Have you ever considered how Jesus came to know Scripture?

Anyone who reads the Gospels can see that Jesus clearly knew the Hebrew Bible well. He quotes Scripture over and over, and does so with the authority and freshness of someone who hasn’t only memorized God’s words but truly knows God’s heart. Jesus has profound insight into what the words of God mean, and so he is able to put Scripture to use in everyday life. He does not simply recite sentences he put to memory, but he is able to apply Scripture in various situations as he encounters them.

You might think, Well, of course Jesus knew Scripture! Jesus is God! He didn’t need to learn it, or work at it, like we do. But that suspicion betrays a significant misunderstanding in what it means for Jesus to be fully God and fully man in one person.

So, we have a little Christology to do here first. Jesus, as we encounter him in the Gospels — in human flesh and blood, walking this earth with human feet, speaking with a human tongue and mouth — this Jesus quotes and makes use of what Scriptures he has come to know with his human mind. The human Christ didn’t know Scripture simply because he was God. As genuinely human, he had to learn it. What he knew, and quoted, is what he had come to learn. Luke 2 tells us that “the [Christ] child grew and became strong, filled with wisdom,” and then a few verses later: “Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature” (Luke 2:40, 52). Born to us as human, Jesus grew not only in his human body but in his human mind.

Jesus is the universe’s unique two-natured person. He is fully God and fully man. Which means he has not only a human body but also a “reasoning soul,” that is, human emotions and a human will, and a human mind.

So, that’s our little Christology lesson. Now, in these few minutes together, let’s look at how Jesus knew Scripture so well.

Jesus’s Relationship with Scripture

In an earlier session this afternoon, we looked at Jesus’s habits of retreating and reentering, of withdrawing from society to commune with his Father and then returning to bless and teach and show compassion to others.

And the major piece we left out there, and now turn to in this session, is Jesus’s relationship with Scripture. It’s a remarkable theme to track in the Gospels. You might think, “Well, he’s God, so he just speaks, and whatever he says is God’s word” — which is true — “so he doesn’t really need to quote previous Scripture.” And then you observe how often, how strikingly often, Jesus says, over and over again, “It is written . . . It is written . . . It is written . . .” Scripture is central and pervasive in his ministry and teaching.

So, I’d like to do two things. First, let’s briefly see it in action and get a taste of the place of Scripture “in the days of his flesh” while among us (Hebrews 5:7). Then let’s address how Jesus knew the word so well. Very practically, how did Scripture come to have such a place in his life and ministry? And I hope that here, as we look at Jesus, you might catch a vision and find encouragement for how Scripture could come to have such a place in your own soul and ministry.

‘It Is Written’

First, then, the taste. Throughout the Gospels, we see in Jesus the evidence of a man utterly captivated by what is written in the text of Scripture.

At the outset of his public ministry, Jesus, led by the Spirit, retreats to the wilderness, and there, in the culminating temptations before the devil himself, he leans, not just once, but three times, on what is written (Matthew 4:4, 6–7, 10; Luke 4:4, 8, 10).

Then, returning from the wilderness to his hometown of Nazareth, Jesus stands up to read, takes the scroll of Isaiah, reads from 61:1–2, and announces, “Today this Scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (Luke 4:21). He identifies John the Baptist as “he of whom it is written” (Matthew 11:10; Luke 7:27). He rebukes the proud by quoting Scripture (Mark 7:6; Luke 20:17). And when he clears the temple of money-changers, he does so on the grounds of what is written in Isaiah 56:7 (Matthew 21:13; Mark 11:17; Luke 19:46).

At every step on the way to Calvary, he knows that everything will happen, he says, “as it is written” (see especially the Gospel of John, 6:31, 45; 8:17; 10:34; 12:14, 16; 15:25). In Mark 14:21, he says, “The Son of Man goes as it is written of him.” Luke 18:31: “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and everything that is written about the Son of Man by the prophets will be accomplished.”

His life and ministry turn on the word of God written in Scripture.

How Did Jesus Know the Word?

