The answer of Jesus to His mother was the declaration of His consciousness of His divine relationship, together with the announcement that He had come to do His Father’s will. Mary had said of Joseph to Jesus, “Thy father.” The answer was that He had remained in Jerusalem because, as He said, “I must be about My Father’s business.” His Father’s will was to be the supreme law of His life, and it was His joy to acknowledge it, and in its acknowledgment He fully answered Mary’s question and removed at the same time her unconcealed reproach. We cannot be surprised that they “understood not the saying which He spake unto them.”
Thereupon we read that “He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them.” His reply to Mary in the temple throws a flood of light upon all these years that came between His first passover and His baptism, because He had by it clearly defined His position. He was here to be “about His Father’s business” and consequently, in being subject to Joseph and Mary, He was doing His Father’s will in like manner as when He tarried behind in Jerusalem. There was not, there could not be, any discord between His daily life and what men term the more sacred duties. Every breath, every feeling, every thought, every word, and every deed were but the fruits of His entire devotedness to His Father’s will, for He always did the things that pleased Him (see John 8:2929And he that sent me is with me: the Father hath not left me alone; for I do always those things that please him. (John 8:29)). What a spectacle passed daily before the eyes of Mary and Joseph in that humble abode at Nazareth!
“His mother,” we are told in conclusion, “kept all these sayings in her heart”—the sayings at Jerusalem and the sayings surely at Nazareth, and as she guarded and meditated upon them, we may be certain that the Spirit of God gave her some perception of their meaning, to sustain, to guide, and to comfort her in the coming years. No, of all the women who have ever lived, there is not one who had such a blessed privilege as Mary; she was indeed “highly favored.” But as we write these words we again recall the Lord’s reply to the woman who cried out from among the crowd, “Blessed is the womb that bare Thee, and the paps which Thou hast sucked.” “Yea, rather,” He answered, “blessed are they that hear the Word of God, and keep it.” This blessedness is open to every one of God’s people.