Jesus' family

While he yet talked to the people, behold, his mother and his brethren stood without, desiring to speak with him. Then one said unto him, Behold, thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to speak with thee. But he answered and said unto him that told him, Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? And he stretched forth his hand toward his disciples, and said, Behold my mother and my brethren! For whosoever shall do the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my brother, and sister, and mother.  – Matthew 12.46-50

We don’t get a lot of insight into Jesus and His family. We get a few brief glimpses, but not enough to tell us a whole lot. We know about His mom. We don’t see anything about His foster dad after the trip to Jerusalem. We know He had brothers and sisters. We suspect none of them accepted Him as the Messiah until after the resurrection.

We also know that His family thought He was mad and were worried about Him. They went to talk to Him to try to convince Him to back off and take it a little easy. He was going to get Himself into trouble. They were right of course; He was going to get Himself in trouble. These are not bad people. They were genuinely concerned for their son and their brother.

They came to Jesus. Someone, probably a disciple, intercepted them and told Jesus that His mother and brothers were there to talk to him. When Jesus was told that they were there and wanted to talk to Him He did something that must have been unexpected. He waved toward the disciples and said ‘these are my mother and my brothers. These are my family.’

What that means for us is that today we are part of Jesus’ family. His Father is our Father. We are brothers and sisters of Christ. We are the family of God.

What a precious position that puts us in. In fact, the Bible says that Jesus is our big brother. All of the cares and troubles of this world pale in comparison to the truth that through faith in Christ and we somehow share in His relationship with Father. It’s almost more than I can grasp. It is more than I can put into words.