So, then, how does Jesus know the word so well? If Jesus isn’t simply drawing upon his divinity to quote texts and put to use concepts his human mind had never learned and considered, then how is it that Jesus knows Scripture so well?

The inspiration for this session came from reading Sinclair Ferguson’s chapter on “The Spirit of Christ” (in his book The Holy Spirit). There he addresses our question:

Jesus’s intimate acquaintance with Scripture did not come [magically from heaven] during the period of his public ministry; it was grounded no doubt on his early education, but nourished by long years of personal meditation. Later, in his public ministry, it becomes evident that he was intimately familiar with its contents . . . and also possessed in his human nature a knowledge of God by the Spirit which lent freshness, authority, and a sense of reality to his teaching. (44)

That’s what I want for you wherever God leads you: freshness, authority, and a sense of reality to your teaching.

Now, when Ferguson speaks here about Jesus’s “public ministry,” he implies an important relationship between public and private life: what Jesus says publicly in his three years of ministry reveals what he has learned and come to know in his three decades in private — and what he continues to feed and nurture in secret communion with his Father.

So, there are two parts here to Jesus’s private life, outside his public ministry. First, “his early education.” Before he could even speak, his mother and Joseph and others in Bethlehem, Egypt, and Nazareth would speak to him. Surely Mary quoted Scripture and sang Scripture to her son as he grew. This foundation, this “grounding,” of his early education, was important. Yet Ferguson rightly puts emphasis on the second and longer phase of Jesus’s private life.

He says that “Jesus’s intimate acquaintance with Scripture . . . [was] nourished by long years of personal meditation.” This is the secret to how Jesus knew Scripture so well: long years of personal meditation. Which is what I want to challenge you to this afternoon.

Lost Art of Meditation

What is meditation? It’s important to ask because we don’t do this very well today. This is countercultural. Biblical meditation is a lost art today. We’re not talking Eastern meditation, where you try to empty your mind and repeat a mantra, but biblical meditation, where you fill your mind with God’s words, and his truth, and slow down and seek to more fully understand the meaning of God’s words and feel their significance in your soul.

Biblical meditation pauses and ponders God’s words without hurry. It chews on the truth communicated by the words of God. It doesn’t just keep on reading at the breakneck speed at which our pixelated screens are teaching us to read (or better, skim). Meditation pauses and slows down and seeks to deeply ponder the truth of God’s word, and sense its weight upon the heart. That’s the kind of meditation that nourished “Jesus’s intimate acquaintance with Scripture.”

In other words, Jesus, like us, learned Scripture. He worked at it. Jesus knew Scripture so well, and quoted it so frequently, and spoke with such freshness and authority and a sense of reality because of his “long years of personal meditation.” His public ministry and teaching, with his seemingly effortless familiarity with God’s word, revealed years of personal, private enjoyment of God’s word.

Jesus knew Scripture so well not just because he was God, but because he dedicated his human mind and heart to daily, personal meditation on the word of God — and this even without having his own personal material copy of the Bible, like we do today. He had to remember and rehearse what he had been read and sung and taught. And so he did, to great effect.

Following Jesus into Scripture

I close with a threefold exhortation.

One, become the kind of person now, in God’s word, in private, that you hope to be someday in public ministry. Over time, who you have become in secret over your Bible will be revealed in public ministry.

Two, learn the power of memorizing God’s words. When you come across particular verses, or even phrases, or longer sections that feed and focus your soul in Christ-honoring ways, put them to memory. Try to build them into the folds of your brain, to put to use in sustaining your own soul and the souls of others.

And finally, three, go deeper still — deeper than mere reading, deeper even than mere memory. Make memory serve meditation. Memorize to meditate, and slow down to meditate as you memorize. And memorize, as a side effect, because you meditated. Set a course now for nourishing your “intimate acquaintance with Scripture” with long years of personal meditation, like Jesus, and with the help he purchased for you in the power of his Spirit.

