A Juvenile Delinquent God

What?

Yes. Jesus of Nazareth. He is not yet "Jesus the Christ" (Christ = "The Anointed One") because at twelve years old he has yet to be anointed. That will happen 20 years later, when he meets John the Baptist in the wilderness down by the Jordan.

But, according to our Christian Belief, he is already "fully man" and "fully God." Fully God means Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnipresent. He can do anything, he knows everything, and he is present everywhere. But according to Paul, he has set aside divine attributes, or at least some of them (Philippians 2:7). 

Omniscient? Then why did he ask for the name of the multiple demons controlling a man from the tombs near the sea of Galilee? Omnipotent? Mark says that he "could do no miracle" in Nazareth, except to lay his hands on a few people and heal them. Omnipresent? Jesus seemed to  get to places the old-fashioned way: he walked there. "Jesus, if you had been here, my brother would not  have died."

So what about those times that he seems to  have God-like powers?

I believe that Jesus retained the same powers that you and I have as Christians. That is, we are guided by the Holy Spirit and empowered by our faith. When the woman at the well said, "I have no husband," the Holy Spirit revealed to Jesus the full, painful, sordid story of her life with multiple husbands--something that he could not have known without it being revealed to him. When Jesus healed the man born blind, he was doing the very thing, according to him, that you and I could do if we had but a mustard seed of faith. And I can't recall an instance where Jesus was located somewhere other than where his physical body was, except possibly the time that Satan, of all people, took him from the desert to the temple, and then to a very high mountain (Matthew 4:5,8).

So. Back to the 12-year-old Jesus of Nazareth. (He didn't spend enough time in his birth city to become known as "Jesus of Bethlehem.") Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem WITHOUT TELLING  HIS PARENTS what he was going to do. His mother loved him deeply, and his earthly father protected him faithfully, so how could it be that he would not have known that his absence would give them great anxiety?

"Didn't you know that I had to be in my Father?" What a lame excuse. He has clearly not let his parents know this. There is no excuse for him not letting his parents know what he was planning to do--or perhaps, what he decided to do at the moment. Our Lord and Savior is behaving as a  Juvenile Delinquent.

But his mother's complaint shocked him back to reality. "Why have you treated us this way? Your father and I have been anxiously looking for  you!"

Jesus had made a mistake. Jesus did indeed "have to be in his Father," but the time for that to be fulfilled had not reached its completion. The present time called for him to be obedient to his parents, and to grow in stature and in wisdom. He immediately reformed his behavior, and continued from that time to be in subjection to his parents. "There is an appointed time for everything, and there is a time for every event under heaven" (Ecclesiastes 3:1).

Jesus learned this lesson well.  We find an echo of this lesson at John 2 verse 4: "What does their lack of wine have  to do with you and I? My time has not yet come."

So Yes, for a brief time, Jesus was a juvenile delinquent. Once confronted with reality, he became a reformed Juvenile delinquent.

My Lord and Savior, a reformed juvenile delinquent, is the Light of my life and Lord over all that I do. Amen. So be it.