Christ Grew Up
John Owen once wrote that true Christians cannot be content with vague thoughts of Christ’s glory. If we long to behold him in the fullness of his grace and truth, then we cannot settle for misty, ethereal notions of him (cf. Jn 1:14). After all, our God is a consuming fire, and last I checked, it was difficult to have abstract thoughts about a roaring wildfire licking up a forest. But I digress.
I simply wish to heed Owen’s counsel, and present to the eyes of faith a solid, real, fiery meditation of Christ’s glory. For the thought occurred to me during communion recently, that Christ grew up — and when one thinks of God “growing up,” it is an occasion for wonder and marvel indeed. It’s akin to that time when Paul told the Ephesian elders to, “care for the church of God, which he obtained with his own blood” (Ac 20:28). O the glory of a God who grew up to bleed and die!
Now we must, of course, be careful in how we talk about this — because when we say that God grew up or that God obtained the church with his own blood, we are talking specifically about God incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ, truly God (according to his divine nature) and truly man (according to his human nature) and thus able to grow and bleed and die. We are not saying that the eternal, triune God experienced hunger or thirst or death within his divine nature; but we are saying that God-in-the-flesh, according to his human nature, did hunger and thirst and die. The church has confessed as much in the ancient creeds for thousands of years now.
So it is important to get that part of it right. But even in that spirit of caution, I still think this eminently worth talking about. And allow me first to clarify that, when I speak of Christ “growing up,” I do not primarily have in mind the fact that he grew in stature and favor before God and men — glorious as that thought indeed is (cf. Lk 2:40). I rather have something else in mind.
Made Perfect Through Suffering
What I mean when I say that Christ “grew up,” is closer to what the author of Hebrews said when he noted that Christ was made perfect through suffering (Heb 2:10). At first, that sentiment might strike us as blasphemous: how could Christ be “made” perfect? Was he not completely pure, holy, and undefiled from the moment he was conceived by the power of the Holy Spirit? Well, the obvious answer to that question is yes — and so bearing that in mind, the author of Hebrews obviously could not have been talking about Christ’s moral perfection, as if he was somehow an ethical sluggard who had to come around to the idea of keeping the law and appreciating its goodness.
So what did the author of Hebrews mean, then? I think it would be putting it right to say that Christ, in his humanity, could not be a complete, to-the-uttermost Savior who could save people who sin to the uttermost, until he had suffered and died for their sins. This was the requirement he had to fulfill in order to become the pioneer and perfecter of our faith (Heb 12:1-2). In other words, by experiencing the fullness of humanity apart from any deforming sin, he could truly say, “Behold, I have come; in the scroll of the book it is written of me: I delight to do your will, O my God; your law is within my heart” (Ps 40:7–8, cf. Hey 10:7).
This means that he had to grow up, in that sense that he had to endure temptations without giving in, he had to experience grief and sorrow and pain without cursing his Father, he had to feel tired down to his bones and be treated unjustly without grumbling — among myriad other things! In a word, he had to choose suffering in the cause of love and obedience, when he could have just as easily opted for safety. This is what made the man Jesus Christ the perfect High Priest who could truly save us and sympathize with us (Heb 4:15).
Suffering Over Safety
So when I say that Christ “grew up,” I say it with all reverence, and I say it with all seriousness. Christ could have called down 12 legions of angels to scorch the earth and carry him up into heaven — but he did not. He could have mustered all the power of the Godhead to get himself off the cross — but he did not. He could have ushered in a judgment day, right there on Golgotha, that would have utterly obliterated all of us from the face of existence — but he did not.
For instead, he chose to suffer the torments of the damned for us — because he loved us. And thus Christ, rather than retreating into the safety of the eternal sanctuary, grew up and faced the suffering that only worthy men can know. Indeed, so magnificent is this reality, that for the aeons to come, we shall sing the song of the Lamb who was slain (Rev 5:9-10). We shall look upon the death wounds of the living Christ for all eternity, and we shall sing endless hymns of praise to him. We shall give ceaseless thanks for the God-man Jesus, who like a shoot from dry ground grew up before us (Is 53:2).
