Did you know that Jesus lived from age 2-30? Well, of course, you did. But does your intellectual knowledge of Jesus living from 2-30 shape your vision of his humanity?

The Orthodox Christian doctrine says that Jesus was fully God and fully man.

But, if you’re honest, does your idea of Jesus as “fully man” involve visions of Mary changing his BMs? Does your vision of Jesus’ full humanity have a picture of Joseph carefully walking his son through how to shave his peach fuzz as puberty sets in? 

In between the Virgin Birth and Jesus’ foray into ministry following his edgy cousin—John the Baptist—Jesus lived the life of a good little Jewish boy before becoming a faithful Jewish man.

We only get one snapshot of Jesus’ life in between his birth and his meteoric rise to ministry as the Messiah—a scene that seems more akin to Home Alone than Scripture.

Mary, Joseph, and their family travel to Jerusalem from Nazareth (about the same distance from Chicago to Milwaukee) to celebrate the Passover celebration, a high and holy moment in the Jewish calendar. After starting their return journey home, Mary and Joseph make it about a day’s journey outside of the city before realizing their son is not with them. They head back to find him and after three days of searching, they found Him in the Temple, learning from the religious leaders of his day.

Like any good mom, Mary let her son know that she was worried sick, but Jesus assured His earthly parents that He was in the best place He could be, His Father’s House.

The Gospel writer then tells us that, “Then he returned to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. And his mother stored all these things in her heart.” (John 2:51 NLT)

So, what happened for the next 18 years or so of his life?

Luke tells us that “Jesus grew in wisdom and in stature and in favor with God and all the people. (Luke 2:52 NLT)

Now, we don’t know exactly what Jesus would have done to grow in wisdom, stature, favor with God, and favor with man. But, we do know the basic practices that Jesus would have done as a devoted Jewish boy-becoming-a-man.

Some of the practices that served as pillars in Jewish pietism (or religious observance) would have been reading of the Old Testament, prayer three times a day, fasting twice a week, and, of course, weekly Sabbath-keeping.

As a good little Jewish boy, and later man, Jesus kept the Sabbath.

If all of the habits and practices we do form us and shape us, in Jesus’ full humanity, the practice of Sabbath-keeping formed the Son of Man. It made him (in his humanity) into who He was.

We see this idea of Jesus’ spiritual formation in Hebrews 5:8. The writer of Hebrews highlights how Jesus’ suffering shaped Him. Scripture says, “Even though Jesus was God’s Son, he learned obedience from the things he suffered.” (Hebrews 5:8 NLT) 

Jesus would not have only learned through suffering though. His Jewish practices shaped Him and formed Him in his humanity, just like as sufferings did. In Jesus’ humanity, the weekly Sabbath formed a Sabbath way of life in his very being.

After His temptation in the desert and the subsequent start of His earthly ministry, we see Jesus go home and what does He do? “When he came to the village of Nazareth, his boyhood home, he went as usual to the synagogue on the Sabbath and stood up to read the Scriptures.” (Luke 4:16)

It is certainly a paradox: Jesus, though Lord of the Sabbath in his full deity, also submitted Himself to the practice of Sabbath in his full humanity. And even though all the way back in Genesis 2, when we know Jesus—in His deity—was present to form the Sabbath, the Sabbath now forms the pre-existent Christ in his humanity. Christ is both the Forming God and the Formed Man.

Does Jesus Himself Take Down the Sabbath?

Rightfully so, most conversations around the Sabbath lead to the question: what became of the Sabbath in light of Jesus’ redemptive work? Yet remarkably, in all the hubbub, we forget to listen to what Jesus Himself actually says about the Sabbath. Over the next few posts, we’ll look at Jesus’ interaction with the Sabbath, both what he says, but then also what he does.