James: the Lynchpin of Our Faith — Chapter 3
John in the opening chapter to his gospel account makes this observation about Jesus: “He was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him” (John 1:10–11).
Most commentators on this passage conclude that John, who wrote this gospel in the latter part of the first century, was referring to the rejection of Jesus by the majority of the Jewish nation. To paraphrase: Jesus came to his own people, but they did not recognize him as their Messiah or receive him as such.
Undoubtedly, this is a correct interpretation of this passage. However, I would argue that typically we view and interpret this passage much too broadly. On the macro level this standard view is correct; Jesus was rejected by the Jewish nation. But it is within the microcosm of the family that the truth of this passage truly hits home. Jesus was not only rejected by his nation; he was rejected by his own family. A careful reading of the gospels makes this painful point clear.
The hometown rejection, which we read of in the previous chapter, foreshadows a much more extensive rejection of Jesus that rippled through his family, through the religious establishment and the whole of Jewish society. It culminated in his condemnation by the Sanhedrin and crucifixion at the hands of the Romans. Despite his wise teachings, which were coupled with signs and wonders, most of his contemporaries did not recognize the divinity of Christ. In their eyes, he was just a man—a man dangerously masquerading as so much more. The Gospel accounts make it blatantly clear that this was also the view that James and his brothers held.
But before we delve deeper into Jesus’ rejection by his family, we need to examine the topic of self-recognition. In the quote above, John stated, “He [Jesus] was in the world, and though the world was made through him, the world did not recognize him” (John 1:10).
John sees the problem of Jesus rejection as stemming from a failure of the people to recognize who he was. John clearly saw Jesus as the Creator of the universe; he recognized Jesus as Deity, but by and large Jewish society did not. He was Deity disguised in humanity and for many the disguise was too effective, too confounding. To this day it remains a stumbling block, particularly for those trained in the Jewish faith. God taking on human form is a foreign concept, and it is incomprehensible.
Now imagine for a moment how baffling—how incomprehensible—this concept would be for a twelve-year-old Jewish boy. But somehow at the age of twelve, Jesus grasped it. He recognized his own Deity. He saw himself as the Son of God. How exactly did this come about?
Childhood is all about self-discovery and learning our place in the world. Quite naturally self-discovery begins at home within the context of the family. We learn who we are from our parents and siblings. They define our genetic and cultural heredity. Genetically we are like them, and we become even more like them through our exposure to their loving nurture, interaction and instruction. Our family defines us, particularly at a young age. But for reasons we do not fully understand, Jesus saw himself as radically different. He saw that he did not fit or rightfully belong in his father’s household—in Joseph’s household. Already at age twelve, he recognized that he was not Joseph’s son.
How did this come about? How did Jesus come to see himself as different? Furthermore, it is one thing to conclude that this man you have grown up with is not your true father, but it is a huge leap for a twelve-year-old to conclude that he is some kind of divinely conceived genetic mutant, an offspring of God—a God/Boy. Yet that is how Jesus came to see himself.
The only gospel account of Jesus’ childhood presents a fascinating snapshot of Jesus’ self-perception. In the following account, Jesus reveals how he sees himself; he grasps his true identity:
Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom. After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it. Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers. When his parents saw him, they were astonished.
His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”
“Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?” But they did not understand what he was saying to them.
Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. (Luke 2:41–52)
The Boy Jesus in the Temple Courts
Jesus response to Mary’s question speaks volumes about Jesus’ self-perception. “Why were you searching for me? Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?”
It’s almost as though he is saying to his mother, “I know who I am. I’ve figured it out. Did you forget whose son I really am? God is my Father. All I wanted to do is spend some time with Him.”
“But they did not understand what he was saying to them” (Luke 2:50).
If Mary and Joseph did not understand what Jesus was saying to them, it would seem to indicate that they did not tell him of his divine origin. There was no private conversation where Joseph took Jesus aside and said, “Look son, you’re really not my son. Oh, and by the way, this is how you came about…”
Apparently, Mary did not have this conversation with Jesus either. Think about it. It would be a very difficult conversation to initiate. Explaining the virgin birth would surely stretch the bounds of common logic and would profoundly conflict with the norms of the Jewish faith. Why would the one true God impregnate a Jewish girl by the Spirit? Consider it for a moment. It’s preposterous and intrinsically it runs counter to all we know of Jewish religious dogma.
