That is a very singular form of expression which our Lord employs.
'Whosoever shall do the will of God, the same is My brother, and
sister, and mother.' We should have expected, seeing that He was
speaking about three different relationships, that He would have used
the plural verb, and said, 'The same are My brother, and sister, and
mother.' And I do not think that it is pedantic grammatical accuracy
to point out this remarkable form of speech, and even to venture to
draw a conclusion from it--viz., that what our Lord meant was, not
that if there were three people, of different sexes, and of different
ages, all doing the will of God, one of these sweet names of
relationship would apply to A, another to B, and the other to C; but
that to each who does the will of God, all the sweetnesses that are
hived in all the names, and in any other analogous ones that can be
uttered, belong. Of course the selection here of relationships
specified has reference to the composition of that group outside the
circle. But there is a great deal more than that in it. Whether you
accept the grammatical remark that I have made or no, we shall, at
least, I suppose, all agree in this, that, in fact, the bond of
kindred that unites a trusting obedient soul with Jesus Christ does in
itself include whatsoever of sweetness, of power, of protection, of
clinging trust, and of any other blessed emotion that makes a shadow
of Eden still upon earth, has ever been attached to human bonds.
Remember how many of these, Christ, and His servants for Him, have
laid their hands upon, and claimed to be His. 'Thy Maker is thy
husband'; 'He that hath the Bride is the bridegroom'; 'Go tell My
brethren'; 'I have not called you servants, but friends.' And if there
be any other sweet names, they belong to Him, and in His one pure,
all-sufficient love they are all enclosed. Fragmentary preciousnesses
are strewed about us. There is 'one pearl of great price.' Many
fragrances come from the flowers that grow on the dunghill of the
world, but they are all gathered in Him whose name is 'as ointment
poured forth,' filling the house with its fragrance.
For Christ is to us all that all separated lovers and friends can be.
And whatsoever our poor hearts may need most, of human affection and
sympathy, and may see least possibility of finding now, among the
incompletenesses and limitations of earth, that Jesus Christ is
waiting to be. All solitary souls and mourning hearts may turn
themselves to, and rest themselves on, these great words. And as they
look at the empty places in their circle, in their homes, and feel the
ache of the empty places in their hearts, they may hear His voice
saying, 'Behold My mother and My brethren.' He comes to us all in the
character that we need most. Just as the great ocean, when it flows in
amongst the land, takes the shape imposed upon it by the containing
banks of the loch, so Christ pours Himself into our hearts, and there
assumes the form that the outline of their emptiness tells we need
most. To many, in all generations, who have been weeping over departed
joys, He says again, though with a different application, turning not
away from but to Himself mourning eyes and hearts, 'Woman, behold thy
Son'--not on the cross nor in the grave, but on the throne--'Son,
behold Thy mother.'
III. Lastly, this relationship requires always the subordination, and
sometimes the sacrifice, of the lower ones.
We have to think of Christ here as Himself putting away the lower
claims, in order more fully to yield Himself to the higher. It was
because it would have been impossible for Him to do the will of His
Father if He had yielded to the purposes of His brethren and His
mother, that He steeled His heart and made solemn His tone in refusing
to go with them.
That group that had come for Him suggests to us the ways in which
earthly ties may limit heavenly obedience. In regard to them the
situation was complicated, because Jesus Christ was their kinsman
according to the flesh, and their Messiah, according to the spirit.
But in them their earthly love, and familiarity with Him, hid from
them His higher glory; and in them He found impediments to His true
consecration, and would-be thwarters of His highest work. And, in like
manner, all our earthly relationships may become means of obscuring to
us the transcendent brightness and greatness of Jesus Christ as our
Saviour And, in like manner as to Him these, His brethren, became
'stumbling blocks' that He had decisively to put behind Him, so in
regard to us 'a man's foes may be those of his own household'; and not
least his foes when they are most his idols, his comforts, and his
sweetnesses. If our earthly loves and relationships obscure to us the
face of Christ; if we find enough in them for our hearts, and go not
beyond them for our true love; if they make us negligent of duty; if
they bind us to the present; if they make us careless of that loftier
affection which alone can satisfy us; if they clog our steps in the
divine life, then they are our foes. They need to be always
subordinated, and, so subordinated, they are more precious than when
they are placed mistakenly foremost. They are better second than
first. They are full of sweetness when our hearts know a sweetness
surpassing theirs; they are robbed of their possible power to harm
when they are rigidly held in inferiority to the one absolute and
supreme love. There need be no collision--there will be no
collision--if the second is second and the first is first. But
sometimes beggars get upon horseback, and the crew mutinies and would
displace the commander, and then there is nothing for it but
sacrifice. 'If thy hand offend thee, cut it off and cast it from
thee.' 'I communed not with flesh and blood,' and we must not, if ever
they conflict with our supreme devotion to Jesus Christ.
These other things and relationships are precious to us, but He is
priceless. They are shadows, but He is the substance. They are brooks
by the way; He is the boundless, bottomless ocean of delights and
loves. Shall we not always subordinate--and sometimes, if needful,
sacrifice--the less to the greater? If we do, we shall get the less
back, greatened by its surrender. 'He that loveth father or mother
more than Me is not worthy of Me' commands the sacrifice. 'There is no
man that hath left brethren or sisters, or father or mother, or wife
or children, for My sake and the Gospel's, but he shall receive a
hundredfold _now_, in this time' promises the reward.