The silent years to thirty - Chambers, Oswald
Luke 2:40–52
A child’s life has no dates, it is free, silent, dateless. A child’s life ought to be a child’s life, full of simplicity. By the silent years to thirty we mean to picture forth the experience of the sanctified soul; we have attained to nothing yet, we are simply perfectly adjusted to god. By sanctification we are placed in the condition of our lord at Bethlehem, and we have the life of Jesus as our example. We are apt to mistake the sovereign works of grace in salvation and sanctification as being final they are only beginnings.
1. His evolution in mind and ours
We mean by evolution growth and development. In the child the body is put first, and the child grew (Luke 2:40); in the young man the mind is put first, and Jesus advanced in wisdom (Luke 2:52 rv ). During those silent years from twelve to thirty there is nothing recorded saving that jesus advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favour with god and men nothing precocious or necromantic, a slow, steady, sane progress till he reached maturity.
And Jesus himself . . . Was about thirty years of age (Luke 3:23 RV). That is the age from the Jewish standpoint at which physical maturity and soul maturity are supposed to be reached. Up to that age a man was looked upon as almost a child and dependent, after thirty he was shielded from no requirements of a full grown-man. Up to the age of thirty life is full of promise and expectation, the powers are untried, they are more or less chaotic and immature. The majority of the works of genius are done before thirty. After thirty, or what is represented by that age, there is no more promise, no more vision, the life has to be lived now in accordance with all the visions it has had. Spiritual maturity is a different matter. Spiritual maturity is not reached by the passing of the years, but by obedience to the will of god. Some people mature into an understanding of gods will more quickly than others because they obey more read- ily, they more readily sacrifice the life of nature to the will of god, they more easily swing clear of little determined opinions. It is these little determined opinions, convictions of our own that wont budge, that hinder growth in grace and makes us bitter and dogmatic, intolerant, and utterly un-christ like.
(a) Willing zone
And he went down with them, and came to nazareth (Luke 2:51). Will is not a faculty but the whole man active. Our lord sacrificed his own natural desire to the will of his father. His natural desire would have been to stay in the temple, but he went down with them and came to Nazareth, and stayed there eighteen years. This is an illustration of the way Jesus used his will all through his life (see john 6:38). He advanced in wisdom by applying his will to the will of his father. For Christ also pleased not himself. To do what we like always ends in immorality; to do what god would have us do always ends in growth in grace.
(b) Wonder zone
How is it that ye sought me? Wist ye not that i must be in my fathers house? (Luke 2:49 RV ). This incident is the one glimpse given to us of those twelve years so full of wonder, so full of sky-lights open towards god. Think of the pure wonder of the child Jesus in the temple when he realised with spiritual intuition that he was in his fathers house; don’t picture a precocious intellectual prig. Jesus was amazed that his mother did not know what he knew, or understand what he understood. A child’s mind exhibits the innocence of intelligence, and in the life of Jesus this innocence never became conceited. The starting-point of every heresy is the corrupting of the innocence of intelligence by conceit. Conceit means to have a point of view; a point of view takes the wonder out of life. It is only when we are born again and sanctified that we enter into an understanding of the life of Jesus. His life is the type of life that the spirit forms in us when we obey him, full of innocent wonder. (cf. Matthew 11:25)
(c) Waiting zone
And he was subject unto them (Luke 2:51 RV). Have we ever caught the full force of the thirty silent years, of those three years wandering in palestine? Have we ever caught the full force of those ten days of waiting in the upper room? If we measure those periods by our modern way of estimating we will put it down as waste of time; but into the life of our lord, and into the lives of the early disciples, were going to come elements that would root and ground them on a solid foundation that nothing could shake. The waiting time is always the testing time. How we hurry people into work for god! A thrilling experience, an ecstasy of spiritual emotion, a heavenly vision, and, i am called of god to preach! Are you? Get back to gods book. If you are called to preach, god will put you through mills you never dreamed of. To testify for god is absolutely essential, but never open your mouth as a preacher unless you are called of god. If you are, it is a woe is unto me, if i preach not, not a delight. One of the worst sins amongst us is that we are more interested in the most recent views on sanctification than we are in the testimonies in gods book. Any excitable, hysterical testimony from a tide of revival is apt to be more welcome to the majority of sanctified people than the bedrock teaching of the new testament. With what result? . . . Because they had no root, they withered away. Picture those silent years in the life of our lord, shielded by his father, until all the tremendous forces of his life were developed and grasped.
2. His evolution in body and ours
(a) organic soul
And Jesus advanced in . . . Stature (Luke 2:52). The spirit is soul expressing itself in the body. The body has an enormous influence on the soul, and the soul on the body. When the body is developing into manhood or womanhood there is a sudden awakening of the soul to religious influences, and it is always a dangerous time. What is looked upon as evidence of the grace of god at work is merely the opening up of the soul in the process of development. God never places any impor- tance on that phase. Over and over again people have built up hope on the religious promise of boys and girls in their teens and after a while it fades away and the unwise say, he, or she, has backs lidden. May god have mercy on the parents who develop precocity in a child! What happens physically in children who show amazing signs of wisdom is that the grey matter of the brain is being used as quickly as it is formed. Precocity is something that ought to be checked. We are apt to place our faith on the years when we are in the making, whereas lives ought to be allowed to develop along a right line to the point of reliability.
