A tale of three Families

Read Mark 3.

The three-year ministry of Jesus appears to be nearly non-stop.  In Mark's gospel, He quickly moves from preaching to healing to selecting the twelve apostles.  Going back home to Nazareth presented a new challenge.  Later in Mark 6:4, Jesus said, "A prophet is not without honor, except in his hometown and among his relatives and in his own household."

The crowds kept gathering and pressing in to hear Jesus and to receive healing.  It became so intense "that they could not even eat" (v.20).  Some came to the conclusion He was "out of his mind" (v.21).  So, His earthly family came to "seize him" and rescue Him from the crowds.  They thought someone must do this so Jesus may eat and rest.  It seemed like a noble effort.

Upon being told that His mother and His brothers were standing outside the house and wanted to see Him, Jesus asked, "Who are my mother and my brothers?"  This was not meant to offend His earthly family but to emphasize the importance and priority of why He was there.

Everyone belongs to two families.
1. Physical Family.
A mother and a father are required to reproduce.  The development and design of each individual is superintended by God long before the day of one's birth.  "I praise you for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.  Wonderful are your works; my soul knows it very well.  My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth.  Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them." (Psalm 139:14-16)

2. Human Family.
In a real and Biblical sense, everyone on earth is a part of the same family and not related at all to anything else in creation.  Humans are a special creation in God's image (Genesis 1) with a body, soul, and a spirit.  The Apostle Paul wrote, "For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named..." (Ephesians 3:14-15).  The concept of the Fatherhood of God and the Brotherhood of man may be found here.

But not everyone is a member of God's third family.
3. Spiritual Family.
Jesus answered His own question in Mark 3:35: "For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother."  John 1:12-13 explains how to become a member of this family.  "But to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God, who were born not of blood nor of the will of the flesh nor of the will of man, but of God."  Jesus told Nicodemus, who was a good man and a teacher of the Old Testament, "That which is born of flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit...you must be born again." (John 3:5-7).  That spiritual birth through faith in Jesus places one into God's eternal family.