Exegetical and Hermeneutical Commentary of Luke 8:19
Then came to him [his] mother and his brethren, and could not come at him for the press.
19-21. Christ’s Mother and His Brethren.
19. Then came to him his mother and his brethren ] Our text has the plural; the reading paregeneto (sing.) would imply that the Virgin took a specially prominent part in the incident. Joseph is never mentioned after the scene in the Temple. This incident can hardly be the same as those in Mar 3:31-35; Mat 12:46-50, because in both of those cases the context is wholly different. St Luke may however have misplaced this incident, since here, as in the other Evangelists, relatives of Jesus are represented as standing outside a house of which the doors were densely thronged; whereas the explanation of the Parable had been given in private. It is here merely said that they wished to see Him; but the fact that they came in a body seems to shew that they desired in some way to direct or control His actions. The fullest account of their motives is found in Mar 3:21, where we are told that they wished “to seize Him” or “get possession of His person,” because they said “He is beside Himself,” perhaps echoing the feelings which had been encouraged by the Pharisees. We must remember that His brethren “did not believe in Him” (Joh 7:5), i.e. their belief in Him was only the belief that he was a Prophet who did not realize their Messianic ideal. It needed the Resurrection to convert them.
his brethren ] James, Joses, Simon, Judas. Possibly (Mat 12:50; Mar 3:35) His sisters also came.
Fuente: The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges
See the notes at Mat 12:46-50.
Fuente: Albert Barnes’ Notes on the Bible
Luk 8:19-21
Then came to Him His mother and His brethren
Spiritual relationship to Christ
It is the higher kinship of the soul.
Christ did not set aside time relationships, but He opened up a far higher view, with which these were in analogy. Men know each other in various relationships; but very few men know themselves. Very few men know one another; but in the degree in which they do, they know each other at different points of the wide extension of man and his relations. A man may know his parentage and his home. That is primary knowledge, and very noble it is. He may know men by their co-operations and partnerships in the affairs of life–that, and only that. He may know men by some similar tastes and pursuits. Artists know artists; musicians know musicians; working men know working men; inventors know inventors. There is a line of sympathy that goes out from all these different points by which men interpret in other people something that they have in themselves. It is a knowledge which consists simply in the attempt to interpret in others something that we have felt in our own selves–to liken ourselves to those around about us. So a man may know his fellow-men in times of great excitement by partizan feeling, by party feeling, or by patriotism. The real relationship, the truest, the highest, while it does not disdain these lower relationships, regards them as external and transient. You may know men as parents, and not know them at all. You may know men as business factors and be utterly outside of them and ignorant of them. You may know men by tastes, by professions, by pursuits, and yet not know them interiorly. You may know men as your countrymen, and as faithful to law and order in times of great confusion; and yet that is exterior knowledge. It is juxtaposition, for the most part. Interiorly, how little does a man know his fellow-men until he has in himself the higher qualities, spiritual and intellectual, and until he interprets the like qualities that are in those around about him! Apply this to the relationship of men with Christ and with God. In the truest and highest sense, not until men rise into those qualities which constitute God can they be said to understand Him. We can understand Him when He thunders, because we can thunder in a small way; we can understand Him when He speaks of Himself as the Creator, because we are mechanicians in a certain way; when He sets His palace in order in the heavens above, when He fills the earth with His glory, when the firmament declares His glory and the earth His handiwork, we can understand all that well enough, because we ourselves are creators, re-arrangers of physical qualities and matter; and so we feel that we have an understanding of God; and we have. But our great wish is that we could understand Him according to our senses all the way through: Why does He not speak to me? That is the way my children understand me. I wish God would bring Himself down within the scope of my eyes. Why does He not hear me? Why does He not come within the realm of my ear? Why does He not come where I can lay my hand upon Him–thrust it into His side, indeed? We are always trying to come to a knowledge of God by bringing Him down to a level with our condition; then we think that we should understand Him; but the disciples did not. His brethren and His mother did not, and He was upon the line and level of their physical condition. They were just as far from Him, and just as far from satisfaction in regard to Him, as if they had never seen Him, or as if He had gone early from the cradle to the grave. And to-day men are seeking to know God by ratiocination. They are searching the origin of things, the germs of life, its unfoldings and its philosophy; and all of them are playing round about this great problem of the universe: Is there a God? Where is He? Who is He? What is He? The royal road to knowledge is goodness. He that loves, we are told in explicit language, knows God, though He cannot imagine the amplitude of such love. He that only knows the candle knows what the sun is a little bit; but the candle does not give him any conception of the magnitude and majesty and glory of the sun. He that loves here has one letter of the alphabet, as it were, but not the whole literature and philosophy of the Divine nature. This is the highway through which, and only through which, John declares that any man can come to an understanding of God. God is love; love is His constituent element, and no man can understand God that does not understand love. As no man can understand heroism except through the recipiency of, or sensibility to, heroism in himself; as no man can understand good taste except through the foregoing feeling of what is harmonious and beautiful; so it is in regard to the great discernments that reveal God to us. (H. W. Beecher.)
The affinity of the faithful
As this voice came to Christ while He was labouring, so many such voices come to us while we are labouring. One saith, Pleasure would speak with you; another saith, Profit would speak with you; another saith, Ease would speak with you; another saith, A deanery would speak with you; another saith, A bishopric would speak with you; another saith, The court would speak with you. Here is the rule now; if you live by it, then you are kin to Christ. As other kindreds go by birth and marriage, so this kindred goeth by faith and obedience. Hearers are but half kin, as it were m a far degree; but they which hear and do are called His mother, which is the nearest kindred of all. Therefore if you have the deed, then are you kin indeed; there is no promise made to hearers, nor to speakers, nor to readers; but all promises are made to believers or to doers. Again, by this you may learn how to choose your friends. As Christ counted none His kinsmen, but such as hear the Word of God, and do it; so we should make none our familiars, but such as Christ counteth His kinsmen. Again, you may see the difference between Christ and the world; Christ calleth the godly His kinsmen, be they never so poor, and we scorn to call the poor our kinsmen, be they never so honest; so proud is the servant above his Master. Again, by this you see how Christ is to be loved; for when He calleth us His mother, He shows us the way to love Him as a mother; for indeed He is the mother of His mother and His brethren too. Again, by this, all vaunting and boasting of kindred is cut off. Glory not in that thou hast a gentleman to thy father, glory not that thou hast a knight to thy brother, but glory that thou hast a Lord to thy brother. Again, by this you may know whether you be kin to Christ; as those priests were shut out of the temple which could not count their genealogy from Aaron, so they shall be shut out of heaven that cannot reckon their pedigree from Christ. Here are the arms now whereby you may show of what house you came. Lastly, by this you may know the devils kinsmen, and therefore Christ saith, You are of your father the devil (Joh 8:44), showingthat the devil and the wicked are as near kin as Christ and the faithful. (H. Smith.)
The two families–the natural and the spiritual
From these words of the Lord Jesus I learn that, without repudiating the family relations of earth, He institutes and proclaims the family relations of heaven. As a faithful minister of the gospel said once to a despotic sovereign, There are two kings and two kingdoms in Scotland, explaining how Church and State may live and thrive on the same spot at the same time, giving and receiving help reciprocally, if each will consent to confine itself to its own sphere and exercise only its own functions; so the Scriptures intimate that two families pervade society, both having to a great extent the same persons as members, yet without jealousy or collision, getting and giving reciprocal support. Both families are of God. He has planned and constituted them. To Him they owe their origin, and from Him they receive their laws. A place has been assigned to the one in creation; to the other in redemption. The one is the grand Institute of Nature; the other the grand Institute of Grace. Both are good, each as far as it goes; but the second is deeper, longer, broader, higher than the first. The first is the family for time; the second is the family for eternity.
I. CHRIST IS THE GOSPEL PERMITS THE NATURAL FAMILY, IN ALL ITS INTEGRITY, TO REMAIN UNDISTURBED. Jesus was Himself the member of a family. He received the benefits of that position, and fulfilled its duties. Honour all the pure affections of human nature, for they thrill in the Saviours breast; loathe all the sins that stain it, for they crucified the Son of God. If you examine the natural affections and instincts of living creatures, you will find that one principle lies like s measuring rod along the whole–utility. These affections are inserted, and inserted such as they are, in the constitution of the creature, because of their usefulness. They are the instruments whereby the Maker works out His own design. Some living creatures, as fishes and certain species of birds, have no perceptible filial or parental affections at all. In their case the instinct is not needed, and therefore is not found. In others, including all the higher grades of the brute creation, the parental affection is developed in great intensity for a short period, and then altogether ceases. A mother that would have shed her blood for her offspring a month ago, when it was feeble, does not know it to-day, at least does not acknowledge it in the herd. The instinct, having served its purpose, is not left dangling after its work is done. Relative affections in human kind expatiate on a wider field, and are more enduring. Here we enter a region in which these affections find room to range; they become, accordingly, manifold and strong. The roots go deeper down in the deeper, richer soil. A short-lived maternal love would not serve the purpose here; and therefore a mothers love in this region is not short-lived. Christ was a perfect man. He was not only perfectly holy, but completely human. He took all our nature without its defects and defilements. He experienced filial and fraternal love. He loved His mother and His brethren with the true affection of a son and a brother. No disciple of Christ is permitted to break the bonds of kindred, and abjure the affections of consanguinity, on the plea of his Masters example or command. Superstition has always shown a tendency to exalt the spiritual relations by crushing the natural; it would build up, according to its own false conception, the family of God on the ruins of the family of man. God did not built up the family in order to pull it down again. As the ordinances of the earlier dispensation were a shadow, and so a prediction, of better things to come in Christ, the natural family is a type, and so a promise, of the spiritual and heavenly.
