Necessary will (had)
“Why is it that you were looking for me? Did you not know that I had to be in My Father’s house?” Luke 2:49
Necessary will (had) – But this is so curious? The words “necessary will” aren’t in the English verse at all. So, why are we looking for them here? Be patient. There is something going on in this verse that is quite unusual, almost as unusual as the story that the verse describes.
This is the only story we have about Jesus as a child. We know the account. Jesus remains in the temple; discussing matters with the priests after his parents leave Jerusalem. Panicked when they discover that their twelve-year-old son is missing, they return to Jerusalem and find him in deep theological debate. Understandably upset, they reprimand him for his action. But he replies with this statement. And in the Greek is the word dei, a word that means, “need” or “necessity” or “inevitability”. We might translate this: “I must, by the very nature of things, be”. Dei at the end of this phrase indicates that Jesus already understood that the Father’s will was his will due to the necessary character of the way things are. It was no accident. His relationship with God was Son to Father by deliberate design, built into the necessity of life. He had to follow His Father’s will. It was who he was.
What is curious about this word is that the idea of necessity found here is a combination of both Greek and Hebrew thought. The Greek word dei summarizes the idea that there is a divine logic behind the universe, that things are not just random accidents. But the Greeks viewed this as an impersonal, neutral divinity much like the concept of a higher principle or law. Centuries later our culture would identify this concept as the Law of Reason. Luke uses the word because it points in the direction of the divine. But that is only half the story.
The Hebrew concept that is combined with this word still points toward a divine design but the divine design is the deliberate direction of a personal God. In this sense, it is God’s personal proclamation that defines the direction of the universe. And in this verse, Jesus, the twelve-year-old boy, says in effect that his very life is directly connected to the design of the personal God. Jesus views everything about himself as defined by this direct relationship. He is who he is because it is God’s will that he is.
This verse gives translators fits. How do you cram all this information into a few translated words? But now that you know something about just one of those words, you can ask yourself if your answer is like his. Can you say, “My choices in life are the direct result of God’s design for me”? Are you living God’s necessity for you?