What thoughts raced through the angels’ minds as they beheld their Creator stoop down to wash human feet? How much those burning seraphim must have wondered. They themselves blushed to expose such creatureliness before their King — worshiping the Son around the throne with feet wing-covered (Isaiah 6:2). What did they think now to watch the Holy One take water and clean those calloused, sweaty, unbeautiful toes?

Did they sing with the psalmist, “What is man that you are mindful of him, and the son of man that you care for him?” (Psalm 8:4). Did they sympathize with Peter’s astonished “Lord, do you wash my feet?” Did they see something right in Peter’s insistent “You shall never wash my feet” (John 13:6, 8)?

From heaven’s view, this moment must have outstripped Jesus’s many signs and wonders thus far. The angels had stood by when the Son created the world, when “the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy” (Job 38:7). What was multiplying bread compared to speaking the land and wheat into existence? The calming of a storm to the very creation of seas and wind and waves with a mere word? They already knew their God had power to raise the dead; they knew him as the God of all life.

But this sight was different. The King of kings played the part of slave of slaves. Had their eyes seen anything like it since he took on human flesh? Armies of angels watched their Captain — the eternal God from the Father’s right hand — bend before his creatures to wash their feet, hours before those feet fled in fear. Here bowed an act beyond omnipotence, an act Matthew Henry named a “miracle in humility.” Former wonders proved he was God; this proved what kind of God he was.

Psychology of Service

Oh, to see this act as angels did. Or better, to see this act as God does. Thankfully, the Holy Spirit moved John’s pen to capture it. Contained within his account are two utterly profound, God-revealed details that I too often have read past.

For years, this is how I (and perhaps you) recalled the spectacle:

Jesus . . . rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. (John 13:3–5)

We remember merely the external act. Jesus washed feet, and so should we. But how much better is the Bible’s telling than our remembering. Two discreet phrases get omitted:

During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper . . . and began to wash his disciples’ feet. (John 13:2–5)

The Holy Spirit, who searches even the mind of God (1 Corinthians 2:10), gives John insight into the very thoughts of Christ just before he bent low to serve. We get an open window into Jesus’s meditations of soul. These cannot be irrelevant details. John will not allow Jesus’s hands to wash until we know what sceptered him for service. The Spirit gifts us with the psychology of Jesus’s heavenly servanthood as he foreshadowed the coming cross.

So let us think after his two thoughts before he rose from dinner. And may what we see animate a lifetime of lowly service.

1. I am rich in God.

Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands . . . rose from supper . . . and began to wash the disciple’s feet. (John 13:3–5)

That the Father had placed “all things” into Christ’s hands was no new thought for him. He felt the fullness from the beginning of his ministry: “The Father loves the Son and has given all things into his hand” (John 3:35).

Christ’s service, here and from the beginning, was not an impoverished service. He did not consider that he had nothing in his hands, or had nothing better to fill them with than human feet. He never needed from his disciples; thus, he could give richly to his disciples. A rich King condescended.

By the Spirit, John makes known that Jesus again deliberates upon all that God had given him. He felt the treasures over in his mind and heart. What golden coins did he feel?

He felt the work, so far accomplished, that the Father gave him to do (John 17:4) — the teachings, the perfect acts of righteousness, the mighty works that a world full of books could not contain (John 21:25) — with the chief jewel now before him. Perhaps he felt the life surging in himself or pondered his authority over all flesh (John 5:25–27; 17:2). No doubt he felt the diamonds and rubies of the glory given him and the glory to be his again, now to be exalted as the God-man, in the Father’s presence (John 17:5). But most often in John, Jesus speaks of the Father having given him a people (John 6:35–40; 10:28–29; 17:1–3, 6–9, 11–15, 22–25).

That night he prays “for those whom you have given me” (John 17:9):

I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. (John 17:11–12)

“Jesus went low to his knees to wash his Bride’s feet — and down into the depths to raise her to himself.”

The Father had given him a people. Later that evening, he steps in front of them at his arrest to fulfill his promise: “Of those whom you gave me I have lost not one” (John 18:9). Death, Satan’s accusations, the Father’s just wrath pursued them. He was no hired hand — he laid down his life for his sheep. He had to, if they would be saved. He went low to his knees to wash his Bride’s feet — and down into the depths to raise her to himself and to the Father in heaven. “Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end” (John 13:1).