II. CHRIST IN THE GOSPEL ESTABLISHES, ON THE SAME SPHERE, A NEW SPIRITUAL FAMILY. If any man be in Christ he is a new creature; in the new creature a multitude of new affections spring and flow, but being on a higher level, they never run foul of the affections that expatiate on the lower sphere of temporal things. Mind, conscience, immortality, have been imparted to man, and these faculties have free scope for action; but those operations of the higher nature do not in any measure impede the inhalation of air, the circulation of the blood, or any of the other processes which belong to us in common with inferior creatures. Now, as mind, acting in another sphere, comes not into collision with the functions of the body, so the new spiritual affections, which belong to us as Christians, do not interfere with the original affections which belong to us as men. There is a process in agriculture which presents an interesting parallel to the simultaneous and commingling growth of relations for time and relations for eternity in human hearts. A field is closely occupied all over with a growing crop which will soon reach maturity, and will be reaped in this seasons harvest. The owner intends that another crop, totally different in kind, shall possess the ground in the following year; but he does not wait till the grain now growing has been reaped–he goes into the field and sows the seed of the new while the old is still growing and green. In some cases a method is adopted which is, from our present point of view, still more suggestive: the seed which shall complete its functions within the present season, and the seed which, springing this year, shall bear its fruit upwards, are mixed together in the same vessel and scattered together on the same ground. Nor does the one lie dormant for a season while the other monopolizes the soil; both spring up at the same, or nearly the same time. The plant for the future germinates at once, but it does not reach maturity till the following year; the plant intended for the present season–the wheat or the barley–grows rapidly and ripens ere the winter come. Lowly, meekly at the roots of the waving grain springs the plant of the future; it passes through its earlier stages while the tall stalks of the wheat are towering over its head. It springs although, the grain is growing on the same spot, and springs better because the grain is growing there. The vigorous growth of another species all around it shelters its feeble infancy; and after the winter has passed, in another season, it starts afresh and comes forth in its own matured strength. Thus the affections and relations that belong to the future spring and grow under the shadow of the affections and relations that belong to the present. Those stars that studded the dark blue canopy of the sky were lovely; often through the weary night did the lone watcher lift his eyes and look upon them. They seemed to him a sort of company, and while he gazed on the bright glancing throng he felt himself for the moment somewhat less lonely. Yet you hear no complaint from that watchers lips when those stars disappear; for the cause of their disappearance is the break of day. Either the many fond individual companionships which cheer disciples in the night of their pilgrimage will remain with them, as bright particular stars in the day of eternity, or they will fade away before its dawning; if they remain, their company in holiness will be a thousand fold more sweet; if they disappear, it will not be that those joys have grown more dim, but that we do not observe them in the light of a more glorious day. Two practical lessons, one in the form of a warning, and the other in the form of an encouragement, depend from the subject visibly, and claim a notice at the close.
1. Reverting again, for a moment, to the analogy of seed for the future sown and springing under the shade of a crop that is growing for the present season, we may gather from nature a caution which is needful and profitable in the department of grace. When this seasons crop, amidst which next seasons seed was sown in spring, has been cut in harvest and carried home, I have seen the field in whole or in part destitute of the young plants which ought at that time to have covered its surface, the hope of future years. Sometimes after this seasons harvest is reaped, no living plant remains in the ground. As you walk over it at the approach of winter, you see rotting stubble, the decaying remnants of one harvest, but no young plants, the promise of another year. Why? Because the first crop has grown too rank in its robust maturity, and overlaid the second in its tender youth. The principle of this lesson applies to the business of life as well as the reciprocal affections of kindred. Beware! Open your hearts and take the warning in. Have you hope for pardon and eternal life in the son of God, the Saviour? Then bear in mind that, under the shade of your city-traffic and your home-joys, a tender plant is growing, native of a softer clime–a plant whose growth is your life, whose decay your ruin, in the great day; a plant that needs indeed the shelter of honest industry and pure family affections, but dies outright under the choking weight of their overgrowth; and see to it that the profits and pleasures of time do not, by their excess, kill the hope for eternity. What is a man profited although he gain the whole world, if he lose his own soul?
2. It is ever true, according to the symbolic prophecy of the Apocalypse, that the earth helps the woman–that the occupations and affinities and friendships of this life may and do cherish the growth of grace in the soul. (W. Arnot.)
On rightly seeking the Saviour
I. THEY DESIRED TO SEE CHRIST. This their desire might proceed–
1. From a proud and vainglorious principle, from which the best of men are not entirely free. They might want to make it known that they were related to Christ, a person followed and talked of, who preached such heavenly doctrines, and performed such astonishing miracles.
2. From an undue, and, indeed, mercenary regard to the health of Christs body and safety of His person.
3. From natural love, without any other design but to please themselves with the company and conversation of one with whom they were so nearly connected, and for whom they had so great regard. Religion is no enemy to natural affection.
4. There might also be a mixture of spiritual affection. Yet, though the principle might be good, their conduct was reprovable, the application being unseasonable; and the check that Christ gave them should teach us, that no intrusion or solicitation should draw us from the work of the Lord.
II. THOSE WHO DESIRE TO SEE CHRIST DO NOT ALWAYS TAKE RIGHT METHODS TO OBTAIN THEIR END.
1. Some, through an improper humility or servile dread, keep at a distance from Christ, even when they have earnest desires to see Him, which desires will never be answered without nearer approaches to Him.
2. Others seek Christ in duties and ordinances, in the streets and broadways, when they ought to see Him in their own closets. They seek Him abroad, but not at home, whereas the kingdom of Christ is within us, and where should the King be but in His kingdom?
3. Others, again, seek Christ out of the Church, who ought to seek Him in it. They stand without. Let them come in, and seek Christ where He is to be found. (B. Beddome, M. A.)
The Lords answer respecting His mother and brethren
On these words of our Lord we may remark–
1. That they are not intended to cast a slur on His mother and brethren, or to undervalue the duties men owe to their relations.
2. That we must not allow our regard to our relations to interfere with our duty to God.
3. The sinfulness and folly of all superstitions regard to the Virgin Mary.
4. Nothing but personal obedience and faith can avail for safety.
5. The great love Jesus bears to His true disciples, and the high honour He bestows on them. (James Foote, M. A.)
Divine and human relationship
A little sad, wasnt it? that His mother and brethren were not sitting about Him. For, as another evangelist says, He looked round on those that were about Him. His disciples, who were learning of Him, were nearest to Him naturally, and His mother and His brethren were outside. It is a sad thing for any of us to be called by His name, and not know Him. It is the business of our human being to know Christ, and nothing else is our business. You observe Christ is always talking about His Father in heaven. You would think He knew nothing else. Did He, then, repudiate the earthly mother, and the earthly brother and sister? No verily. But it is a profound, absolute fact that our relation to God is infinitely nearer than any relation by nature. (George Macdonald.)
The true relatives of Christ
Kinship with Christ is not a matter of genealogy or of Church position, or the men around Him would have had it; not of birth, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man. Kindred with Christ is a matter of nature, and nature can never be tested but by action. If a man is a partaker of the Divine nature that will show itself, and the will that will rule him will no longer be his own, but the will of his Father who is in heaven. (W. Arthur, M. A.)
Divine relationships
We have here two things, a character and a blessing,
I. THE CHARACTER. These which hear the Word of God and do it.
II. THE BLESSING. The same are my brother and sister and mother. (Dean Vaughan.)
Spiritual relationship
(An Epiphany Sermon):–Successive steps in Christs revelation of Himself.
1. At twelve years old, though He must be about His Fathers business, yet He remained subject for the present.
2. At marriage-festival–Woman, what have I to do with thee? a clearer Epiphany, and yet Mine hour is not yet come.
3. His friends, His mother, seek Him. He utters words which show that in the higher spiritual relationship claimed for His disciples there is no room for sex; the tie of brotherhood and motherhood a faint type only of the close communion between the redeemed and the Redeemer.
