What was happening in the temple when Jesus’ parents found Him?

This is a unique picture of Jesus, seated among Israel’s leading rabbis, politely listening to them, asking questions, and amazing them with His comprehension and discernment. Still a child in every sense, He was already the most amazing student they had ever had the privilege to teach. He had evidently kept these teachers fully engaged for three days, and when Joseph and Mary finally came upon the scene, Jesus’ attention was still so focused on the lesson that He had not yet even thought to go looking for them. Because He was still a child—the perfect child—it is only reasonable to assume that Jesus maintained the role of a respectful student.

We’re not to think Jesus was rebuking, challenging, even instructing those rabbis. In fact, Luke seems to include this brief vignette about Jesus’ childhood precisely to stress the full humanity of Christ—how He grew “in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men” (Luke 2:52). Again, Luke is saying that every aspect of Jesus’ development into full manhood (intellectually, physically, spiritually, and socially) was ordinary, not extraordinary. Even though He was God incarnate, with all the full attributes of God in His infinite being, Jesus fully submitted the use of those attributes (like His divine omniscience) to His Father’s will. Consequently, there were times when Jesus’ omniscience was put on display (Matthew 9:4; John 2:24). At other times, however, His knowledge was veiled by His humanity according to the Father’s purpose (Mark 13:32). In His incarnation, as Luke explained here, Jesus experienced the normal process of human growth, including intellectual development. All of that was part of the Father’s perfect plan for His Son.

According to Luke, Jesus was listening and asking questions, and what amazed these tutors was His grasp of the information they were giving Him as well as His answers (Luke 2:47). So the rabbis were obviously quizzing Him as they went, and they were astonished at both His attention span and His ability to perceive spiritual truth. The questions Jesus asked those rabbis were part of His learning process, not some backhanded way of showing up the rabbis. He was truly learning from them and processing what they taught Him. This experience surely provided our Lord’s first personal insight into their approach to Scripture and their religious system, which He would later denounce.