The
child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom; and the favor of God was upon
him. (Luke 2:40 | NRSV)
Commenting on the Christological
implications of Luke 2:40, Gerald F. Hawthorne noted the following:
Crammed
into this final phrase, “by being filled with wisdom,” are several large ideas
that are worth unpacking and spreading out to that they may easily be seen:
1.
At its center is a participle in the present tense, pleroumenon, a
progressive tense in Greek, which describes a steady, continuous, uninterrupted
action. Jesus was becoming strong (intellectually) by being ever more and
more filled.
2.
Further, the participle pleroumenon, is in the passive voice—Jesus was
being filled by someone. That is to say, someone other than Jesus
himself was doing the filling. But who? Luke does not say in just so many words
who this agent was. One may infer, however, both from what Luke had to say
earlier about the agent at Jesus’ birth (1:35), and from what he will say later
on about the driving force in Jesus’ ministry (4:1), that this unnamed agent
was none other than the Holy Spirit. Jesus, therefore, was growing strong (in
mind) because the Holy Spirit was ever more and more filling him.
3.
Finally, that with which Jesus was being filled was sophia, “wisdom.” In
choosing this important word, Luke may have intended to say: (a) that the
growth of Jesus’ mind was to be such that not only would he become a highly
intelligent person, but a person filled with a knowledge of, a love for, and a
commitment to the ways of God—the essence of wisdom (cf. 1 Kings 4:29; 2 Chron.
1:10; Prov. 1:2, 7); (b) that perhaps Jesus was to be the Messiah, for the
Messianic hope was bound up in just such a person as this, a person endowed
with wisdom by the Spirit of God (cf. Isa. 11:2; Pss. Sol. 17:37; 1 En. 49:3);
and (c) that readers must not be surprised when they come across the story of
Jesus sitting, while still a young boy, among the learned teachers of Israel
asking them questions and intelligently answering theirs (cf. Luke 2:47)—after
all, he was constantly being filled with wisdom throughout these very early
years of his life. (Gerald F. Hawthorne, The Presence and the Power: The
Significance of the Holy Spirit in the Life and Ministry of Jesus [Dallas:
Word Publishing, 1991], 99-100, italics in original)