4. At last, dying, He commends His mother to the disciple, Behold thy mother, as if to show that the human relationship had ceased for Himself and her. Natural relationships are swallowed up, the spiritual eclipsing them. Results of acknowledging this fact.
I. DISCOMFORT.
II. CONSOLATION.
III. PRACTICAL EFFECT ON OUR LIVES, viz., our future relationship will be decided not by our present earthly ones, but by our birth of God. (O. Warren, M. A.)
Christ and kinship with Him
I. THE SPIRITUALITY OF CHRISTS MISSION AND HIS ABSORPTION IN IT. Affections, even the purest, must be sacrificed when they intrenched upon His liberty to do what He had come into the world to do. To this end was I born, and for this cause came I into the world, that I should bear witness unto the truth. Think of the loneliness of Christ. While holding intercourse with His friends at Bethany, or surrounded by His disciples, or pressed upon by the crowd, He was yet alone, always alone–alone in His knowledge of the full meaning of His lifes work, alone in the endurance of His bitterest pain, alone in the constancy and grandeur of His unfailing purpose.
II. THE LARGE-HEARTEDNESS OF CHRIST. He had two great lessons to teach men–The Fatherhood of God, and the common brotherhood of man How much larger our hearts would be, how much more generous our sympathies, if we shared more largely His Spirit of universal love.
III. THE NATURE OF KINSHIP WITH HIM. We all hear, and we all may do the Word of God. We have, then, set before us in the text a privilege in which we all may share–a sacred relationship with Christ into which we all may enter. Application:
1. Is there anywhere any poor man sorely tried, buffeted by circumstances, self-despising and despised of others, but who desires with all his heart to do the will of God. Rise up, and be of good courage, for thou art Christs brother.
2. Thou art perhaps a widow left alone and poor to struggle with the world; or a mother with the anxious care of a family upon thy shoulders; or a daughter whose life is passing away in some joyless home, and in devotion to an invalid parent whose petulance is thy daily cross. Be patient, and struggle on. Bear the cross, and do the duty, because it is Gods will. And remember for thine encouragement in every hour of trial that thou art Christs sister.
3. And O, aged mothers heart, bereft of thy children, and refusing to be comforted because they are not, think that the Lord of life and glory condescends to call Himself thy son. He will be the comfort and stay of thy declining days, the prop of thy feebleness, the companion of thy loneliness. (J. R. Bailey.)
The household of faith
I. THE CONNECTION WHICH IS HERE PROCLAIMED.
1. In regard to the connection, the first point is as to the parties between whom it subsists. On the one side, we have a personage of inconceivable greatness and power. Is it some glorious angel whom God made as a specimen of what the Creator can do? No. It is one who is above the angels, and concerning whom it is written, Let all the angels of God worship Him. This is one to whom it can be said, Thy throne, O God, is for ever and ever. It is the eternal Son, the heir and Lord of all. It is Jehovah Himself, God manifest in the flesh! On the other hand, we have a portion of the human family. We have a company of dependent and powerless beings, whose breath is in their nostrils, and who have nothing of their own. Between Him, so great, and them, so mean, there is now the affinity mentioned in the text. He, the blessed and only Potentate, discovers and recognizes in them His brother, His sister, His mother!
2. The next point we shall inquire into is the nature of the connection.
(1) It is a close connection. There are many relations which belong to the constitution of human society. There are, for example, the relations of magistrate and subjects, master and servants, teacher and pupils, and so on. But the closest relation of all is the family relation. The family relation is fraught with intimacies which are known to no other. This is the relation which is declared in the text between Christ and His people. Christ and His people are embraced in the same family circle, the word being taken in its most limited acceptation. They are not remotely allied to Him. They are His nearest kindred. They are His brother, His sister, His mother. No tie of blood can be closer than that by which He and they are connected.
(2) It is an endearing connection. Love wells out of it–reciprocal love. We see, then, that between Jesus and His followers there is a connection which is fitted to give rise to love–which is fitted, we may say, to give rise to it in no ordinary degree, and to produce a most peculiar and devoted attachment.
(3) It is a connection that cannot be transferred. We are familiar with connections whose transference is easy, and is constantly taking place. There is the connection between master and servant. The master may be changed; and so may be the servant. There is the connection between bosom friends. He who is my friend now may become my foe in a little while, and I may get another friend in his room. Although I may change my friend, I cannot change my mother. Although I may change my servant, I cannot change my son. The connection between Christ and His people, then, is fixed. He cannot be supplanted in His relation to them, nor they in their relation to Him.
(4) It is a connection that cannot be destroyed. Recent occurrences in the history of the world have strikingly shown that the connection between a sovereign and his subjects is perishable, and may be suddenly dissolved. But, happen what may, brother and sister will continue to be brother and sister, and a mans mother is his mother as long as she lives. Neither accidents nor efforts can sever the family tie. Death, indeed, may come, and, in one sense, put an end to it. But even death cannot prevail against the bond by which Christ and His disciples are united. He liveth for evermore, and so do they.
3. Our third point is the advantage with which the connection is fraught to Christs people. The Lord is laid under obligations by it, which will redound to their benefit. A brother, a sister, a mother, have peculiar claims, which no relative, with a conscience and a heart, will disregard.
(1) Is the disciple a brother? He has a claim upon the Saviour as such. One of the most emphatic declarations of Scripture tells of a Friend that sticketh closer than a brother. When a man is in straits of any kind, who so likely as his brother to relieve him, if that brother be able? Now, then, let the Christian rejoice that he is the brother of the Lord. Let him remember it in trouble, and let him not be cast down. The Lord Himself remembers it, and says to him, Call upon Me in the day of trouble, and I will deliver thee.
(2) Does Christ declare that the disciple is His sister? A sister has claims even stronger than a brother. A sister is weak, and needs a guardian, and an arm to lean upon. A sister is timid, and needs a companion who has boldness and decision, that he may lead her forth, take her through the crowd, and encourage her by the way. A sister needs a prompt and powerful champion, that she may be defended from insult, and that her purity and honour may be cared for. And a sister turns to her kind and manly brother as the guardian, the bold companion, and the prompt and powerful champion that she needs. When Christ says that His disciple is His sister, He gives His people to understand that He is all this to them. And O how He cherishes and tends them!
(3) Christ says that His disciple is His mother. This also has great significance. It speaks to us of a son who devotes the vigorous labour of his prime to win a subsistence for his mother, and to make for her a comfortable and happy home.
4. A fourth point is the formation of the tie between Christ and His people. How is it constituted? How, then, is the rank of His mother and His brethren acquired? The question is answered in the following verse–Whosoever shall do the will of My Father which is in heaven, the same is My brother, and sister, and mother. It is as much as to say to us all, Do the will of My father in heaven, and ye shall become very dear to Me; ye shall acquire the strong claims of the closest relationship. But what must we understand by the will of His Father? We have His own definition of the will of His Father, when He says, This is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath sent. After Christs ascension, the Apostle John announced the will of the Father, saying, This is His commandment, that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ. And is this the way to become members of the family of Jesus? Is this the way to do, if we wish to be the brother, and sister, and mother of the Lord? This is the way. He comes to us in the Fathers name, with gracious proposals, as the sinners Friend. Let us bid Him welcome; let us accept His offers; let us yield to His love. So shall we be His: and He shall be ours. To as many as receive Him, to them gives He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe in His name. It is by faith that we enter the family of Jesus.
5. Our last point is the evidence of the tie. For this we go again to the same verse:–Whosoever shall do the will of My Father which is in heaven, the same is My brother, and sister, and mother. That which creates the tie, also manifests it. Take notice, says our Lord, take notice of the person that does My Fathers will, and believes in Me; take notice of My follower, My disciple! The same is My brother, and sister, and mother. There is a family likeness between Christ and His people. The doing of the Fathers will is a family characteristic. It is a feature by which a member of the Church of the first-born may be infallibly discovered. Christ, the chief, the great Brother of the household, is the image of the Father. And of all the members of the blessed household it can be said that, beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, they are changed into the same image, from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. One remark we must add here, lest the mother and the brethren of Jesus be discouraged. It is not our doctrine, it is not the doctrine of Scripture, or of the text, that those only who attain to a perfect fulfilment of the Will of the Father can claim to be the kindred of the Lord. His meaning was, and the true doctrine is, that his brother, and sister, and mother, are they who have entered the school, who are learning the lesson, and have begun to practise the duty, of obedience to the will of the Father.
II. The second branch of our subject relates to THE DELIGHT WHICH JESUS HAS IN THIS CONNECTION. The text is expressive of feelings of complacency and satisfaction. It was a burst of affection, the utterance of a loving and joyful heart, when He exclaimed, Behold My mother and My brethren. To illustrate the delight which Jesus has in the affinity between Him and His people, it may be well to show what is His behavour towards them.
