be born, to be brought up, and to acquire more and more knowledge so
as to become intelligent and wise. Therefore in his human manifestation
he was an infant like any infant, a child like any child, and so on with
just one difference: he completed the process more quickly, more fully,
and more perfectly than the rest of us do.
This statement in Luke shows that he followed the divine design in
his progress: “The child Jesus grew and became strong in spirit, and he
advanced in wisdom, age, and grace with God and with humankind”
(Luke 2 : 40 , 52 ). Other statements about the Lord in the same Gospel
make it clear that he grew up more quickly, more fully, and more per-
fectly than the rest of us; for example, when he was “a child of twelve, he
sat and taught in the Temple in the midst of the scholars, and all who
heard him were astounded at his insightful answers” (Luke 2 : 46 – 47 ).
Likewise later on; see Luke 4 : 16 – 22 , 32.
The Lord’s life followed this path because the divine design is for
people to prepare themselves to accept God; and as they prepare them-
selves, God enters them as if he were coming into his own dwelling and
his own home. The preparation entails developing a concept of God
and of the spiritual things related to the church—that is, developing
intelligence and wisdom.
It is a law of the divine design that the closer and closer we come to
God, which is something we have to do as if we were completely on our
own, the closer and closer God comes to us. When we meet, God forms
a partnership with us. The Lord followed this design even to the point of
union with his Father, as we will show later on [§§ 97 – 99 , 105 – 106 ].
People who do not know that the divine omnipotence follows and 90
works according to the divine design are capable of hatching many con-
cepts from their own imaginations that contradict and oppose sound rea-
son. For example, they might wonder why God did not instantly take on a
human manifestation without going through life stages. They might won-
der why he did not create or assemble a body for himself from substances
from all four directions of the world. If he had, he could have presented
himself as a human God before the Jewish people and in fact before the
entire world. Or if he had especially wanted to go through the birth
process, why did he not pour his whole divinity into that embryo, or else
into himself as a baby? Or right after he was born why did he not expand
himself to the size of an adult and immediately start speaking divine wis-
dom? People who think of divine omnipotence without thinking of the
§90 the lord the redeemer & redemption 125