Blake Long

We don’t know much of Jesus’s years on earth between the age of 12 and the beginning of his ministry around 30 years old. And there’s no need for speculation, really. What God has not communicated to us, we must not need to know. We can certainly trust God in His silence, just like there was 400 years of silence between the Old and New Testament.

However, we do learn valuable information about Jesus as a boy. We learn what Jesus, as the Son of God, has always been about. Jesus, a mere 12 years old, was visiting the temple. He stayed behind in order to learn and ask questions of the teachers in the temple. The text tells us that “all were amazed at his understanding and his answers” (Luke 2:47).

As his parents look for him and find him in the temple, they essentially ask him, “What were you thinking?” The text reads: “And when his parents saw him, they were astonished. And his mother said to him, ‘Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress’” (v. 48).

And Jesus responded in the way He could only respond. “And he said to them, “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house” (v. 49)? The New King James Version reads: “… Did you not know that I must be about my Father’s business”?

Though we don’t have much information about what Jesus did between the ages of 12 and 30, we do know what his life’s mission was: the Father’s business. What exactly was the Father’s business?

The Father’s business, of course, was to display His glory through the salvation of His people via the perfect life and atoning death of His only Son, Jesus Christ. Jesus knew the Father’s business. Even at age 12, He knew he had a mission. Did He know all of what the Father’s plan for Him was?

RC Sproul observed in his book Surprised by Suffering:

By then he was aware of a mustness, a duty that was His to perform. Whether He realized the full import of that duty at such an early age is a matter of conjecture. But certainly by the time He arrived at the Garden of Gethsemane there was no longer any question.

Surprised by Suffering, p. 21

The text tells us Jesus grew in knowledge as a human, just like we all do. Did Jesus always know the point of His earthly ministry? To attempt to answer is to speculate. But we must understand that any degree of lack of knowledge about His purpose solely pertained to Jesus’s human nature, not His divine nature. As God, He always knew. He knew His mission; He knew He would be about the Father’s business.

Blake, you might ask, what does this mean for us?

Jesus being about His Father’s business shows us His commitment to God’s elect. God will never leave us or forsake us. Through the good and the bad, the joyous and the mournful, the valleys and the mountains, God will be there. Jesus lived a perfect life pleasing to God the Father and died the death of sinners—we can be assured that He will remain committed to us. He won’t get tired of us. His love won’t run out, His patience will remain steadfast and true.

In turn, we must also be about the Father’s business. Through astounding grace, God uses His children as a means to save His lost sheep. As children of God, we must be about the business of witnessing to the lost of the marvelous work of Jesus Christ, of interceding for other Christians, of living a life pleasing to God empowered by the Holy Spirit.

Jesus was about the Father’s business, and we should be, too.