1. He visits them. It happens sometimes in a family of humble rank, that one of the members rises far above the rest in point of circumstances and position. And it happens also, sometimes, in such cases, that the great and wealthy member of the family forgets his poor kinsmen, and seldom or never goes to see them. But Christ does not forget His people. He came and saw them often during the old dispensation. He has never been long away from them. One visit, most notable for the wonders of love it exhibited, was His advent in the flesh. It had been described beforehand, but the half was not told. The Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory. When He was departing, He said, I will see you again. The family of Jesus, like other families, has its meetings; the members often assemble; and now and then, at stated periods, they hold high festival together. On such occasions He, the exalted Brother to whom all look up, is never away. Absentees there may be, but He is not one of them; His place is never empty. Are they in darkness? He visits them and gives them light.
2. He sends gifts to them. He, the Brother of great possessions, sends gifts to His lowly kindred. All power is His, both in heaven and in earth. Do they need gold? He sends them gold, tried in the fire. Do they need raiment? He furnishes them with white raiment, that they may be clothed–robes of righteousness, garments of salvation. Do they need meat anddrink? He gives them bread of life, wine and milk, honey out of the rock.
We have spoken of their family feasts, but these would be feasts of emptiness, were it not for His bounty. What shall we say more? To express everything in a word, He sends them the Holy Spirit. That heavenly gift is completely subject to His administration.
3. He dwells among them. It is customary for the members of a family to dwell together. They group with each other in the same abode. It may seem strange to say that Christ dwells with His friends, after we have said that He visits them. But both are true. In this case there is no real inconsistency. Just before His ascension He declared to His disciples, Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world. I am going away, yet will I never be absent. In Salem is His tabernacle, and His dwelling-place in Zion.
4. He acknowledges them. Behold My mother and My brethren. Behold these fishermen, these peasants, these obscure Galileans, who receive My doctrine. These are My relatives; see, this is the family to which I belong. And was not that a signal acknowledgment of kinsmanship that He gave in the case of the three children, when, before Nebuchadnezzar, and his princes and captains, and the vast Babylonian concourse, He walked in the midst of the furnace along with them? He promised that He would confess His brethren before His Father and before His holy angels. He is confessing them now in His continual intercession at Gods right hand. (A. Gray.)
Fuente: Biblical Illustrator Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Verse 19. His mother and brethren] See the notes on Mt 12:46, &c., and on Mr 3:31, &c.
Fuente: Adam Clarke’s Commentary and Critical Notes on the Bible
See Poole on “Mat 12:46“, and following verses to Mat 12:50. See Poole on “Mar 3:31” and following verses to Mar 3:35.
Fuente: English Annotations on the Holy Bible by Matthew Poole
Then came to him his mother and his brethren,…. It was when Christ was preaching in an house at Capernaum, that Mary his mother, and some of his near kinsmen with her, came from Nazareth to him: these brethren of his were relations according to the flesh, either by Joseph, or his mother’s side: who they were, cannot be said with certainty: it may be they were Joses and Simon; for as for James and Judas, they were among the twelve apostles, and with him; and these are the four only persons that are mentioned by name, as his brethren, Mt 13:55 though there were others that were so called, who did not believe in him, Joh 7:5
and could not come at him for the press; the multitude of people that were about him, who were so thick, that there was no coming near him, much less was there an opportunity of speaking privately, with him. The Syriac version renders it, “they could not speak unto him for the multitude”.
Fuente: John Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible
His mother and brethren ( ). Mark 3:31-35; Matt 12:46-50 place the visit of the mother and brothers of Jesus before the parable of the sower. Usually Luke follows Mark’s order, but he does not do so here. At first the brothers of Jesus (younger sons of Joseph and Mary, I take the words to mean, there being sisters also) were not unfriendly to the work of Jesus as seen in Joh 2:12 when they with the mother of Jesus are with him and the small group (half dozen) disciples in Capernaum after the wedding in Cana. But as Jesus went on with his work and was rejected at Nazareth (Lu 4:16-31), there developed an evident disbelief in his claims on the part of the brothers who ridiculed him six months before the end (Joh 7:5). At this stage they have apparently come with Mary to take Jesus home out of the excitement of the crowds, perhaps thinking that he is beside himself (Mr 3:21). They hardly believed the charge of the rabbis that Jesus was in league with Beelzebub. Certainly the mother of Jesus could give no credence to that slander. But she herself was deeply concerned and wanted to help him if possible. See discussion of the problem in my little book The Mother of Jesus and also on Mr 3:31 and Mt 12:46.
Come to him (). Second aorist active infinitive of , an old verb, though here alone in the N.T., meaning to meet with, to fall in with as if accidentally, here with associative instrumental case .
Fuente: Robertson’s Word Pictures in the New Testament
NEW RELATIONSHIPS THROUGH CHRIST V. 19-21
1) “Then came to him his mother and his brethren,” (paregeneto de pros auton he meter kai hoi adelphoi autou) “Then his mother and fraternal brothers came directly to him,” to try to see and speak to Him, Mat 12:46; Mar 3:31. Because His father Joseph is not mentioned here or hereafter, he is believed to have been dead.
2) “And could not come at him for the press.” (kai ouk edunato suntuchein auto dia ton ocheon) “And they were not able to come up (close, to be with) him through the crowd,” Mar 4:31; The family of children is referred to Mat 13:55.
Fuente: Garner-Howes Baptist Commentary
Luk 8:19
. And his mother and his brethren came to him. There is an apparent discrepancy here between Luke and the other two Evangelists; for, according to their arrangement of the narrative, they represent Christ’s mother and cousins as having come, while he was discoursing about the unclean spirit, while he refers to a different occasion, and mentions only the woman’s exclamation, which we have just now explained. But we know that the Evangelists were not very exact as to the order of dates, or even in detailing minutely every thing that Christ did or said, so that the difficulty is soon removed. Luke does not state at what precise time Christ’s mother came to him; but what the other two Evangelists relate before the parable of the sower he introduces after it. The account which he gives of the exclamation of the woman from among the multitude bears some resemblance to this narrative; for inconsiderate zeal may have led her to exalt to the highest pitch what she imagined that Christ had unduly lowered.
All the three Evangelists agree in stating, that while Christ was discoursing in the midst of a crowd of people, his mother and brethren came to him The reason must have been either that they were anxious about him, or that they were desirous of instruction; for it is not without some good reason that they endeavor to approach him, and it is not probable that those who accompanied the holy mother were unbelievers. Ambrose and Chrysostom accuse Mary of ambition, but without any probability. What necessity is there for such a conjecture, when the testimony of the Spirit everywhere bestows commendation on her distinguished piety and modesty? The warmth of natural affection may have carried them beyond the bounds of propriety: this I do not deny, but I have no doubt that they were led by pious zeal to seek his society. Matthew relates that the message respecting their arrival was brought by one individual: Mark and Luke say that he was informed by many persons. But there is no inconsistency here; for the message which his mother sent to call him would be communicated, as usually happens, from one hand to another, till at length it reached him.
Fuente: Calvin’s Complete Commentary
CRITICAL NOTES
Luk. 8:19-21.St. Luke gives this incident as occurring after the parable of the sower, though without any precise note of time: St. Matthew and St. Mark relate it as occurring before that parable was spoken. It is probable that the latter evangelists follow the more correct order of time.
Luk. 8:19. His mother and His brethren.From the fact that Joseph is not mentioned, it is reasonable to suppose that he was dead. The fact that the members of His family came thus in a body seems to indicate that they wished to control His actions. St. Mark says that they went out to lay hold on Him: for they said. He is beside Himself. The great excitement created by His teaching and miracles, His formal choice of apostles, the unfavourable reception accorded to Him in Jerusalem, convinced them that He was bent upon a career that was bound to be a failure; and mental alienation on His part seemed to be the only explanation of His conduct. St. John says, His brethren did not believe in Him (Luk. 7:5). Who these brethren were is an almost insoluble problem. Three hypotheses on the subject have been maintained:
(1) that they were actual uterine brothers of our Lord, the sons of Joseph and Mary;
(2) that they were legal half-brothers, the sons of Joseph by a former marriage;
(3) that they were cousins of our Lord, the sons of Clopas (or Alphus) and Mary his wife, sister of the Virgin, mentioned Joh. 19:25. For a full discussion of these various hypotheses we refer the reader to Lightfoot on Galatians, Alford in his prolegomena to the Epistle of James and his note on Mat. 13:55, article James in Smiths Dictionary of the Bible, and to article Jacobus in Herzogs Real-Encyclopdie. On the whole the third of these hypotheses seems to be more in accordance with the passages of Scripture bearing on the matter than are either of the other two. The allusion in Mar. 6:3 to Jesus as the son of Mary seems undoubtedly to distinguish Him as her only son from the brethren there nameda fact which if allowed would be fatal to the first hypothesis. While if Joseph had sons older than Jesus by a first wife, we could not understand how Jesus could be heir through him of the throne of David.
