Jesus’ Early Manhood

128:1.1With the at­tain­ment of adult years Je­sus be­gan in earnest and with full self-con­scious­ness the task of com­plet­ing the ex­pe­ri­ence of mas­ter­ing the knowl­edge of the life of his low­est form of in­tel­li­gent crea­tures, thereby fi­nally and fully earn­ing the right of un­qual­i­fied ruler­ship of his self-cre­ated uni­verse. He en­tered upon this stu­pen­dous task fully re­al­iz­ing his dual na­ture. But he had al­ready ef­fec­tively com­bined these two na­tures into one—Je­sus of Naz­a­reth.

128:1.2Joshua ben Joseph knew full well that he was a man, a mor­tal man, born of woman. This is shown in the se­lec­tion of his first ti­tle, the Son of Man. He was truly a par­taker of flesh and blood, and even now, as he pre­sides in sov­er­eign au­thor­ity over the des­tinies of a uni­verse, he still bears among his nu­mer­ous well-earned ti­tles that of Son of Man. It is lit­er­ally true that the cre­ative Word—the Cre­ator Son—of the Uni­ver­sal Fa­ther was “made flesh and dwelt as a man of the realm on Uran­tia.” He la­bored, grew weary, rested, and slept. He hun­gered and sat­is­fied such crav­ings with food; he thirsted and quenched his thirst with wa­ter. He ex­pe­ri­enced the full gamut of hu­man feel­ings and emo­tions; he was “in all things tested, even as you are,” and he suf­fered and died.

128:1.3He ob­tained knowl­edge, gained ex­pe­ri­ence, and com­bined these into wis­dom, just as do other mor­tals of the realm. Un­til af­ter his bap­tism he availed him­self of no super­nat­u­ral power. He em­ployed no agency not a part of his hu­man en­dow­ment as a son of Joseph and Mary.

128:1.4As to the at­tri­butes of his pre­hu­man ex­is­tence, he emp­tied him­self. Prior to the be­gin­ning of his pub­lic work his knowl­edge of men and events was wholly self-lim­ited. He was a true man among men.

128:1.5It is for­ever and glo­ri­ously true: “We have a high ruler who can be touched with the feel­ing of our in­fir­mi­ties. We have a Sov­er­eign who was in all points tested and tempted like as we are, yet with­out sin.” And since he him­self has suf­fered, be­ing tested and tried, he is abun­dantly able to un­der­stand and min­is­ter to those who are con­fused and dis­tressed.

128:1.6The Naz­a­reth car­pen­ter now fully un­der­stood the work be­fore him, but he chose to live his hu­man life in the chan­nel of its nat­u­ral flow­ing. And in some of these mat­ters he is in­deed an ex­am­ple to his mor­tal crea­tures, even as it is re­corded: “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Je­sus, who, be­ing of the na­ture of God, thought it not strange to be equal with God. But he made him­self to be of lit­tle im­port and, tak­ing upon him­self the form of a crea­ture, was born in the like­ness of man­kind. And be­ing thus fash­ioned as a man, he hum­bled him­self and be­came obe­di­ent to death, even the death of the cross.”

128:1.7He lived his mor­tal life just as all oth­ers of the hu­man fam­ily may live theirs, “who in the days of the flesh so fre­quently of­fered up prayers and sup­pli­ca­tions, even with strong feel­ings and tears, to Him who is able to save from all evil, and his prayers were ef­fec­tive be­cause he be­lieved.” Where­fore it be­hooved him in ev­ery re­spect to be made like his breth­ren that he might be­come a mer­ci­ful and un­der­stand­ing sov­er­eign ruler over them.

128:1.8Of his hu­man na­ture he was never in doubt; it was self-ev­i­dent and al­ways pres­ent in his con­scious­ness. But of his di­vine na­ture there was al­ways room for doubt and con­jec­ture, at least this was true right up to the event of his bap­tism. The self-re­al­iza­tion of di­vin­ity was a slow and, from the hu­man stand­point, a nat­u­ral evo­lu­tion­ary rev­e­la­tion. This rev­e­la­tion and self-re­al­iza­tion of di­vin­ity be­gan in Je­ru­sa­lem when he was not quite thir­teen years old with the first super­nat­u­ral oc­cur­rence of his hu­man ex­is­tence; and this ex­pe­ri­ence of ef­fect­ing the self-re­al­iza­tion of his di­vine na­ture was com­pleted at the time of his sec­ond super­nat­u­ral ex­pe­ri­ence while in the flesh, the episode at­ten­dant upon his bap­tism by John in the Jor­dan, which event marked the be­gin­ning of his pub­lic ca­reer of min­istry and teach­ing.

