In this article we would like to consider some of the words of the Lord Jesus Christ which He uses in Matt 12 The incident to which we refer is the one where His mother and His brethren came to see Him and asked to speak to Him, and Jesus said, Behold, who are my mother and my brethren” Then He said to them a very strange thing, Whosoever doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven, the same is my mother and brethren and sisters.
There are two very important things which we should learn from this verse The first is, that it is whosoever is doing the will of God, he is not reading the will of God, or wilting the will of God, or endlessly talking about the will of God Jesus was talking about the man who is doing the will of God You see the big difference This is the first point of our lesson—the doing of the will of God. It is so important that the Lord Jesus Christ, on one occasion, compares the man who is doing the will of God to the man who builds his house upon a rock. It is so firm, so strong, so sure, that the sea may come in with all its powerful tide and the winds may blow upon it, but that house will stand because it is built upon a rock.
Now, in comparison, the Lord Jesus Christ draws an illustration of the man who does not do the will of God. He may be talking about it, writing about it and reading about it, but that man, Christ says, builds his house upon the sand and when the sea comes in, it sweeps his house away and it no longer exists.
Must be doers
The first thing we learn here is that we have to be doers of the will of God. The second point is that these, and only these, are Christ’s brethren and sisters and mother—no-one else, just these. You and I, brethren and sisters, have come into the family of God through baptism. We call ourselves brethren and sisters but have we a right to that name? This is what we have to ask ourselves; am I a brother or sister of Christ? Do I do the will of God, because if I don’t, I am a fraud, an imposter, a sham . . . I have no right to the name. I have no right to call myself a brother or sister of Christ. So this is what we must ask ourselves—these two very important questions.
This leads us to the next point, which is, what is the will of God which Jesus is speaking about? Jesus tells us—he leaves us in no doubt. He says, “And this is the will of God, that ye love one another as I have loved you.” And again, “Greater love hath no man than that a man lay down his life for his friend.” Again He says, “Ye are my friends if ye do whatsoever I command you.” Not if you read what I tell you; not if you write what I say; and not if you talk about me. Because He said there are those who prophesied in His name and He will say, “I never knew you.” John writes, “Hereby shall men know that ye are my disciples, if ye love one another.” And so we see that love is the most important thing. “It is the greatest thing in the world,” quoting from the book of Harry Drummond. Love is the most important thing in our lives. It is the basis and principle whereby we order our lives now, and whereby we eventually hope to come into the Kingdom of God. It is the center and circumference of all God’s work. It is the essence of God, because we read, “God is love.”
We want to show that there are four types of love, actually five, although the fifth does not concern us:
1st: Mother love, or the love of a parent for her child. We all know about this, so we needn’t go into detail.
2nd: The type of love of a man for his wife. We understand that the Apostle Paul and the Lord Jesus Christ used this type of love that exists between a man and his wife in showing that Jesus is the bridegroom and that one day you and I shall be joined together with Him in the Marriage Supper of the Lamb. This is a very beautiful type of love we all agree.
3rd: The love of a man for his fellowman. A love, which in these days of evil and degeneracy is sometimes misconstrued. We mean the type of love of which David speaks when he says his love for Jonathan was a love which surpasseth that of women, a love of man for man which is pure and holy and which we seldom see in these days of evil and corruption.
4th: The love of man for God. The love that you and I have for our Creator, who made this universe and all the beauties of nature that we see around us.
5th: The love of money, which is the root of all evil, of which the Bible speaks. We are not concerned about that as it should not be of concern to Us.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One