Luk. 8:21. Are these.St. Matthew and St. Mark add vividness to the narrative by their description of Christs gesture and look as He spoke the words: the one says, He stretched forth His hand toward His disciples, and the other, He looked round about on them which sat about Him. The words assert the paramount claims of spiritual over natural relationships, and show that Jesus Himself exemplified the rule which He laid down for His disciples, and allowed no ties of human affection to draw Him aside from the path of duty (cf. Luk. 14:26).
. Hence the two evangelists are in general agreement on this point. St. Matthew introduces it without any reference to time.
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.Luk. 8:19-21
Natural and Spiritual Relationships.The purpose for which Christs mother and brethren came explains the words He uttered on this occasion. It was not merely to see Him, but to persuade Him to give up the work in which He was engaged, or even to use force to compel Him to yield to their desire. From the zeal and ardour which seemed to render Him indifferent to food and repose, they concluded that He was beside Himself (Mar. 3:20-21), and probably also they were alarmed at the enmity towards Him which the Pharisees had begun to manifest. From their action and from the words which it evoked from Christ we may learn several important lessons.
I. Faith is often found wanting in those who are most highly favoured in outward circumstances.Who could have been more highly favoured than the mother and brethren of Jesus, in being permitted for so many years to witness His pure and holy life? And yet they were at this time devoid of the faith in Him which is necessary for genuine discipleship. Others who had seen and known but little of Him had accepted Him as their Saviour and Lord, while they were quite out of sympathy with the work God had sent Him to do. Familiarity even with holy things is only too apt to breed indifference, and, as Christ Himself said, a prophet often finds comparative strangers more willing to listen to his message than those of his own country and kindred.
II. There may be collision between the claims of natural affection and those of the kingdom of God.Christ Himself had now to choose between the two, and to subordinate the lower to the higher. And a like experience is familiar to all who have ever attempted to serve Him. This painful conflict is perhaps seen in its sharpest forms in cases where Christianity is beginning to make its way in heathen society. New converts have often to sacrifice ties of kindred and friendship for the sake of Christ, and to seem to be cruel to those whom they love most dearly. But in no state of society is the conflict between lower and higher duties altogether unknown. Circumstances often arise in which a sensitive conscience guides the believer to take a line of action which may be disapproved of by those whose good opinion and affection he is naturally most anxious to retain. The rule he should follow is here laid down for him by the example of his Master.
III. Obedience to Gods will means intimate union with Christ.It was His meat and drink to do the will of His Father, and all who are imbued with the same spirit come into the closest fellowship with Him. It is quite evident that the language which Christ here uses involves claims of a unique kindthat no mere man, however holy, could thus present Himself as the bond of union between heaven and earth. The high privileges which He thus proclaims as belonging to those who become His disciples place rich and poor, high-born and lowly, on the same level. And the union which exists between Him and them death itself cannot break.
IV. These family relationships suggest the spontaneous affection which believers should cherish towards Christ and towards each other.The mere fact of relationships, such as are implied in the words mother, sister, brother, naturally calls up feelings of love, and suggests strong and indissoluble ties. We experience a kind of horror at meeting with those who seem to be wanting in this natural affection, which appears to us as rather an instinctive impulse than an emotion which we can cultivate. Christ here uses these relationships with all that they imply to represent the spiritual ties formed between Him and His true disciples. And the common tie that binds them to Him should bind them to each other. So do we find it in actual fact. Christians recognise their brethren everywhere among those who believe in Christ, though they may differ from them in race, and blood, and colour. The relation of spirit to spirit is the profoundest of all. Civil wars, love of gain, and a hundred other things have been known to break the family bond, and to extinguish natural affection. But the mutual relations of believers with each other have been least disturbed of any, when those ties have been real and not nominal.
SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Luk. 8:19-21
Luk. 8:19. His mother and His brethren.This is one of the cases in which the parallel narratives in the other Gospels serve to supplement the history given by St. Luke, and to make its significance clearer. Had we no other information than that given here, we should not have known the reason why His mother and brethren desired to see Him; we should not have had reason for supposing that they were bent upon checking or interfering with His work; and His depreciation of natural relationships as compared with spiritual would have seemed uncalled for. We learn, however, from Mark 3 that His mother and brethren were
(1) alarmed at the rupture between Him and the Pharisees, and
(2) solicitous also concerning His healthfor He and His disciples were so thronged by the multitude as not to have leisure so much as to eat bread. They came to the conclusion that He was beside Himself, and wished to put Him under restraint; or they alleged this as an excuse for His procedure, in order to pacify the anger of His enemies. Their conduct was, therefore, blameworthy, as prompted by excess of natural affection, an assumption of authority over Him or worldly policy. The comment of St. Chrysostom on these words is interesting, even if it show us only that belief in the sinlessness of Mary was not in his time an article of the Catholic faith: What she attempted came of overmuch love of honour; for she wished to show to the people that she had power and authority over her son, imagining not as yet anything great concerning Him; whence also she came unseasonably. Observe then her and their recklessness. For when they ought to have gone in and listened with the multitude, or, if they were not so minded, to have waited for His bringing His discourse to an end, and then to have come near, they call Him out, and do this before all, exhibiting overmuch love of honour, and wishing to show that with much authority they enjoin Him; and this, too, the Evangelist shows that he is blaming; for with this very allusion he says, while He yet talked to the people; as if he should say, What! was there no other opportunity? What! could they not have spoken with Him in private? Whence it is evident that they did this solely out of vain-glory.
Luk. 8:21. The Spiritual Relationship takes Precedence of the Natural.The reply of Jesus is virtually a statement of the fact that when natural and spiritual relationships come into conflict the former must be made to give way. He does not despise His mother, but He gives higher honour to His Father (Bengel). The principle Christ announced was one which had already been approved in the word of God, in the blessing pronounced by Moses upon the tribe of Levi: Who said unto his father and his mother, I have not seen him; neither did he acknowledge his brethren, nor knew his own children: for they have observed Thy word, and kept Thy covenant (Deu. 33:9). We have therefore the plain lesson taught us that we must not allow ourselves to be guided solely by natural feelings, but when earthly ties bring us into conflict with our duties towards God obey the higher call even at the risk of seeming to be cruel and hard-hearted. No friends or relatives have claims upon us superior to those which spring from our obligations to God and Christ.
My mother and My brethren are these.Perhaps in the first relationship Christ referred specially to those devout women mentioned in the earlier part of the chapter, as ministering to His wants and caring for Him with all the affectionateness of their sex; in the second He had in view the circle of apostles and disciples immediately surrounding Him. It is to be noticed that our Lord, though in St. Matthews narrative He introduces the additional term sister into His answer, does not, and indeed could not, introduce father, inasmuch as He never speaks of an earthly father. His Father was in heaven.Alford.
Son of Man.He is Son of man as well as Son of Mary, and in one sense is more identified with the race than with her.
Brother, sister, and motherThese words define the compass and limits of the relationship of the Son of God and man with the human race. This relationship has already been thrown open to the whole race by His birth in the flesh, already involved in the grace offered to all; but it is completed only in those who do the will of God, His Father in heaven.Stier.
A New Relationship.Nor is the separation between earthly and spiritual ties necessarily final: His mother and brethren, by becoming His disciples also, will become bound to Him by a closer than natural relationship.
But One True Nobility.There is but one true nobilitythat of obedience to God. This is greater than that of the Virgins relationship to Christ. Therefore when a woman in the crowd exclaimed, Blessed is the womb that bare Thee, and the paps which Thou hast sucked, He did not say She is not My mother, but If she desires to be blessed, let her do the will of God; He said, Yea rather, blessed are they that hear the word of God, and keep it.Chrysostom.
A Widely Extended Privilege.With the apparent severity of the answer there is wonderful gentleness blended: the claim to relationship is denied to be the exclusive right of a few, but the privilege of making it is extended to the many who obeyed His word and accepted His teaching. All who then heard the word of God and did it, or who should hereafter hear and do, are taken into this intimate fellowship with Himself. This was surely sent for the comfort of as many as should come after; and it is well worthy of remark how our blessed Lord in countless ways contrived that as many as are afar offeven we at this distant dayshould be made to feel that privileges of the highest order are oursprivileges equal to any which were enjoyed by kinsmen and disciples in the days of the Son of man (Burgon).
One Family.How glorious is the thought that there is a family even upon earth of which the Son of God holds Himself a part; a family the loving bond and reigning principle of which is subjection to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and so embracing high and low, rude and refined, bond and free, of every kindred and every age that have tasted that the Lord is gracious; a family whose members can at once understand each other and take sweetest counsel together, though meeting for the first time from the ends of the earthwhile with their nearest relatives, who are but the children of this world, they have no sympathy in such things; a family which death cannot break up, but only transfer to their Fathers house! Did Christians but habitually realise and act upon this, as did their blessed Master, what would be the effect upon the Church and upon the world?Brown.
