Jesus’ Early Manhood

128:4.1The last four months of this year Je­sus spent in Da­mas­cus as the guest of the mer­chant whom he first met at Phil­a­del­phia when on his way to Je­ru­sa­lem. A rep­re­sen­ta­tive of this mer­chant had sought out Je­sus when pass­ing through Naz­a­reth and es­corted him to Da­mas­cus. This part-Jew­ish mer­chant pro­posed to de­vote an ex­traor­di­nary sum of money to the es­tab­lish­ment of a school of re­li­gious phi­los­o­phy at Da­mas­cus. He planned to cre­ate a cen­ter of learn­ing which would out-ri­val Alexan­dria. And he pro­posed that Je­sus should im­me­di­ately be­gin a long tour of the world’s ed­u­ca­tional cen­ters prepara­tory to be­com­ing the head of this new project. This was one of the great­est temp­ta­tions that Je­sus ever faced in the course of his purely hu­man ca­reer.

128:4.2Pres­ently this mer­chant brought be­fore Je­sus a group of twelve mer­chants and bankers who agreed to sup­port this newly pro­jected school. Je­sus man­i­fested deep in­ter­est in the pro­posed school, helped them plan for its or­ga­ni­za­tion, but al­ways ex­pressed the fear that his other and un­stated but prior obli­ga­tions would pre­vent his ac­cept­ing the di­rec­tion of such a pre­ten­tious en­ter­prise. His would-be bene­fac­tor was per­sis­tent, and he prof­itably em­ployed Je­sus at his home do­ing some trans­lat­ing while he, his wife, and their sons and daugh­ters sought to pre­vail upon Je­sus to ac­cept the prof­fered honor. But he would not con­sent. He well knew that his mis­sion on earth was not to be sup­ported by in­sti­tu­tions of learn­ing; he knew that he must not ob­li­gate him­self in the least to be di­rected by the “coun­cils of men,” no mat­ter how well-in­ten­tioned.

128:4.3He who was re­jected by the Je­ru­sa­lem re­li­gious lead­ers, even af­ter he had demon­strated his lead­er­ship, was rec­og­nized and hailed as a mas­ter teacher by the busi­ness­men and bankers of Da­mas­cus, and all this when he was an ob­scure and un­known car­pen­ter of Naz­a­reth.

128:4.4He never spoke about this of­fer to his fam­ily, and the end of this year found him back in Naz­a­reth go­ing about his daily du­ties just as if he had never been tempted by the flat­ter­ing propo­si­tions of his Da­mas­cus friends. Nei­ther did these men of Da­mas­cus ever as­so­ciate the later cit­i­zen of Ca­per­naum who turned all Jewry up­side down with the for­mer car­pen­ter of Naz­a­reth who had dared to refuse the honor which their com­bined wealth might have pro­cured.

128:4.5Je­sus most clev­erly and in­ten­tion­ally con­trived to de­tach var­i­ous episodes of his life so that they never be­came, in the eyes of the world, as­so­ci­ated to­gether as the do­ings of a sin­gle in­di­vid­ual. Many times in sub­se­quent years he lis­tened to the recital of this very story of the strange Galilean who de­clined the op­por­tu­nity of found­ing a school in Da­mas­cus to com­pete with Alexan­dria.

128:4.6One pur­pose which Je­sus had in mind, when he sought to seg­re­gate cer­tain fea­tures of his earthly ex­pe­ri­ence, was to pre­vent the build­ing up of such a ver­sa­tile and spec­tac­u­lar ca­reer as would cause sub­se­quent gen­er­a­tions to ven­er­ate the teacher in place of obey­ing the truth which he had lived and taught. Je­sus did not want to build up such a hu­man rec­ord of achieve­ment as would at­tract at­ten­tion from his teach­ing. Very early he rec­og­nized that his fol­low­ers would be tempted to for­mu­late a re­li­gion about him which might be­come a com­peti­tor of the gospel of the king­dom that he in­tended to pro­claim to the world. Ac­cord­ingly, he con­sis­tently sought to sup­press ev­ery­thing dur­ing his event­ful ca­reer which he thought might be made to serve this nat­u­ral hu­man ten­dency to ex­alt the teacher in place of pro­claim­ing his teach­ings.

128:4.7This same mo­tive also ex­plains why he per­mit­ted him­self to be known by dif­fer­ent ti­tles dur­ing var­i­ous epochs of his di­ver­si­fied life on earth. Again, he did not want to bring any un­due in­flu­ence to bear upon his fam­ily or oth­ers which would lead them to be­lieve in him against their hon­est con­vic­tions. He al­ways re­fused to take un­due or un­fair ad­van­tage of the hu­man mind. He did not want men to be­lieve in him un­less their hearts were re­spon­sive to the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties re­vealed in his teach­ings.

128:4.8By the end of this year the Naz­a­reth home was run­ning fairly smoothly. The chil­dren were grow­ing up, and Mary was be­com­ing ac­cus­tomed to Je­sus’ be­ing away from home. He con­tin­ued to turn over his earn­ings to James for the sup­port of the fam­ily, re­tain­ing only a small por­tion for his im­me­di­ate per­sonal ex­penses.

128:4.9As the years passed, it be­came more dif­fi­cult to re­al­ize that this man was a Son of God on earth. He seemed to be­come quite like an in­di­vid­ual of the realm, just an­other man among men. And it was or­dained by the Fa­ther in heaven that the be­stowal should un­fold in this very way.