How do you tell your firstborn that he is the Son of God? Apparently, you don’t. If he truly is the Son of God, you let him figure it out. From this account, it would seem this is the course of inaction that Mary and Joseph took. They let Jesus figure it out. And he did.
That’s what’s truly remarkable about this account. The twelve-year-old figured it out. He discovered his true identity.
The question remains: How did Jesus do it? How did he come to realize his divinity?
Typically, we read this account of the lost twelve-year-old Jesus from the viewpoint of a parent. We identify with the stress of losing a child in a big city. We would title this story, “Mary and Joseph find lost Jesus.” But the story reads quite differently when we view it from the perspective of a child trying to discover who he really is. Viewed from Jesus’ perspective the title of the story might well be, “Lost Boy finds Himself ” or “Lost Boy Discovers His Divinity.”
How did Jesus discover he was God’s son? Some believers might well reason that the answer is obvious. Jesus is God; therefore, he is omniscient. The all-knowing Jesus would surely know that he was God’s son. But many theologians would beg to differ. They view the humanity of Christ as all-pervasive. Jesus was 100% human, and as such he needed to learn and discover his identity, even as any child does. The apostle Paul’s writing lends credence to this perspective. Here is his advice to the believers at Philippi:
In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death—even death on a cross!
Therefore God exalted him to the highest place and gave him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue acknowledge that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:5–11)
The passage above contrasts the humility and exaltation of Christ. In taking on humanity, Christ emptied himself of Deity. He fully became one of us. He was faced with the same frailties and limitations. In other words, in his humanity, he did not know everything. His feet got tired after a long day, and, yes, they probably stank too. He was fully human. He grew hungry and thirsty, and he was tempted in every way just as we are.
The writer of the Book of Hebrews, when speaking of Jesus tells us that he was
fully human in every way, in order that he [Jesus] might become a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God, and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people. Because he himself suffered when he was tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted. (Hebrews 2:17–18)
If this is true, then the boy Jesus needed to discover his divine identity. It may have been written into every fibre of his being, but he still needed to discover it, just as any young musical prodigy needs to explore and discover his or her gift. All divine gifts must be discovered and developed to reach their maximum potential.
Luke concludes his boyhood account about Jesus with these words: “Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man” (Luke 2:41–52). Evidently, there was a process of learning and growth in Jesus’ development, even as there is in any boy transitioning to manhood. But there was something different about this child. His interests were different from his peers. We are told that he was found in the temple courts, “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers” (Luke 2:46b–47). Clearly, he possessed wisdom and insight beyond his years. His divine DNA was showing. It was written into the very character of his soul, and he was learning to read what was written there.
He was the Son of God.
That is what the boy Jesus saw writ large upon his life. That is what he heard his Father saying to him. If Joseph did not tell the boy Jesus about his divine origin, his heavenly Father certainly did. He was whispering in his ear, “You are my son!”
The teachers were amazed because they were catching glimpses of Deity.
Why did this realization of who he was occur to Jesus at this time?
Developmental psychologists tell us there is something quite significant about the mind of a twelve-year-old. For most children it’s the year of the great leap forward. Mentally there is this massive shift that takes place in brain function. The brain moves from concrete to abstract thought. Ideas take on far greater significance. The mind is less dependent on physical objects as props to thought. Ideas and concepts can be grasped and manipulated in ways that were impossible a few months earlier. In this context, the concept and understanding of self takes on a new significance.
In his twelfth year, for the first time Jesus fully understood who he was.
Jesus was different from his brothers. That was probably the first clue in discovering his true identity. We don’t know what Jesus looked like. First century people didn’t have cameras, and Da Vinci and the European master artists did not have time machines, so we really have no clear idea about Jesus’ appearance.
We do not know what divine DNA looks like when it takes on human form. Did Jesus simply look like a male version of Mary? Or were there other marked differences in appearance coming from the heavenly Father?
We can safely assume that Jesus didn’t look like Joseph, and if he didn’t resemble Joseph, he probably appeared to be different from his half-brothers, James, Joseph, Simon, and Jude. A father’s facial and physical traits are usually very evident in his sons.
A perceptive child would notice the differences. And Jesus was a perceptive child. By age twelve he would recognize that he was the different one, the odd one in the family. Knowing whose child you are cuts to the very core of your identity. Discovering you are not who you think you are is jarring to say the least. Imagine waking up to this totally altered reality. You are not your father’s son. You belong to someone else. You are someone else.