Spiritual Affinity the Closest of All.The deepest affinity is that of the spirit. Hence the supremacy, even in the present provisional state of things, of the wedlock relationship. Hence, too, the still higher supremacy of the relationship that will rule in the world of glory (Mat. 22:30).Morison.
Fuente: The Preacher’s Complete Homiletical Commentary Edited by Joseph S. Exell
Appleburys Comments
Spiritual Kinship
Scripture
Luk. 8:19-21 And there came to him his mother and brethren, and they could not come at him for the crowd. 20 And it was told him, Thy mother and thy brethren stand without, desiring to see thee. 21. But he answered and said unto them, My mother and my brethren are these that hear the word of God, and do it.
Comments
Thy mother and thy brethren.Mark reminds us that some of Jesus friends thought that He was beside himself with the dream of messiahship. They tried to rescue Him from the crowds that followed Him (Mar. 3:21). It is possible that His brothers felt the same way about Him, for John says that they did not believe on Him (Joh. 7:5). But they were concerned about Him, for they had grown up with Him and must have had a very high regard for Him as their older brother. Of course, they did not know the facts about His birth that could not be shared with them by their mother until after His resurrection. It was the force of the resurrection that compelled them to believe that He was truly the Messiah. The Epistle of James begins with this statement: James, servant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ. If we are correct in assuming that this is James the Lords brother (Gal. 1:19), we have in this remarkable statement the genuine faith of Jesus brothers after they had become convinced that He was the Son of God.
What a wonderful older brother He must have been to them; what a wonderful Lord He became to them!
My mother and my brethren are these that hear the word of God.The parable of the sower shows us how to understand the Word of God. The parable of the lamp indicates that it can be understood. The lesson on spiritual kinship shows the results of hearing the Word of God and obeying it. Once, only the little family at Nazareth knew Jesus as their older Brother; now all who obey the word spoken by Him can enjoy this privilege. See Heb. 2:11-12.
Fuente: College Press Bible Study Textbook Series
(19-21) Then came to him his mother and his brethren.See Notes on Mat. 12:46-50, and Mar. 3:31-35. There cannot be any doubt that we have in those passages a report of the same incident; but it may be noted that St. Luke places it after the teaching by parables, and the other two Gospels before. In this instance the evidence preponderates in favour of the latter sequence of events.
For the press.Better, by reason of the multitude.
Fuente: Ellicott’s Commentary for English Readers (Old and New Testaments)
45. ATTEMPT OF THE MOTHER AND BROTHERS OF JESUS TO SEE HIM, Luk 8:19-21 .
(See notes on Mat 12:46-50; Mar 3:31-35.)
Fuente: Whedon’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
‘And there came to him his mother and brethren, and they could not come at him for the crowd.’
Mar 3:21 tells us that they came because they thought that He was ‘beside Himself’. Luke leaves it to be inferred. He had had much to do with Jesus’ mother and therefore was sympathetic in his treatment of her. However the tale had to be told. But he does make it clear that they had not come to join the crowd or to hear. Rather they wanted to ‘come at Him’. Their purpose was not concerned with the cause of the Kingly Rule of God.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
‘And there came to him his mother and brethren, and they could not come at him for the crowd.’
Mar 3:21 tells us that they came because they thought that He was ‘beside Himself’. Luke leaves that fact to be inferred. He had had much to do with Jesus’ mother and therefore was sympathetic in His treatment of her. However the tale had to be told. And he does make it clear that they had not come to join the crowd in order to hear Him. Rather they wanted to ‘come at Him’. Their purpose was not to approach Him in the cause of the Kingly Rule of God, but rather as basically agreeing with the people of His home town in their negative verdict against Him (Luk 4:28-30).
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Jesus’ Mother and Brothers Come To Hinder Him (8:19-21).
Luke gives no explanation as to why Jesus’ mother and brothers come seeking Him, but the fact that they are left on ‘the outside’ says all that needs to be said. In some way or another they had come to interfere with His ministry, taking advantage of their relationship with Him. Perhaps He remembered back to another time when His mother had interfered with His ministry when as a young boy He was in the Temple. Then she had had a certain right, even though He had to remind her that He was on earth to do His Father’s will. But now she had no right. And nor had His brothers. For God had called Him to His Messianic task.
One purpose of their mention here is as an illustration of those who were not receptive to the word of God, as in the parable. As the chiasmus shows us this incident is closely tied in with this whole passage. Originally Mary had eagerly received the word, but it had clearly become choked within her because of the cares of the world and a worldly-wise attitude. While she recognised His calling, she considered that He needed to be guided rather forcibly on how to fulfil it. Many mothers feel that their sons are never quite up to making final decisions about life, however old they get, and feel therefore that they must make their decisions for them so that they do not make mistakes. Her intentions were no doubt good. But they arose because she did not trust her son to make the right decisions. She had failed to genuinely recognise His Lordship. His brothers were more probably similar to the hardened ground. He was their kid brother Whom they had know all their lives. There was nothing that He could tell them. It would take the resurrection to break them down.
Another side of this is that it was an attempt to divert Jesus from the word. Their aim was to do precisely that. But it was of no avail, for the word was too deeply rooted.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
Jesus’ Own Family Do Not Receive Him: The Son of Man Is Rejected (8:19-21).
We have already considered these verses in connection with the previous part, but reintroduce them here because they also form the commencement of this new part. Here His own family remain ‘on the outside’. They are not ready to receive Him. They act as a warning that Jesus will not be accepted by everyone. In view of what chapter 9 contains of a continual threat of death this must be seen as significant.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
3). Jesus is Revealed As The Messiah Who Has Come With Power (8:19-9:36).
In this third part of Section 3 Jesus is Revealed as the glorious Messiah Who has come with power but will be involved in suffering and death (Luk 8:19 to Luk 9:36). It may be analysed as follows:
a He no longer owns responsibility to His own family who do not believe in Him, and are on the outside (His own do not recognise Him) (Luk 8:19-21).
b He is revealed as the One Who is from above by quelling the storm, revealing His power and authority over nature (Luk 8:22-25).
c He delivers the demoniac of a legion of demons, revealing His power and authority over the spirit world, and His ability to deliver from legions (Luk 8:26-39).
d He raises the dead, revealing His power and authority over death (Luk 8:30-56).
c He sends out His power to preach and to heal through the twelve, giving them power and authority over all demons, coming under threat from Herod (Luk 9:1-10).
b He is revealed as the One Who is from above by providing a miraculous sacramental meal, revealing again His power over nature and His power to feed men’s inner beings (Luk 9:11-17).
a He is confessed as Messiah by His followers, and revealed as such by being transfigured before, them revealing Who His true Father is, but at the same time He warns that He has come to suffer (Luk 9:18-36).
Note how in ‘a’ His natural family do not acknowledge Him while in the parallel His spiritual family and His Father do. In ‘b’ He reveals His power over nature so as to protect His own, in the parallel He reveals His power over nature so as to feed His own. In neither case is it for His own benefit. It is for theirs. In ‘c’ He delivers the demoniac from the tyranny of evil spirits, and in the parallel His disciples go out to deliver people from the same tyranny. Central over all is that He is the Giver of Life, and Lord over Death.
Fuente: Commentary Series on the Bible by Peter Pett
The true relatives of the Lord:
v. 19. Then came to Him His mother and His brethren, and could not come at Him for the press.
v. 20. And it was told Him by certain which said, Thy mother and Thy brethren stand without, desiring to see Thee.
v. 21. And He answered and said unto them, My mother and my brethren are these which hear the Word of God and do it. In the narrative above Luke had combined the discourses of two different occasions. This explains the fact that he here relates the incident concerning the relatives of Jesus. Christ was busily engaged with His teaching when there came an interruption. His mother and His brothers (cousins or half-brothers) had come down with the intention of taking Him away for some time and giving Him a much-needed vacation. Though they tried to get into the house, they could not so much as come near Him on account of the great multitude that filled every bit of available space. So the request of His relatives was passed along, until finally Jesus was told by those nearest to Him that His mother and His brothers wanted to see Him. There was no doubt that they meant well, but their understanding of the Savior’s work and ministry was very poor. And therefore their attempt, with all its implied kindness, was an unwarranted interference with the Lord’s business. He did not go out to them, nor did He permit them to disturb Him. He was about His Father’s business, and in the performance of those duties which had been given Him by His Father no man may disturb or hinder Him. Note: This is an example for us that we may not be discouraged or turned aside from our purpose when our work concerns the kingdom of God. Jesus here, after looking at His disciples that were sitting nearest to Him, gave an answer which could be transmitted to the waiting relatives: My mother and My brethren are these that hear and do the Word of God. The spiritual relationship with Christ through faith is far more intimate than any physical relationship possibly could be. It brings the believer into the closest communion with his Savior. Joh 15:1-6.
