Honor Your Father and Mother: Did Jesus Break This Command?

If you have spent any amount of time in church, you know that Jesus Christ is pretty important to us Christians. It is, after all, in the name: CHRISTian. And you may have even caught on to some pretty important beliefs about Jesus, not least of which being that he is God and that he never sinned.¹ Yet, this notion of Jesus’ sinlessness is sometimes challenged. Jesus is, on occasion, accused of breaking God’s command to “honor your father and mother” (Exodus 20:12).

But what if I told you that there is more to this man than a divine nature and blind obedience to God? And what if what many of us think we know about Jesus is not the whole story?

Since the focus of this blog is to learn to grow in the attitude of Christ, it seems fitting that we spend some time going through his words, for he himself says that “out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks” (Matthew 12:34). If this is true, then the best way to get to know the heart of Christ is to understand the words of Christ, and what better place to begin a study of the sayings of Jesus than with his first recorded conversation?

The Holy Family Celebrates Passover

Follow me to Jerusalem, circa A.D. 9. The feast of Passover brings thousands of worshippers to the Great City to remember Yahweh’s covenant with the people of Israel. Among those many is a humble family from Nazareth: Mary, Joseph, and their children.

They spend about a week in Jerusalem, feasting, sacrificing, meditating, and celebrating with their people that God delivered them from slavery many centuries before. But just like every other year, the festivities come to a close, and it is time to return home to Nazareth, for life to go back to normal. Time for Joseph to get back to the family business. Time for Mary to keep raising her children.

Little did they know, normal was soon going to evade their family for good.

Where’s Jesus?

About a day into their trip back home, they realized that one of their children was not with them. Mary and Joseph frantically searched for their son among their relatives. It was normal for children to mingle and play and remain with their other family and their friends for a time before returning to their parents. And what a beautiful thing to be able to trust their community to that degree. But the time came when they expected him to be back with them, and he never showed up.

They realized they lost him, and they retraced their steps. So they went backwards a day’s journey. Returning to Jerusalem, they searched there for at least an entire day to find their lost son. But he was far from lost.

“Honor Your Father and Mother”

Finally, entering the temple, they find him: their twelve-year-old son Jesus is sitting among the teachers of Israel talking about theology. Luke 2:46-47 tells us that they found Jesus “sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who heard him were amazed at his understanding and his answers.”

But Jesus’s parents felt differently. Look at what his mother says in verse 48: “Son, why have you treated us so? Behold, your father and I have been searching for you in great distress.”

Many skeptics look on this passage with glee, as they presume a contradiction is present. And yes, a cursory reading of this passage can present some questions which, if left unanswered, can lead to doubt, or confusion at the very least.

And here the argument goes: “If Jesus was sinless, then why does he dishonor his parents like this? ‘Honor your father and mother” is one of the ten commandments, after all.”

On the surface, this question makes sense. It has certainly made me question my beliefs, as it has many others. But when one takes the time to look closely at what is really going on here, we see that the Son of God is not the one who is at fault.

For just a moment, it seems Mary forgot who Jesus was. For he was just a boy, accused by his mother who lost track of him, as though his prefrontal cortex, the brain’s epicenter of understanding consequences, had been fully developed already. As a young boy, perhaps it would not have occurred to him that his parents would leave without him or be confused at all about where he would be spending his time.

I Can Relate

When I was a child on shopping trips to Wal-Mart with my parents, I spent most of my time in the store playing the video game demos that would be set up in the electronics section. One time in particular, it was just me and dad. I let him know where I was going, and I spent what felt like hours playing samples of the newest games on the market. Did it cross my mind that it had been a while? Certainly. But I knew I had told my dad where I was, and I never left that place. I knew I just needed to wait for his return. If I left, how would he know where to look when he finally did come back?

Well eventually, dad found me. And he was livid. He yelled at me and made me feel stupid for not staying with him. Turns out, he left the store without me, forgetting I was even with him. His anger was at the inconvenience of having to go back to get me when he finally remembered.

Now, Mary and Joseph were not quite like my dad. They didn’t belittle Jesus or yell at him. But they did make a similar mistake: they blamed the child for not being with them, when they were responsible to make sure he was.

God, the Boy

Like me at Wal-Mart, Jesus stayed in Jerusalem longer than his parents would have preferred. But look at Luke 2:49; listen to the shock in his response to Mary’s scolding: “Why were you looking for me? Did you not know that I must be in my Father’s house?”

Jesus would have understandably been casually waiting for his parents to come get him and making good theological discussion with the rabbis in the meantime. Jesus assumed that they knew where he would be. In his mind, they knew his identity as the Son of God. Leading up to his birth, and angel told them this. They likely observed and appreciated his devotion and love for God in the way he celebrated the Passover with them. So, in the mind of this twelve-year-old boy, their absence meant their approval.

In this, we see the beautiful union of Jesus’ nature, for in the incarnation, through the womb of the Virgin, Yahweh, the Creator of that womb, “emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men” (Philippians 2:7). For this reason, the Church throughout the ages has known Mary as the Mother of God, because God came to join us in our humanity through her. God had to learn how to walk. The Creator had to learn how to speak. The Sovereign King had to learn how to obey through his sufferings (Hebrews 5:8). He had to learn how to interact with people. He had to learn his parents’ wishes. And when he did, Luke tells us in 2:51 that he “was submissive to them.”

Follow the God-Man

So don’t let your faith be shaken by this. Rather, let it be inspired by the truth that Jesus is our great representative: true God and true man. Jesus did not sin. He, like all of us at one time, merely had the limited mind of a twelve year old.

And what if this moment was on Jesus’ mind when he told us we need to “become like little children” to enter God’s kingdom? What if he wants us to be so deeply aware of our Father’s voice that we no longer fear the consequences of obedience?

Sometimes obedience can cost us greatly. It can even cost or offend others. But if our relationship with and obedience to God is limited by potential consequences, this is a sign of distrust. The Lord wants to take us from only knowing him as “Our Father” into the revelation of God as “My Father.”

When we finally begin to get that (and I am preaching just as much to myself here), we won’t need to worry about what happens to us or who likes us. We will no longer be discouraged when our enemies hurt us or when our prayers are answered differently than we wanted. We will say with the psalmist in Psalm 27:1, “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? The Lord is the stronghold of my life; of whom shall I be afraid?” And as Saint Peter tells us in 1 Peter 4:19, we will be able to “entrust [our] souls to a faithful Creator.”

Footnotes

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1. See my blog post: A Tale of Three Tests: Finding Strength in the Wilderness. ↩︎