The Bible highlights key moments from Jesus’ childhood but focuses mainly on His mission as the Messiah. God revealed what we need to know for faith and obedience—what’s not included serves His greater purpose.
The Bible, especially the gospels of Matthew and Luke, includes several important details about Jesus’ birth and childhood. For example, Matthew and Luke record Jesus’ birth. The book of Luke presents information about Jesus’ circumcision, purification, and the reactions of Simeon and Anna to seeing the infant Jesus (Luke 2:21-38). Luke also records an incident in which Mary and Joseph frantically looked for the twelve-year-old Jesus, only to find Him discussing the Law with Jewish religious leaders in the temple (Luke 2:41-50). Some Old Testament prophecies include details of Jesus’ birth, such as Him being born of a virgin (Isaiah 7:14) and being born in Bethlehem (Micah 5:2). Besides those few details, Scripture does not provide a full biography or continuous narrative of His early years. Rather than recording every stage of Jesus’ life, the Gospels focus primarily on His identity as the Messiah and His public ministry, which started when He was approximately thirty years old (Luke 3:23). What is revealed serves God’s purpose in helping us know and follow Christ. What is not revealed, God did not find important to communicate. Rather than speculating on what isn’t written, we are called to treasure and live out the truth that God has clearly given.
The four Gospels emphasize Jesus as the Messiah. The only material shared from the early life of Jesus was what was needed to help fulfill this purpose. The Gospels were not strict biographies but rather summaries of the earliest teachings about Jesus from His followers and those associated with them.
Later legendary accounts about the "lost years" of Jesus should be dismissed as unhistorical accounts. Jesus and His family likely returned to Nazareth when He was still a toddler, meaning the accounts from the Gnostic Gospel of Thomas and similar writings are at odds with the known historical details.
God's Word is not intended to reveal every detail, including those concerning Jesus’ early life. Deuteronomy 29:29 teaches, "The secret things belong to the LORD our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law." The Lord has chosen to reveal just some information about Christ's life for us today.
We are blessed to have four Gospels complete with some key parts of Christ's early life, as well as the crucial teaching from Jesus and the information concerning His death and resurrection.