Fuente: The Popular Commentary on the Bible by Kretzmann
Luk 8:19. Then came to him his mother Our Lord’s mother made this visit probably with a design to carry him to Nazareth, where she might hope that he would work miracles, and bless his countrymen with the benefits which he so freely dispensed wherever he came. She seems to have succeeded in her design; for not long after this he went away into his own country, as Matthew informs us, Mat 13:53. Or, if this supposition be not allowed, perhaps his relations might come to him, from an apprehension that a continual fatigue of preaching might hurt his health; and were therefore desirous of his resting awhile, to refresh himself. Dr. Macknight is of opinion, that this was the second time in which Mary shewed her anxiety for her Son; the account in St. Matthew being introduced before the parable of the sower, and this in St. Luke after it.
Fuente: Commentary on the Holy Bible by Thomas Coke
Luk 8:19-21 . See on Mat 12:46-50 ; Mar 3:31-35 . Luke has the section in accordance with Mark, but in a shortened form, [114] without anything to indicate chronological sequence or connection of subject, and he gives it a different position.
Luk 8:20 . ] by its being said . See Winer, p. 519 [E. T. 736]; Bernhardy, p. 481; Borenemann, Schol . p. 53.
Luk 8:21 . ] my mother and my brethren are those who, etc.
[114] Therefore it is not to be said, with Baur, Evang . p. 467 f., that Luke purposely omitted the words in Matthew: . . . . ., in an interest adverse to the Twelve. It is not the Twelve alone that are meant in Matthew.
Fuente: Heinrich August Wilhelm Meyer’s New Testament Commentary
XXX
OUR LORD’S GREAT MINISTRY IN GALILEE
Part V THE SIN AGAINST THE HOLY SPIRIT (Continued)
Harmony pages 59-60, same as for the preceding chapter and Mat 12:38-50 ; Mar 3:31-35 ; Luk 8:19-21 .
We are now ready to consider the unpardonable sin itself. Here, at the outset we meet a difficulty that needs to be removed. It is a question concerning the true text of the latter clause of Mar 3:29 . Our common version reads: “But is in danger of eternal damnation,” while the revised version reads: “But is guilty of an eternal sin.” Evidently these two renderings cannot be differences in translating the same Greek words. It is unnecessary to cite all the variations of the text in the several manuscripts on this short clause. For our present purpose we need to note only one. The revised version, on the authority of older and more reliable manuscripts than were before the King James translators, recognized as the true text hamartematos instead of kriseos. The former is rendered “sin,” the latter “damnation.” But the difficulty is not yet entirely explained. All the texts have the same Greek word enochos , which the common version renders “in danger of.” The question arises: How can there be such vast difference in rendering this one word? The difference is great and obvious since “in danger of” expresses a mere liability which may be averted, while “guilty of” expresses a positive, settled transaction. This difficulty is grammatical, and not textual so far as the word enochos is concerned, but is textual when we look at the case of the noun connected with it. If the noun in the true text is in one case, say the dative, then “in danger of,” “liable to” or ” exposed to” would fairly translate enochos . But if the noun with which it is connected is in a different case, say the genitive, then “guilty of” is the better translation. Well, it so happens that in the true text that is, the one so regarded by such scholars as Lachmann, Tischendorf, Tregelles, Alford, and others, and the one so accepted by both the English and American companies of the revisers of the new version in this text the noun hamartematos, rendered “sin,” is in the genitive case, hence enochos hamartematos with its modifying words is rightly translated “guilty of an eternal sin,” while enochos kriseos with the same modifying words might well be rendered “in danger of eternal judgment.” So that in the true text we find not only a different word meaning “sin,” instead of “damnation” or “judgment,” but we find that word in a case which will necessarily give color to the meaning of another word connected with it, about which there is no textual difficulty.
We accept, then, the text and rendering of the revised version. We hold it as the word of God, that whoever blasphemes the Holy Spirit is at once, not liable to, but guilty of an eternal sin.” What, then, is an eternal sin? Does it mean an “eternal sinning”? That is, does the perpetuity refer to the committing? Evidently not. Doubtless one who has blasphemed the Holy Spirit will, as a matter of fact, continue to sin, but the language under consideration refers not to such fact. An eternal sin, as here intended, is an act already completed, whose guilt and judgment have already been incurred. It is called an eternal sin because its penalty can never be blotted out. Any sin would be eternal in this sense, if there were no possible way to escape its punishment. A sin becomes eternal, then, when all gracious means of forgiveness are withdrawn. For example: David committed a great sin. Its penalties, or chastisements, lasted to the border of this world. But it was not an eternal sin, because those penalties had an end. They did not continue forever. Grace stopped them with this life and blotted them out forever. What is blotted out has no existence. But the sin against the Holy Spirit is eternal, because thereby the sinner at once puts himself beyond the only means of pardon. Remember the principles already stated: Outside of grace no salvation; outside of Christ no grace; outside of the Spirit no Christ. Or without regeneration, justification, and sanctification, no salvation; and apart from the Spirit no regeneration, justification, and sanctification.
We have seen that as human governments become more civilized very few offenses are made capital, and these must be very heinous in character. Moreover, the conditions under which such crimes are possible are very stringent, to wit: discretionary age, sanity, premeditation, and malice. Not only so, but the accused is additionally hedged about by a liberal construction of all provocation and of the right of self-defense, and of the amount and character of the evidence necessary to conviction. Now since this benevolent modification of hitherto rigorous human law has been brought about by the influence of the Bible, we would naturally expect to find in that good book that the only unpardonable offense against divine law calls for a rare degree of heinousness, and such extraordinary conditions under which the sin could be possible, as would on their face vindicate the divine procedure from all appearances of harshness, with all right thinking intelligences. This high degree of heinousness and these extraordinary conditions are just what we do find.
It is not a sin to be committed by a thoughtless child immature youth nor by one of feeble mind, nor by the ignorant. It must be knowingly done, wilfully done, maliciously done, presumptuously done.
The whole matter may be made more forcible by stating clearly and considering separately the constituent elements or conditions of the unpardonable sin:
It is a sin of character crystallized in opposition to God.
By this is meant such a confirmed state of heart, and such fixedness of evil character, such a blunting or searing of moral perceptions as mark the incorrigibly wicked. Indeed, this reflection embodies the essence of the sin.
It is no impulsive, no hasty act, but proceeds from such a state of heart, such a character, such a servitude to evil habits, such a violent distortion or utter perversion of moral vision, such an insensibility to spiritual impressions as would indicate the hopelessness of benefit in the continuance of remedial appliances, since there is a point beyond which we cannot go without destroying individuality and moral agency.
The case in point is abundantly illustrative. Let us carefully examine each step of our way just here. Let us be sure we are right before we go ahead. Milton not inaptly represents the crystallization of Satan’s character in five words: “Evil, be thou my good.” Isaiah, in rapt, prophetic vision, forecasts the very characters fitted to commit the unpardonable sin. He denounces six woes which may well be compared to the eight woes denounced by our Lord (Isa 5:8-23 ; Mat 23:13-36 ). They all refer to character incorrigibly evil, such as (a) inordinate covetousness and selfishness that join house to house and field to field until there is no place for other people to have a home; (b) inveterate and confirmed drunkards that rise early and sit up late to inflame themselves with strong wines until they regard not the work of the Lord, neither consider the operation of his hands; (c) incorrigible sinners that draw iniquity with cords of vanity and defy the judgments of God; (d) moral perverts that justify the wicked and take away the righteousness of the righteous; (e) inveterate vanity and self-conceit; (f) but especially this one: “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil, that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter!” Now this answers to Milton’s devil: “Evil, be thou my good.” And it was this very distortion and perversion of moral vision of which the Pharisees of this passage were guilty, and which constituted the essence of their blasphemy or slander of God. They called the Holy Spirit an unclean spirit. Upon this point the testimony of Mark is explicit. They are expressly declared to be guilty of an eternal sin, “Because they said, He hath an unclean spirit.” But the words were significant only because they were symptoms of expressions of a state of heart a heart of overflowing, implacable hate and malice.
So, in the context, our Saviour declares: “How can ye, being evil, speak good things? For out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh.” It is therefore evidently out of harmony with the Bible concept of blasphemy against the Holy Spirit, that thoughtless boys and girls, who sometimes in revival meetings manifest an irreverent spirit, do thereby commit the unpardonable sin.
I have myself conversed with a now genuinely good and converted mother, who, when young, once conspired with nine or ten other girls to practice on the credulity of a conceited young preacher by joining the church in a body and by being baptized, when the whole procedure was meant for a practical Joke. Some of these parties are now living and one of them is the exemplary wife of a Baptist preacher. The irreverence and impiety of the act were not realized until afterward. This was no blasphemy of the Holy Spirit. They were immature, ill taught girls, without malicious intent against God, and some others of them, as I have since learned, afterward most cordially repented of their great sin and received the gracious forgiveness of the Heavenly Father whose institutions and ordinances had been outraged by their folly. If we compare with this incident the act of Ananias and Sapphira, we may readily perceive the difference in degree of guilt.
