By Mike Ivaska, Associate Pastor
The Christmas holiday is a time for Christians to focus on certain details of Jesus’ life and message that are often overlooked the rest of the year. We do not often consider, for example, how vulnerable our Savior allowed himself to become by being born a little baby. The incarnation could have happened in such a way that Jesus came as an adult, or even a wise old man. If his public ministry did not begin until he was thirty, what were all of those earlier years about?
The Bible tells us that Jesus knows what it is like to be tempted, because he has faced all of the same temptations that we face (see Hebrews 4:15). So for Jesus, all of the challenges of life are familiar because of his incarnation. We tend to think of this in the context of his adult life, especially his temptations in the wilderness after his baptism. But if Jesus knows what the struggles of our lives are like, can that apply less to a child or teenager than to an adult? Is Jesus unaware of the personal confusion of adolescence? Does Jesus not know what it is like to be disciplined imperfectly by imperfect parents?
The childhood and adolescence of Jesus means that he DOES know what these things are like – and not simply by analogy. Where an adult might laugh at a teenager or child, that their problems are not “real” problems, Jesus knows otherwise. If childhood sin is still sin, then childhood challenges are still challenges. And Jesus knows what that is like. This is one of the many dimensions of the incarnation of the Son of God, which we celebrate at Christmas time.