Did Jesus Perform Miracles before His Baptism?

Transcript of the video above, edited for readability.

There is a gospel called the Gospel of the Infancy. Now, it's an apocryphal gospel, by which I mean it's very late. It's very fictitious. It's very offensive. Some people, emphasizing the deity of Jesus, just can't imagine that he had to learn anything. And in this gospel, the Infancy, as Mary has just brought Jesus forth and is wrapping him in swaddling clothes, he looks up at her and says something on the order of. "I am the Son of God. Handle me carefully," or something like that. Well, obviously, that's offensive to us. The idea that Jesus, the newborn babe, just few minutes old, looks at his mother and speaks. Why? Because he had to learn to talk. He had to learn to walk. He had to learn all of those things that a little baby has to learn.

It goes on to tell about all sorts of silly little miracles that supposedly Boy Jesus did. Now again, I disbelieve, I reject high-handedly, all of these. They're false. They're silly. Some of them are just silly. Everywhere he would step, a little flower would grow up behind his foot. When they threw his swaddling clothes in the fire, they didn't burn, when they dropped them in the fire. So then they discovered if you rubbed, whatever ailed, you would be healed if you rubbed it with the swaddling clothes. One time he's sitting out in the yard playing with some of his friends, and they're making little animals, molding them out with their hands out of mud and clay. And Jesus molds a little clay pigeon, and then he breathes into it and the thing flies off and all of his friends go, "Ooh, that's good." Some of them are a little more... Frankly, some of them are downright offensive. He gets mad at a playmate and turns him into a goat and things like this.

But my point is, come back to Luke 4. If this is the way Jesus grew up, then when he turns out to be a rabbi and comes back to the synagogue, what are people going to say? They're going to say, "I knew this kid was different ever since he breathed on that little clay mud pigeon and it flew off. I knew this." That's not what they say at all. What they say is, "What's going on here? This is Joseph's son," which is to say, "This is the boy who grew up here in town. We know this boy." So the point is, he was normal. Now, there were ways in which he was abnormal. He never did any miracles. But I'll bet you every time Mary came out and said, "You know, Jesus, it's time to clean up your toys and come in," I'll bet he did an absolutely marvelous mind-boggling thing. He cleaned up his toys and came in.

Now, he was entirely obedient. He had never disappointed his mother or his father. He had a mind that was unfettered by sin and therefore was remarkably precocious as evidenced by the experience with the doctors there in Luke chapter 2 at the age of 12, that is when Jesus was 12. I think you got to understand, number one, that he had a mind undamaged by sin. So he would've been, as I say, just a remarkable intelligence. Number two, you have to think that his mother would've told him the stories, would've sat him on her knee and told him about his birth and about the angels and about the prophecies and so on. Thirdly, you got to think that Jesus had an absolutely rapacious hunger for the scriptures. We know that. He appeals to them so often. And so he would've read the scriptures. He would've read them without the encumbrance of rabbinical misinterpretation, and so on.

So I think probably rather young, Jesus began to realize this. And I think it's it absolutely mind-boggling to realize that having discovered that, then he just had to wait. I think that's going on at the temple. When he stays behind in the temple, he thinks, "I'm an adult now. Maybe this is the time." But as it turns out, it's not the Father's time. He goes back. He waits for another 18 to 20 years, till finally, as we'll talk about, rather innocently, he goes on to be baptized and the Spirit comes upon him and he's thrust into his ministry. So I tell that just to say this: he was a normal boy.

Doug Bookman

Shepherds Theological Seminary

Updated Jun 29, 2023

https://content.swncdn.com/jesusorg/mp3/did-jesus-do-miracles-before-his-baptism.mp3