That is the reality that the twelve-year-old Jesus was coming to grips with. His decision to not return to Nazareth with his parents needs to be viewed in this context. Was this a deliberate decision? If Jesus knew he was not Joseph’s son, why return with this man who was not his father? But if he wasn’t Joseph’s son, whose child was he? Did Jesus stay in Jerusalem in an attempt to discover the answer to that question? The twelve- year-old Jesus was coming face to face with an intense identity crisis.
There is a huge level of pathos and emotional freight in this story. Joseph and Mary are frantically worried and searching for their lost son. But on the other side of the equation, we see a lost son—with his whole sense of self in question. Was he searching for and discovering a new identity? But there is a huge leap from recognizing you are different—not fully one of the family—to identifying yourself as the Son of God.
But Jesus made that leap. The New King James Version translates Jesus’ response to Mary’s question in the temple this way. “Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” (Luke 2:49).
Implicit in that response is Jesus’ recognition that he was not the carpenter’s son, but instead God’s son—God’s son ready and willing to take on God’s work.
The easier conclusion a perceptive twelve-year-old might reach is that he was the product of Mary’s union with another man—maybe the result of a teenage fling or indiscretion, or perhaps Mary was raped by a Roman soldier. That would account for Jesus’ apparent differences from the other members in the family. It might also be the reason why these differences were not discussed. His conception was an embarrassing episode prior to marriage. For reasons of family pride, some things were better left unsaid.
But Jesus did not reach this more mundane conclusion. According to the scenario presented here, everything within him told him he was the Son of God. His internal script contained a different code, and there in the temple he had deciphered it. He was God’s son come in the flesh. The lost boy had found Himself. He had found His true identity, not as Joseph’s son, but as God’s Son. (4
Time would tell if this was just the deluded thoughts of a preteen dreamer, or if there was the ring of truth to his self-identification with Deity.
J. W. Shepard in his classic The Christ of the Gospels gives us his take on this account from Luke:
Theologians have speculated as to when Jesus first became conscious of the fact that He was God’s son in a peculiar sense and of his Messianic mission. We turn to these words as the sole clear self-revelation of Jesus in his boyhood years. In them we find his feeling of a distinct disappointment, that his parents did not understand Him better. He reveals in them the consciousness of a unique relationship to His Father. He expressed in them a clear sense of His primary obligations to God, which for the time had so engrossed His attention, that He almost lost sight of time and his human filial relationships. (5
At this point readers may well be questioning how this connects with James. This is supposed to be a book about James after all. But James may well have been present—standing next to Mary and Joseph when Jesus said “Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” (Luke 2:49 NKJV)
There are some sound reasons for believing that this was the case—that young James was present when Jesus identified himself as God’s son. In the previous chapter we clearly established that there were other children born to Mary and Joseph. Luke tells us that… “Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover. When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom” (Luke 2:41–42).
It is logical to assume that this was a pilgrimage that the whole family undertook. Being observant Jews, there are no obvious grounds to assume otherwise. If this is the case, there may well have been as many as five or six children in this family entourage. In this context losing track of one child makes far more sense, given the large size of this family. The oldest boy, Jesus, was more independent, so “Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends” (Luke 2:44).
When Joseph and Mary returned to Jerusalem to search for Jesus, James and his brothers and sisters may have come with them. Having just lost one child, Mary and Joseph would want their remaining children close beside them, or safe in the care of the extended family. Hence, it is possible that James was present with his parents when they came upon Jesus in the temple courts.
Via-Dolorosa in Jerusalem — photo courtesy of Lois Morrow
Finally, we need to consider how this story came to be in Luke’s Gospel. In the introduction to his gospel, the good doctor Luke gives us some insight into the sources he drew upon when he wrote his account of Jesus life.
Many have undertaken to draw up an account of the things that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed down to us by those who from the first were eyewitnesses and servants of the word. With this in mind, since I myself have carefully investigated everything from the beginning, I too decided to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the certainty of the things you have been taught. (Luke 1:1–4)
Luke asserts that he did some careful investigation, and from the above statement it is reasonable to assume that he interviewed eyewitnesses before he sat down to write this portion of his Gospel account. Who were these eyewitnesses?
