God’s Word shows us that even at the young age of twelve, Jesus was very much aware of following His Father’s agenda. In Luke 2:49 in response to His parent’s frantic search for Him, which finally ended when they found Him in the temple, He asked them: “Why did you seek Me? Did you not know that I must be about My father’s business?” From an early age, Jesus was following His Father’s agenda, and the Father’s will always came first.
This commitment guided His entire life. Years later, when crowds of people pressed around Jesus and the disciples so that they “were not even able to eat,” the family of Jesus heard about this and they “went to take charge of Him” (Mark 3:20-21). But once again Jesus made it clear that His Father’s will and work came first. His obedience to the Father’s will was not something that was mechanical or automatic for Jesus. It was vitally linked with Jesus’s continuing fellowship with the Father, a relationship marked by the Son’s active dependence on the Father, as well as His continued learning.
Going back to Hebrews 5 of Jesus’s prayer life in the days of His flesh, there is an extraordinary statement. After being told how the Son prayed constantly and passionately and was heard because of His reverent submission, we read this in Hebrews 5:8: “Though He was a son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered.” Even the Son of God learned obedience and He did so by suffering. This passage clearly emphasizes the humanity of Jesus with the phrase “in the days of His flesh”. This gives us great encouragement as we pray. Then it points to the deity of Jesus as the “Son.” Yet it emphasizes something Jesus experienced that all human beings also share, and that is suffering.
Even though the Father’s answer to Jesus’s prayers involved hardship, Jesus never quit praying or obeying. It was in His afflictions that He learned obedience in the sense of personally and practically taking hold of every part of obedience in every situation that awaited Him. Jesus’s suffering was real, but through prayer, He knew its purpose in the will of God was to provide salvation for mankind. His example is also the pattern for us, as we learn and practice obedience in the most difficult things that God brings us as part of His agenda. Obedience is about learning. As we pray, we can know and expect God to teach and transform us in order to conform us to His will, and the suffering He purposes for us will be a key ingredient in this.