The Intervention of Jesus’ Family

Take Every Passage to Prayer - Volume 2, The Gospels
^{Monday July 08, 2024}

Matthew 12:46-50, Mark 3:20-21,31-35, Luke 8:19-21

Father, please help me to love my “brothers and sisters in Christ” as if they were of my biological family. I will be spending eternity with my spiritual family. Each brother and sister deserve the totality of my love for them today. Please help me to love them incredibly. Amen.

Father, I can imagine that somebody from the crowd went back to Jesus’ family and said something like this:

“There’s something wrong with your son and brother. He’s raising up a riot, all angry with the Pharisees, and saying all kinds of mean things to them. You should probably go there and get him to shut up.”

His family, including Mary and Jesus’ brothers , quickly traveled to the place where Jesus was talking to the crowd. They sent word through the crowd to Jesus that they wanted to talk to Him. What did they want to talk about?

1. They may have wanted to warn Jesus that He was endangering not only Himself but also His disciples and the team with Him.
2. They may have acted upon a long-standing grudge against Jesus, that He was always the “special child”. This was His brother’s opportunity to cut Jesus down to size by making Him seem insane.
3. They may have wanted to calm Jesus down because He was embarrassing the family.
4. They may have wanted Jesus to stop alienating the Pharisees. If the Pharisees become enemies of the family, the entire family will suffer.

Father, as I reflect upon this, I think His family’s intent was all four of these things but with special emphasis on the last two. They knew Jesus wasn’t insane, but they described Him as such to try to save face. If they can get the Pharisees to conclude Jesus’ is mentally ill, the Pharisees won’t punish the family, or the family’s carpentry business, for His behavior.

In Mark 10:28-30, Jesus said that anybody who leaves his home, brothers, sisters, mother, father, children, or fields for Jesus, and the gospel, will receive a hundred times as much: homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, children, and fields in this life and in the life to come. In other words, whatever we give up for Jesus, we will receive a bounty of the same in return.

It is in this context that Jesus rejects His mother and brothers who have come to see Him. Jesus is faithful to put into practice that which He preaches others to do. He sets the example, even for the parables and teachings that come from His lips. Jesus essentially states that He has a new family – the disciples, who are now His brothers, and the women who service His ministry, who are essentially His sisters.

An unknown woman from the crowd shouted, “Blessed is the mother who gave You birth and nursed You.” There is something clearly wrong about her well-intended comment. If Jesus had said, “Yes, that is true”, church doctrine would have been dramatically changed throughout the ages. Preference would have been given to the bloodline of Jesus. In fact, Jesus’ own brothers and sisters may have been deified. Today, we might consider royalty anyone who can trace their roots back to Joseph and Mary. There certainly would be genealogical records dating back 2,000 years because of the nature of human pride and entitlement. Christianity would look eerily similar to the Nazi belief in the superiority of the Aryan race. Character would not matter near as much as what family you are from. Those who were from Jesus’ bloodline wouldn’t need the gospel. They would be saved merely by being biologically related to Jesus.

It is with thanks that I can report that Jesus said something different:

“Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it (NIV).”

Thanks to this one response from Jesus, Christianity will be defined by a person’s relationship with Christ and the extent that they keep His commands. Therefore, anyone from any race, from any nation, and from any family is invited to be blessed as a member of Jesus’ family. If the woman who made this statement accepted Jesus Christ as her Savior, she would be equally as blessed as Jesus’ mother Mary, a believer in Jesus herself.
Father, You give us an earthly family. It is our responsibility to love them throughout the course of our lives. However, in the life to come, as I understand Your Word, we will no longer have biological relationships. My earthly father, who knew the Lord, will be a brother in Christ, just like my believing friend on earth. My earthly sister, a believer, will be a sister in Christ, just like my believing wife will be to me in heaven. There will not be husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, or sons and daughters. We will all be Your children, brothers, and sisters in the same family with the same Father.

With this in mind, I don’t believe Jesus’ statement is as harsh as it may seem at first. I believe Jesus loves His mother and brothers deeply. If He didn’t, He would be breaking His own command to love our neighbors as ourselves. He is simply making the statement that His mother and brothers, once they accept Him as their Savior, if they haven’t already, will belong to a new family, a family of believers from every tribe and nation.

Therefore, His earthly family is not as important as His eternal family. His earthly mother and brothers, and certainly His earthly father and sisters, are welcome to be a part of His eternal family. In summary, anyone who does Your will, and obeys Your commands, is a member of Jesus’ family. Amen.