<p>4:22 <i>And all bore him witness, and wondered at the words of grace which proceeded out of his mouth; and they said- </i>Because of the gracious words and manner of speaking of Jesus, therefore God so highly exalted Him (Ps. 45:2). The Father was <i>so </i>impressed with the words of His Son. Lk. 4:22 records how people were amazed at the gracious words He spoke, as in Jn. 7:46; there was something very unusual in His manner of speaking. Evidently there must have been something totally outstanding about His use of language. God highly exalted Him because He so loved righteousness and hated wickedness (Ps. 45:7), and yet also because of His manner of speaking (Ps. 45:2); so this <i>love </i>of righteousness and hatred of evil was what made His words so special. &nbsp;</p><p><i>Is this not Joseph's son?</i>- Mary had clearly not shared with others what had happened around the Lord's conception. She had perhaps come to see Him as Joseph's son by the time she rebuked Him at age 12 in the temple, when she refers to Joseph as His father. She became influenced in her view of the Lord by the view of others. And we can take a warning from this. Such was His humanity that He appeared to have just followed the profession of His supposed &lsquo;father&rsquo; on earth. In essence, the same is happening to Trinitarians. They just can't hack that Jesus, Son of God, perfect human being... was truly human, with a human brother, mother and relatives. And so they have stumbled off into various wrong theories and theologies about Jesus to try to rationalize and spiritually legitimise their lack of faith in Him as a human person.&nbsp;</p><p>One of the most surpassing wonders of the Lord&rsquo;s character was that He could live for 30 years in a small town in Galilee, never ever committing sin, and never ever omitting an act of righteousness... and yet when He stood up and basically proclaimed Himself to be Messiah, the people were scandalized. They were shocked that this carpenter&rsquo;s son should think He was anything much more than them. Yet whenever we try to be a bit more righteous than our fellows, it&rsquo;s always noticed and held against us. Yet the Lord Jesus was both perfect, and also in favour with men. He came over as the ordinary guy, and yet He was perfect, and the light of this world. In this there is a matchless example for us. This wondrous feature of the Lord&rsquo;s achievement in His own character is reflected by the way His own brothers, who knew Him better than any, perceived Him to be just an ordinary person. When He started implying that He was the Son of God, they thought He&rsquo;d gone crazy. When He declared Himself as Messiah, the people who had grown up with Him were scandalized. He was <i>so</i> human that even though He never sinned, the people who intimately knew Him for 30 years thought that He was truly one of them. In our making the word flesh, we tend to irritate people by our apparent righteousness, or turn them away from us by our hypocrisy. But the Lord truly made the word flesh, to the extent that the very dregs of society could relate to Him as one of them. There is a wonder in this that requires sustained meditation.</p>