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When God Was A Child
Brian Mashburn
January 11, 2015
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When God Was A Boy
Let me say it this way in order for you to grab the absurdity of it:
A short time after God was born in Bethlehem, Joseph, God's dad, was told by an angel to escape Israel and go into Egypt so that God wouldn't be killed by King Herod. So God spent his earliest years growing up in the land of Egypt, until Herod died, and the angel showed up again, telling God's dad to move back to Israel. So God and his parents settled in Nazareth. When God was twelve years old, and he accompanied his parents to Jerusalem for the Feast of Passover, he stayed behind in Jerusalem when his parents left for home. When Joseph and Mary realized their son was missing, they went back, only to find God in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers in conversation.
It sounds odd, doesn't it? Borderline absurd. And yet, this is the beginning of the story around which Christians live their lives around. Why? Why THIS story? Why did God reveal himself THIS way? By becoming a man?
Even though, when pressed, most Christians will say that Jesus was fully man, the fully God part of Jesus keeps him from being fully man in their subconscious. It seems irreverent to take it all the way. Like the paragraph above, to allow God to be fully man just seems wrong.
And yet, according to the gospels, he was. He was even a child at one point. Luke says that God was obedient to his parents. That God grew in wisdom. That God grew in favor with God. God can't do those things!
Not unless he was fully human. What does this mean for us?