128:1.9Be­tween these two ce­les­tial vis­i­ta­tions, one in his thir­teenth year and the other at his bap­tism, there oc­curred noth­ing super­nat­u­ral or super­hu­man in the life of this in­car­nated Cre­ator Son. Not­with­stand­ing this, the babe of Beth­le­hem, the lad, youth, and man of Naz­a­reth, was in re­al­ity the in­car­nated Cre­ator of a uni­verse; but he never once used aught of this power, nor did he uti­lize the guid­ance of ce­les­tial per­son­al­i­ties, aside from that of his guard­ian ser­a­phim, in the liv­ing of his hu­man life up to the day of his bap­tism by John. And we who thus tes­tify know whereof we speak.

128:1.10And yet, through­out all these years of his life in the flesh he was truly di­vine. He was ac­tu­ally a Cre­ator Son of the Par­a­dise Fa­ther. When once he had es­poused his pub­lic ca­reer, sub­se­quent to the tech­ni­cal com­ple­tion of his purely mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence of sov­er­eignty ac­quire­ment, he did not hes­i­tate pub­licly to ad­mit that he was the Son of God. He did not hes­i­tate to de­clare, “I am Al­pha and Omega, the be­gin­ning and the end, the first and the last.” He made no protest in later years when he was called Lord of Glory, Ruler of a Uni­verse, the Lord God of all cre­ation, the Holy One of Is­rael, the Lord of all, our Lord and our God, God with us, hav­ing a name above ev­ery name and on all worlds, the Om­nipo­tence of a uni­verse, the Uni­verse Mind of this cre­ation, the One in whom are hid all trea­sures of wis­dom and knowl­edge, the full­ness of Him who fills all things, the eter­nal Word of the eter­nal God, the One who was be­fore all things and in whom all things con­sist, the Cre­ator of the heav­ens and the earth, the Up­holder of a uni­verse, the Judge of all the earth, the Giver of life eter­nal, the True Shep­herd, the De­liv­erer of the worlds, and the Cap­tain of our sal­va­tion.

128:1.11He never ob­jected to any of these ti­tles as they were ap­plied to him sub­se­quent to the emer­gence from his purely hu­man life into the later years of his self-con­scious­ness of the min­istry of di­vin­ity in hu­man­ity, and for hu­man­ity, and to hu­man­ity on this world and for all other worlds. Je­sus ob­jected to but one ti­tle as ap­plied to him: When he was once called Im­manuel, he merely replied, “Not I, that is my el­der brother.”

128:1.12Al­ways, even af­ter his emer­gence into the larger life on earth, Je­sus was sub­mis­sively sub­ject to the will of the Fa­ther in heaven.

128:1.13Af­ter his bap­tism he thought noth­ing of per­mit­ting his sin­cere be­liev­ers and grate­ful fol­low­ers to wor­ship him. Even while he wres­tled with pov­erty and toiled with his hands to pro­vide the ne­ces­si­ties of life for his fam­ily, his aware­ness that he was a Son of God was grow­ing; he knew that he was the maker of the heav­ens and this very earth whereon he was now liv­ing out his hu­man ex­is­tence. And the hosts of ce­les­tial be­ings through­out the great and on­look­ing uni­verse like­wise knew that this man of Naz­a­reth was their beloved Sov­er­eign and Cre­ator-fa­ther. A pro­found sus­pense per­vaded the uni­verse of Neb­a­don through­out these years; all ce­les­tial eyes were con­tin­u­ously fo­cused on Uran­tia—on Pales­tine.

128:1.14This year Je­sus went up to Je­ru­sa­lem with Joseph to cel­e­brate the Pass­over. Hav­ing taken James to the tem­ple for con­se­cra­tion, he deemed it his duty to take Joseph. Je­sus never ex­hib­ited any de­gree of par­tial­ity in deal­ing with his fam­ily. He went with Joseph to Je­ru­sa­lem by the usual Jor­dan val­ley route, but he re­turned to Naz­a­reth by the east Jor­dan way, which led through Am­athus. Go­ing down the Jor­dan, Je­sus nar­rated Jew­ish his­tory to Joseph and on the re­turn trip told him about the ex­pe­ri­ences of the re­puted tribes of Ruben, Gad, and Gilead that tra­di­tion­ally had dwelt in these re­gions east of the river.

128:1.15Joseph asked Je­sus many lead­ing ques­tions con­cern­ing his life mis­sion, but to most of these in­quiries Je­sus would only re­ply, “My hour has not yet come.” How­ever, in these in­ti­mate dis­cus­sions many words were dropped which Joseph re­mem­bered dur­ing the stir­ring events of sub­se­quent years. Je­sus, with Joseph, spent this Pass­over with his three friends at Beth­any, as was his cus­tom when in Je­ru­sa­lem at­tend­ing these fes­ti­val com­mem­o­ra­tions.