2. I am going home to my Father.

Jesus, knowing that . . . he had come from God and was going back to God . . . began to wash the disciples’ feet. (John 13:3, 5)

We are not from the Father in the same way Jesus was. He is the Son, fully God, eternally existent “in the beginning” with God, in the beginning as God (John 1:1–2). The Father sent the Son from eternity past (John 7:29). The Son took on flesh and tabernacled among us (John 1:14); God entered his own story.

Jesus knew this. He incensed the Jews by claiming that before Abraham existed, he was (John 8:58). He would pray that evening, “Father, glorify me in your own presence with the glory that I had with you before the world existed” (John 17:5). Jesus, in whom the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, came from the Father into the world to save his people from their sins.

During dinner, Jesus’s thoughts fed upon his future with his Father. A few verses earlier, John summarizes the whole brutal cross with a most beautiful phrase: “Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father” (John 13:1). Jesus viewed his coming death, even the most horrific, shameful death, as the ferry to bring him home to his Father.

The joy outweighed the anguish: for the joy set before him he endured the cross, despising the shame. For him (and for all his people), death does not submerge into the abyss; it carries the soul to the God it calls “Father.” Beyond the feet-washing and beyond the cross and beyond even his people and glory on the other side, Jesus reflected upon the one to whom he went: the Abba his soul loved.

No Service Too Low

The Master’s foot-washing foretold of his cleansing cross-work. And with it, he left us an example.

I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. (John 13:15–17)

Christ, our great Master and filth-washer, has left us an example — not just in his actions, but in his considerations. In the psychology of the God-man’s service, he shows us that we too must serve from knowing our fullness and our future in him.

“Born of God, our destiny is to be with God, forever. What service is too low when you consider a future so high?”

We often do not serve because we think ourselves wanting. To serve others, we believe, increases our deficits. Yet consider that in Christ, all things are yours. Remove your outer robe, and you have not removed God’s favor. Tie the servant’s towel around your waist, and you have not forfeited your room in your Father’s house. Take in your hands the mud-stained, smelly, unlovely feet of fellow saints and sinners, and you shall still take hold of your place next to the Son to reign. What can separate us from the love of Christ? While you and I are enveloped in such blessing — the least of which is experienced now — whose feet can we not wash?

Or consider that, like Christ, you sail upon a vessel heading to the Father. Jesus made it so. He went to Calvary to prepare a place for us in his Father’s house (John 14:2–3). Peter writes of the cross, “Christ also suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18). Born of God, our destiny is to be with God, forever. What service is too low when you consider a future so high?

You are rich in God now, and richer still as you head to God, your full inheritance. Whom can we not serve along the road to such a glory? The angels saw the Son wash human feet: may they see such beautiful service replicated by his people throughout this selfish world. May they see our satisfaction in God performed in our service of others.

When I was a young mother with an overflowing stroller, accustomed to strangers counting my children aloud, I could not have been more aware that this particular kind of fruitfulness was not generally admired in the world. I received vast amounts of godly encouragement from my husband, from the word, and from the church — but I was also very clear on why I needed that kind of encouragement.

Believing that what God says about children is true is not the same as living like it is true. As it turns out, this tremendous blessing of children that God sent into my life was the ground on which I learned the glorious truth that baskets full of fruit are heavy. Glorious, bountiful, fruitful, faithful living does not feel easy, carefree, relaxing, simple, or streamlined. The life of faithful mothering, it turns out, must actually be full of faith.

Dragon-Slaying Diaper-Changing

Mothers need to believe that the work we are doing is important, that it honors God, that it matters eternally that we do it well. And we need to remember these things when we are physically exhausted, emotionally frazzled, and spiritually thin. It can be hard to believe — in the middle of a wild day of toddler life in your little home — that what you are doing is kingdom-building, dragon-slaying, gospel-proclaiming, glorious work.

