Jesus-Emmanuel made everything His own concern, in living obedience to His Father or in loving sympathies with all around Him. The Gospel by Luke takes us along the lonely paths of this oftentimes solitary Man, though never an isolated One. In the midst of His own sorrows and sufferings He carried on in moral perfectness, where none but He could make a path for Himself. And then while in that path, where He manifested devotedness to God, obedience as a servant, sympathy as a man, and sufferings in grace, He would cry to God concerning such trials and sorrows, and He was alone when He cried to be heard and answered. He was the solitary Man. How could this be with Him, who had come down into the realm of God’s dishonor and of Satan’s triumph and the place of man’s disgrace and defeat? In such a place He was always about “the Father’s business.” We find Him throughout Luke as the dependent but confident One. “He withdrew himself into the wilderness and prayed”; when He left the wilderness, Luke tells us, “It came to pass in those days that he went out into a mountain to pray, and continued all night in prayer to God.” What a night was this! The Son of man upon this earth, taking on Himself all the failures and liabilities of men in their relation to the powers of God in righteousness, justifying the Judge of the whole earth by accepting the consequences of their disobedience, and making that the very starting-point of His own walk with God and men below. Where could He look but to heaven? With whom could He speak on matters like these, but with the Jehovah of Israel? And to whom could He pray but to Him who accredited this Son of man at the outset by the voice from the opened heavens, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased?” Our blessed Lord not only takes all these accumulated liabilities on Himself and glorifies God by their means, but, while doing this in righteous obedience and suffering, He carries all their weight and pressure to God and in “the night seasons” is not silent; yes, He says, I will meditate on thee in the “night watches.” He was the true Israelite, the Messiah and Head of that people; thus “the Spirit of God, like a dove descending, lighted upon him,” or as the annunciation by the angel declared to Mary, “That holy thing which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God.”
From The Bible Treasury