Luke tells us more about the birth of Jesus and John the Baptistthan any other Gospel writer. He alone describes the stable birth in Bethlehem, the angelic visitation and the adoration of the shepherds. He alone speaks of the encounter with Simeon and the prophetess Anna in the temple courts, where Mary and Joseph hear prophetic words spoken over the baby Jesus. None of the other three Gospel writers make mention of the boyhood of Jesus. Only Luke recounts the twelve-year-old Jesus’ instructional escapade with the teachers of the law in the temple courts.
There is a richness of detail in these stories which strongly suggests that Luke got these accounts from someone who was present when they happened, someone who had an intimate knowledge of the holy family and their history. Two possible sources spring immediately to mind: Mary and James.
Since Joseph died at a relatively young age, Mary would appear to be the obvious choice. But if Luke had an opportunity to speak with her, she would be well-advanced in years. When was Luke’s Gospel written? Could Luke have interviewed Mary or James—or perhaps both—before he penned his Gospel?
Biblical scholars vary widely in their dating of Luke’s Gospel. In his introduction to the Book of Luke, Dr. J. Lyle Story, Associate Professor of Biblical Studies at Regent University, makes the following statement:
Since Luke was in Caesarea during Paul’s two-year incarceration there (Acts 27:1), he would have had ample opportunity during that time to conduct the investigation he mentions in Luke 1:1–4. If this is the case, then Luke’s Gospel may be dated around A.D. 59–60, but as late as A.D. 75. (6
It is by no means unreasonable to picture a seventy-five-year-old Mary in the company of her greying son, James, sitting down over a meal with the good doctor Luke to discuss the events of Jesus’ birth and childhood. It is in fact a thoroughly plausible explanation as to how Luke was able to provide us with such a vivid account of these gospel events. Luke interviewed, probed and questioned the eyewitnesses that were available to him. And who would be better to question about Christ’s birth than Mary, the mother of Jesus?
In summing up Jesus’ birth and the visitation of the shepherds, Luke wrote, “But Mary treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart” (Luke 2:19). Since these are inner thoughts, how would Luke know that this was so, unless Mary told him?
Some would argue these passages simply came through the divine inspiration that was at work when Luke penned these words—an inspiration that infuses all the holy scriptures. But Luke clearly states that his sources were eyewitnesses. The use of eyewitness accounts does not nullify the concept of divine inspiration. On the contrary, one could argue that it reinforces it.
An early dating of Luke’s Gospel makes a meeting between Mary, James and Luke not only possible, but highly likely. Given James’ preeminent position in the early church,7 it stands to reason that he would be aware of Luke’s intention to write an authoritative gospel account of Jesus life. Luke may in fact, have asked for permission from James and sought his blessing to do so.
We also know that Luke accompanied Paul on his journey to Jerusalem, where together they met with James and the leaders of the church (Acts 21:15–40). Luke would have had an opportunity to discuss and research these matters at that time.
It would also logically follow that both James and Mary would want the events of Jesus annunciation, divine conception, birth and childhood recorded for posterity. Since Mary was already well-advanced in years, this would lend an element of urgency to this project. Full collaboration with Luke is the likely outcome.
Evangelho — Lc 1, 26-38 AI Modified
Historical records indicate that James died a martyr’s death in 64 AD. If Luke’s gospel was completed after 64 AD, then James was not the source of the material found in chapters one and two of Luke’s gospel. But with each succeeding year, the likelihood of Mary being the eyewitness source also diminishes. This makes an early dating of Luke’s gospel eminently plausible.
So, in conclusion, let’s return to that moment the boy Jesus said, “Did you not know that I must be about My Father’s business?” (Luke 2:49 NKJV)
Where was James when Jesus made this declaration? He was likely standing alongside his mother, Mary, and his father, Joseph, as those words were spoken.
Years later, James may also have played a significant role in ensuringthat those words were recorded for all generations.
4) A more commonly accepted scenario for Jesus’ self-identification is presented in the next chapter.
5) J. W. Shepard, The Christ of the Gospels (Eerdmans, 1938), p. 54.
6) J. Lyle Story, “Introduction: The Gospel of Luke,” Spirit Filled Life Bible, New King James Version, General Editor Jack W. Hayford (Thomas Nelson, 1991), p. 1503.
7) For a more thorough discussion of James’ leadership role in the early church, see Chapter 12 of this book.
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I love the Psalms 