Luke 2:27

And he came in the Spirit into the temple: and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, that they might do concerning him after the custom of law, then he received him into his arms, and blessed God, and said,

The parents ... Luke's use of this word for Joseph and Mary here, and again in Luke 2:41, and Mary's reference to Joseph as "father" of Jesus raises no question whatever regarding the virgin birth. One grows weary of the sophistry, and that is all it is, that seizes upon such expressions as any manner of denial of the facts Luke had so dogmatically affirmed only a moment before. They were his "parents" legally; Joseph was his "father" legally; and a student of the New Testament must be out of his senses to suppose that Jesus was reared any other way than as the "supposed" child of Joseph (Luke 3:23), a fact Luke stated. Could it be imagined, even for a moment, that Mary and Joseph would have shared the glorious truth of Jesus' virgin birth with the nosey neighbors of unbelieving Nazareth? or with the secular hypocrites who ran the temple? NO! It must be supposed even further that Mary did not tell Jesus himself of the marvels that attended his birth, at least not the whole story until he reached sufficient age. The fact of her eventually sharing the full wonder of it all probably came when Jesus was about twelve years of age; and it was Jesus' full comprehension of what Mary had told him (probably recently) which may account for the incident of his hearing and asking questions of the religious doctors, and his first recorded reference to God as "my Father." And is not the inference which we have spelled out here exactly the reason why Luke recorded these references to "parents" and "father" as inclusive of Joseph? If any other course had been followed, the function of the blessed Mary would have been that of a child-worshiper, rather than that of a competent mother of our Lord. What Luke is saying here is that, despite the supernatural elements in the birth of Jesus, he was at once relegated by his legal parents to the ordinary status of any child, and that his infancy, youth, and immaturity were those of any normal human being. That this should have been so was inherent in the fact of the incarnation.

In this same connection, there inevitably came to the holy mother herself an acceptance of the normalcy of Jesus' life and person. Time eroded, to a certain extent, but never effaced, the blessed memories of Jesus' supernatural birth; and when Jesus dramatically claimed God as "my Father" (Luke 2:49), it was only natural that Joseph and Mary "understood not the saying which he spake unto them." All of the basic knowledge needed for the understanding of it, they already had, as Luke's history shows; but Joseph and Mary, lulled by the years of Jesus' normal and unspectacular development, found nothing in their knowledge of the child Jesus thus far that could enable their understanding of it. In all probability, the same state of affairs continued until the baptism of Jesus eighteen years later. The facts related here are of vast importance in refuting the wild and irresponsible tales that were fancied during the Dark Ages with reference to the child Jesus.

After the custom of the law ... See under Luke 2:21.