Jesus and His Brethren.
Consider:
I. the brethren of the boyhood of Jesus. Christ was born into the home and was to live in a brotherhood, with no opportunity for exclusiveness permitted Him. He acted and was acted upon by the brotherhood of the home and the neighbourhood. That He passed stainlessly at length into His manhood, ought to go for something as a declaration of the mysterious virtue that He was. Having been made like unto His brethren, and lived sinlessly under the conditions of human brotherhood, He is able to succour the brotherhood, and the brotherhood is able to have faith to receive the succour.
II. The brethren of the manhood of Jesus. "He stretched forth His hand toward His disciples, and said, Behold, My mother and My brethren." The idea we have of brotherhood to begin with must suffer in the losses of our after experiences, and participate in the benefits of our highest gains. If the sanctities of childhood be lost with the purities of mankind unattained, our conception of brotherhood may be modified to the extent even of losing its central and essential idea. The impure selfish man has no brother if he continues long enough in his impurity, but only a confederate in his sin. On the other hand, if man turn the negative of his childhood into the positive of his manhood, and arise by persistent endeavour and trust in God from innocence into virtue, there will be a correspondent elevation and expansion of his sense of brotherhood. Man is then his brother, not because he is of his kin, but of his kind; not because he is of his nation, but of his nature. Men are called into the brotherhood of Christ's manhood, not because of what they have and are in themselves, but because of that which they can be made to see to be for them in God; they know themselves in Him, and find each other in the light of His countenance, and in the light of God there is but little difference between man and man. We can all be very near to the Christ, for we can all serve if we cannot command. The brotherhood is broad, and such as fitted the God-man to have formed.
J. O. Davies, Sunrise on the Soul,p. 281.
References: Matthew 12:46-50. G. Macdonald, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxii., p. 5.Matthew 12:48-50. W. Arthur, Ibid.,vol. xvi., p. 201; H. W. Beecher, Sermons,1st series, p. 284.Matthew 12:49; Matthew 12:50. W. H. Murray, The Fruits of the Spirit,p. 474.