The Adolescent Years

127:1.1The in­car­nated Son passed through in­fancy and ex­pe­ri­enced an un­event­ful child­hood. Then he emerged from that test­ing and try­ing tran­si­tion stage be­tween child­hood and young man­hood—he be­came the ado­les­cent Je­sus.

127:1.2This year he at­tained his full phys­i­cal growth. He was a vir­ile and comely youth. He be­came in­creas­ingly sober and se­ri­ous, but he was kind and sym­pa­thetic. His eye was kind but search­ing; his smile was al­ways en­gag­ing and re­as­sur­ing. His voice was mu­si­cal but au­thor­i­ta­tive; his greet­ing cor­dial but un­af­fected. Al­ways, even in the most com­mon­place of con­tacts, there seemed to be in ev­i­dence the touch of a two­fold na­ture, the hu­man and the di­vine. Ever he dis­played this com­bi­na­tion of the sym­pa­thiz­ing friend and the au­thor­i­ta­tive teacher. And these per­son­al­ity traits be­gan early to be­come man­i­fest, even in these ado­les­cent years.

127:1.3This phys­i­cally strong and ro­bust youth also ac­quired the full growth of his hu­man in­tel­lect, not the full ex­pe­ri­ence of hu­man think­ing but the full­ness of ca­pac­ity for such in­tel­lec­tual de­vel­op­ment. He pos­sessed a healthy and well-pro­por­tioned body, a keen and an­a­lyt­i­cal mind, a kind and sym­pa­thetic dis­po­si­tion, a some­what fluc­tu­at­ing but ag­gres­sive tem­per­a­ment, all of which were be­com­ing or­ga­nized into a strong, strik­ing, and at­trac­tive per­son­al­ity.

127:1.4As time went on, it be­came more dif­fi­cult for his mother and his broth­ers and sis­ters to un­der­stand him; they stum­bled over his say­ings and mis­in­ter­preted his do­ings. They were all un­fit­ted to com­pre­hend their el­dest brother’s life be­cause their mother had given them to un­der­stand that he was des­tined to be­come the de­liv­erer of the Jew­ish peo­ple. Af­ter they had re­ceived from Mary such in­ti­ma­tions as fam­ily se­crets, imag­ine their con­fu­sion when Je­sus would make frank de­nials of all such ideas and in­ten­tions.

127:1.5This year Si­mon started to school, and they were com­pelled to sell an­other house. James now took charge of the teach­ing of his three sis­ters, two of whom were old enough to be­gin se­ri­ous study. As soon as Ruth grew up, she was taken in hand by Miriam and Martha. Or­di­nar­ily the girls of Jew­ish fam­i­lies re­ceived lit­tle ed­u­ca­tion, but Je­sus main­tained (and his mother agreed) that girls should go to school the same as boys, and since the syn­a­gogue school would not re­ceive them, there was noth­ing to do but con­duct a home school es­pe­cially for them.

127:1.6Through­out this year Je­sus was closely con­fined to the work­bench. For­tu­nately he had plenty of work; his was of such a su­pe­rior grade that he was never idle no mat­ter how slack work might be in that re­gion. At times he had so much to do that James would help him.

127:1.7By the end of this year he had just about made up his mind that he would, af­ter rear­ing his fam­ily and see­ing them mar­ried, en­ter pub­licly upon his work as a teacher of truth and as a re­vealer of the heav­enly Fa­ther to the world. He knew he was not to be­come the ex­pected Jew­ish Mes­siah, and he con­cluded that it was next to use­less to dis­cuss these mat­ters with his mother; he de­cided to al­low her to en­ter­tain what­ever ideas she might choose since all he had said in the past had made lit­tle or no im­pres­sion upon her and he re­called that his fa­ther had never been able to say any­thing that would change her mind. From this year on he talked less and less with his mother, or any­one else, about these prob­lems. His was such a pe­cu­liar mis­sion that no one liv­ing on earth could give him ad­vice con­cern­ing its pros­e­cu­tion.

127:1.8He was a real though youth­ful fa­ther to the fam­ily; he spent ev­ery pos­si­ble hour with the young­sters, and they truly loved him. His mother grieved to see him work so hard; she sor­rowed that he was day by day toil­ing at the car­pen­ter’s bench earn­ing a liv­ing for the fam­ily in­stead of be­ing, as they had so fondly planned, at Je­ru­sa­lem study­ing with the rab­bis. While there was much about her son that Mary could not un­der­stand, she did love him, and she most thor­oughly ap­pre­ci­ated the will­ing man­ner in which he shoul­dered the re­spon­si­bil­ity of the home.