“It can be hard to believe that what you are doing is kingdom-building, dragon-slaying, gospel-proclaiming, glorious work.”

The flesh wants to see the Cheerios and the sippy cups and the sticky floors, and it wants to wallow in feelings of not being seen or understood. The flesh wants to believe that what can be seen easily by tired eyes is the extent of the matter. This is all. You, the bedraggled mother of all these dirty children, are wasting your life. You settled. You have been deceived, and now you are being shown to have been a fool with no ambition.

But the flesh, like always, is not on our side. It must be overcome by faith. It must not be listened to, put in an authoritative position, or believed.

Games We Play with Kids

I am sure that mothers throughout all of history have struggled with being discouraged, but our time is actually unique in the momentum that goes against the basic, faithful fruitfulness of Christian marriage. There were other eras when fruitfulness and fertility were still admired by the world. The flesh would not have needed to stand up to so much in that context, and the devil would have found other ways to keep women off task. But in this time, in our era, we are surrounded by a world that thinks it is inventing itself.

A young Christian couple can get married today and announce, without pushback, what their goals and dreams are. Essentially, this is our board game of life, and these are the rules we are playing with. Our goals are financial — we will view owning our own home as a reward. We want to plant for a life of leisure and harvest the blessing of relaxing vacations. In this world we think we are making, children would not be a blessing. They would not be a reward. They will not be our inheritance. We’ll probably choose a dog at some point. Success will be measured by our desires, and we will have done well when we have pleased ourselves.

But for Christians, we cannot imagine that we’re actually building this world, or the rules. We are not planning out the purpose of our own life — God the Creator has done that, and he has given us his word. This is the truth about the real world, about what actually matters, about what we must value and pursue and believe and live for. God has already decided these things, and they are not up in the air for us to decide.

What God Calls Children

If you look to Scripture to tell you what to think about children, you will find a shocking contrast to the worldly thoughts that all of us have been marinating in.

Even those of us who have always been pro-life have nonetheless taken on some thinking that children are objectively an interruption, a burden, a difficulty — unless you decided you wanted one like the world wants a pet. We have still thought the barefoot pregnant woman in the kitchen is a little lowbrow. We have allowed the world to shape our understanding on the most fundamental things of life.

What we need more than anything is to marinate more deeply in the truth of God’s word, to let those unbelieving thoughts be driven out by reality. Because what God says is reality, and we cannot and should not want to opt out of it. God says,

Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, and the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one’s youth. Blessed is that man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate. (Psalm 127:3–5)

The modern Christian couple will shy away from almost everything in this passage. I don’t want that reward, thanks. I don’t care to be fighting with anyone, so this military language does not appeal. I’d prefer to not have a quiver of any kind really, much less one that is full of life. I don’t think that sounds like a blessing I want . . .

If you feel yourself shying away from the language that Scripture uses about children, know that what you are shying away from is blessing — God’s blessing. There is nothing in the world so heavy, so glorious, so desirable as God’s blessings.

Another Unexpected Blessing

Those first four children of mine that used to shock the world are now all taller than I am, all teenagers. It is easy for me to see the glory now. Proverbs 17:6 says that children’s children are the crown of the aged — and we are far enough into this parenting life to know that crowns are made out of things that take great effort. Gold that must be mined and refined in fire, precious stones that are found deep in the earth and cut and polished and worked until they can be set. Glory is heavy, like gold — but also like gold, it is real and precious.

“What God says about the world is reality, and what the world says about him is nothing but a mist.”

God has blessed us with a surprise pregnancy this year, a baby number eight — and while being pregnant at 41 was never one of my plans or ideas, I am deeply grateful. I know from the inside out that what God says about children is true and real. And when people are inclined to look at me with my pregnant belly like I am the dot on a wild exclamation point, I agree with them. This exclamation point is needed, because it follows after a testimony that God is faithful. He is merciful. He is doing great things for us.

Our God is the living God, the one who spoke all of reality into existence. What he says about the world is reality, and what the world says about him is nothing but a mist.