If this is true in the physical and psychical domain, it is much more so in the spiritual. There are stages in spiritual development when god allows us to be dull, times when we cannot realise or feel any- thing. It is one of the greatest mercies that we have those blank spaces, for this reason, that if we go on with spiritual perception too quickly we have no time to work it out; and if we have no time to work it out it will react in stagnation and degeneration. Work out what god works in work it out through your fingertips, through your tongue, through your eyes; then when that is worked out, god will flood your soul with more light. Beware of curiosity in spiritual matters (see 2 Corinthians 11:3). If once you begin to push gods restrictions on one side and say i wonder what this movement is; i wonder if i should have this or that experience, you may find yourself getting perilously near the condition of the prodigal son, taking the law into your own hands and going clean off at a tangent. Unless religious emotions spring from the indwelling grace of god and are worked out on the right level, they will always, not sometimes, react on an immoral level. The time when these dangers begin is in this stage of development. It is a wonderful point of illumination that our lords soul was in a body like ours, and that for thirty silent years he exhibited a holy life through all the stages of development that our life goes through.
(b) organic self-sacrifice
I lay down my life. . . . I lay it down of myself ( john 10:1718). Our lord is referring to the power he has of self-sacrifice. Have we that power? Thank god we have. After sanctification we have the power to deliberately take our sanctified selves and sacrifice them for god. it is an easy business to be self-sacrificing in mind i intend to do this and that, that is, i estimate what it is going to cost me. Paul says he not only estimated the cost, he experienced it. . . . For whom i suffered the loss of all things (RV). As you go on towards maturity watch the by-path meadows i have been so blessed of god here, this is where i ought to stay. Read the life of Jesus, he kept his eye fixed on
The one purpose his father had for his life, which he calls going up to Jerusalem, and we have to go with him there. One of the greatest snares is the number of good things we might do. Jesus Christ never did the good things he might have done, he did everything he ought to do because he had his eye fixed on his fathers will and he sacrificed himself for his father. It is not done once for all, it can only be done once for always, day by day, day by day, the sacrifice of ourselves to the will of Jesus, that is, self-realisation is gone and christ-realisation has come in. Difficult? Nothing is ever attained in the natural world without difficulty and the same thing applies in the spiritual world. How many of us have learned the a b c of concentration? This one thing i do, our face set like a flint towards the purposes of god, not fanatically doing our duty, but going steadfastly on with the sacrifice of ourselves for Jesus as he sacrificed himself for his father.
(c) Organic spirit
Father, into thy hands i commend my spirit (Luke 23:46). All through the life of Jesus there is a clear realisation of his authority over body, soul and spirit. He matured to that authority in those silent years. Oh but, you say, jesus was the son of god: he said he was the son of man, that is, he exhibited what we are to be when we become sons of god, and if he learned obedience by the things which he suffered (RV) are we going to rebel because we have to go the same way?
What are we doing with our brains since we entered into the experience of sanctification? Are we allowing the holy spirit to get hold of this bodily machine until we construct an expression of the mind of Christ? The spirit of jesus is given to us in new birth, but we have not the mind of christ until we form it. How our minds express themselves depends entirely on the way we use our brains. I mean by mind not the spiritual mind, but the mind as it expresses itself in the bodily life. But we have the mind of christ. It is not true to say that god gives us our ideas, that notion is the starting-point of all heresies. God never gave anyone their ideas, god makes a man use his ideas in order to convey his mind; otherwise responsibility is destroyed. Glean your thinking, says Paul, and we have to do it by will. The holy spirit energises the will to complete mastery of the brain. Dont be a mental wool-gatherer.
3. His evolution in maturity and ours
Being about thirty years of age . . . The period of maturity. Who was it reached maturity? The son of god as man the maturity of all physical powers, all soul powers, all spiritual powers, and not until that point was reached did god thrust him out into the three years of service. I do always those things that are pleasing to [my father] (rv ). Where did Jesus learn that power? In those thirty silent years.
Can god say of us that soul is learning, precept upon precept; line upon line; it is not nearly so petulant and stupid as it used to be, it no longer sulks in corners, it no longer murmurs against discipline, it is getting slowly to the place where i shall be able to do with it what i did with my own son? What was that? God took his hand off, as it were, and said to the world, the flesh and the devil, do your worst . . . Greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world. God shielded his son from no requirements of a son, and when we are rightly related to god he will not shield us from any requirements of sons.
In spiritual maturity all our powers are thoroughly adjusted into a calm poise, rightly balanced, and god can begin to trust us with his work. If a man love me, . . . He will keep my words, said Jesus; he is referring to the freedom of the disciple to keep his commandments. No natural man is free to keep the commandments of god, he is utterly unable to unless he is born again of the holy spirit. Freedom means ability to keep the law; every kind of freedom has to be earned. And my father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him an unspeakable, unstateable communion, god the father, god the son and god the holy ghost, and the sinner saved and sanctified by grace, communing together. That is the sheer sovereign work of the lord Jesus Christ.