thought that, as His disciples, we, too, may claim sonship to God
through Him, and penetrate beyond the awe of Divine Majesty into the
love of our Father God. Brethren, notwithstanding all that was
unique in the Sonship of Jesus Christ, He welcomes us to a place
beside Himself, and if we are the children of God by faith in Him,
then are we 'heirs of God, and joint heirs with Christ.'