It is an old proverb: “Nature has no leaps.” Character is a result of long working forces tending to permanency of type. We have thus reached a view of the first and most important element in this awful sin an element of character resulting from cumulative forces and habits.
It is a sin against spiritual knowledge. Far, far from us, however, be the thought that every sin against light or knowledge is unpardonable. Do allow me to make this very clear and very emphatic, because a host of good people have tortured themselves needlessly just here by misapprehension. They are conscious of having sinned, and of having sinned when they knew beforehand that what they were tempted to do and did was wrong. Misapplying the Scripture they have said to themselves: “The unpardonable sin is a sin against knowledge. I have sinned against knowledge. Have I not committed the unpardonable sin?” Here again let us step carefully. Let us be sure we are right before we go ahead. Look closely at a little catechism mark the emphatic words: The unpardonable sin is a sin against what knowledge? Against what degree of that knowledge? Is every sin against even that particular kind of knowledge necessarily unpardonable? Note the emphasis on the discriminating word in this second constituent element of the unpardonable sin. It is a sin against spiritual knowledge. How else could it be a sin against the Holy Spirit as specially distinguished from and contrasted with a sin against the Father or the Son?
Let us illustrate by the case of Paul. (a) According to his own testimony he was, before his conversion, “a blasphemer, and a persecutor and injurious” (1Ti 1:13 ). (b) By persecution and torture he “compelled others to blaspheme” (Act 26:11 ). (c) Yet he says, “I obtained mercy because I did it ignorantly in unbelief” (1Ti 1:13 ). What are the salient points of this case? We find here first an indisputable case of blasphemy, but it is blasphemy against the Son, which this passage declares to be pardonable. Next we find a case of ignorance which again makes the sin pardonable. This second finding is most pertinent to the matter in hand. It furnishes the clue, which properly followed leads us safely out of the maze of discussion on the unpardonable sin. What was Paul’s ignorance? We cannot deny that he had the Old Testament with all its shadows, symbols and prophecies pointing to the Messiah. We cannot deny that he had knowledge of the historical and argumentative proofs, certifying Jesus to be that Messiah. Wherein then was he ignorant? In this material point: Light from the Holy Spirit had not convinced him that Jesus was the Messiah. He had not spiritual knowledge and hence had not sinned against the Holy Spirit. In his soul he thought Jesus was an imposter. He “verily thought within himself he was doing God’s service” in warring against Jesus. His conscience was void of offense. Compare this with the demons: “We know thee, who thou art, thou Holy One of God.” Paul hated Jesus from an utter misconception of him, and loved him when the misconception was removed. The demons hated him the more, that they did not misconceive his mission and character. Because they knew he was the Messiah and because they painfully felt the presence of his holiness as a wolf is shamed or an owl is pained by the light; therefore they hated him.
Just here we approach a borderland whose precise boundary line has never been fixed by theological controversy. And yet in this narrow strip lies the unpardonable sin. Where the great have stumbled let guides of less degree walk humbly, circumspectedly, and prayerfully. I trust, at least, to make myself intelligible here. Some hyper-Calvinists hold that all subjects of influence from the Holy Spirit are necessarily saved, basing their arguments on such scriptures as, “Being confident of this very thing, that he who hath begun a good work in you will perform it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phi 1:6 ). From which they argue that the Holy Spirit never really touches any man except those pre-ordained to salvation. I hold unswervingly to the doctrine that in every case of genuine conversion the good work thus commenced will be graciously completed. But, in my judgment, the Bible is very far from teaching that the lost never had any spiritual light never were subject to any impressions made by the Holy Spirit. Indeed, it would seem impossible otherwise to commit the unpardonable sin against the Holy Spirit.
With all light comes responsibility to accept it and walk in it. With all light comes liability. As said the Saviour, “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not the sin: but now they have no cloak for their sin” (Joh 15:22 ). Unquestionable the degree of both guilt and penalty is measured by the degree of light against which one sins. This sentiment readily finds universal acceptance. It accords with our instinctive and intuitive ideas of justice. Certainly the Bible, at least, is very clear on this point. On what other principle could our Lord declare the punishment of Sodom and Gomorrah, Tyre and Sidon, more tolerable in the day of judgment than the punishment of the cities which rejected him and his servants (Mat 10:15 ; Mat 11:20-24 ; Mar 6:11 ; Luk 10:12-14 ) ? How else account for the difference in penalty between “a few stripes” and “many stripes” when the act of offense is precisely the same in both cases (Luk 12:47-48 ) ? How otherwise account for David’s distinction between “secret sins and presumptuous sins”? How otherwise could Paul represent God as “winking at” [i. e. a mercifully overlooking] “times of ignorance” (Act 17:30 ) ? How else could the men of Nineveh and the Queen of Sheba condemn at the judgment the generation that rejected Jesus (Mat 12:41-42 )? Now mark the application of this argument to the matter under consideration. Chorazin, Bethsaida, Capernaum, and Jerusalem were guiltier than Sodom and Tyre, because a greater light, in a greater person than Lot, Solomon or Jonah, was in their midst.
But our Saviour himself teaches that the light is brighter still when the Holy Spirit works. And hence a sin against the Son of man may be pardonable while a sin against the Holy Spirit is unpardonable. But as Lot, Jonah, Solomon, and Jesus, the light-bearers, were all personally present in a way to be known and felt, so it must follow that the Holy Spirit, as bearer of a brighter light, must be personally present in a way to be known and impressively felt. Therefore none can commit this unpardonable sin against the Holy Spirit unless he has known and felt his presence as a light-bearer. I say the presence of the Holy Spirit must be known and felt. The mind must be convinced of his presence, and the heart must feel it, and the inmost judgment of conscience must acknowledge it. This is precisely why the unpardonable sin is oftenest committed in great revivals. It is a sin against light spiritual light light known and felt, light so painfully, gloriously bright that a man must run from it, blaspheme or be converted. What miracle affecting only the physical man can equal the Spirit’s display of power over mind and soul in a great revival? When he fills a house or a whole city; when he is demonstrably convicting and converting on the right and left; when strong men are broken down; when hard hearts are melted; when long-sealed fountains of tears are opened; when hardened sinners fall as oak trees before a sweeping tempest; when all around the guilty confess their sins; when the saved rise up with love-lighted eyes and glorified faces to joyfully declare that God for Christ’s sake has forgiven their sins ah I the power the felt Presence! Then some sinner, seeing and knowing and feeling the truth of it all, pierced through and through with the arrows of conviction, riven to the marrow with the bolt of demonstration, trembling like Belshazzar before the mysterious, awful, but certain Presence, overwhelmed by memory of a thousand sins, yet so knowing, so feeling, clings with death-grip to some besetting sin and to justify rejection of Jesus, so witnessed by the Holy Spirit, lies unto God as to his real motives of rejection, reviles the Holy One, turns away and dies forever. Yes, a soul dies! As I have been impressed with the presence of physical death, so, only far more vividly, have I felt the presence of spiritual death. Once during a great meeting I felt it; I felt a soul had died that I was in the presence of the hopelessly lost.
It must be a sin of malice. In the special case before us the presence of malice is most evident. One expression of our Lord sufficiently tells the whole story: “Ye offspring of vipers I” See the snake in his coil! Mark his cold, steely eye of hate! Behold the lightning play of his forked tongue! See the needle fang and the venom of secreted poison! That snake means death to his innocent victim. So Satan’s devotee, about to commit the unpardonable sin. Hear him: “I hate this light. It exposes my secret sins. It strips me of my mask of self-respect. It humiliates me. This light shows how sensual, how groveling, how beastly, how devilish I really am. It exposes my chains. It advertises my bondage to pride, lust, and money. It makes me loathesome to myself. I hate this painful light, this awful purity. 0, prince of darkness, restore my self-esteem, re-establish my respectability!”
Hear Satan’s rejoinder: “You must away from that light. You cannot put it out. It is the unquenchable shining of immaculate holiness. Here is your only expedient: Lock all the doors of your soul. Close the blinds of every window. Pull down every curtain. Now call that light ‘& superstition.’ Call your rejection of it ‘superior intelligence,’ or ‘science,’ or ‘higher criticism,’ or ‘progress,’ or ‘broadmindedness,’ or whatever you will. Put evil for good and good for evil. Blaspheme. And that light will never disturb you any more.”
Ah, no! Never more. “The die is cast. The Rubicon is crossed that soul is free no more.” In his case is fulfilled the scripture: “My Spirit shall not always strive with man.” He has joined that outlawed host to whom this scripture applies: “Ye stiff-necked and uncircumcised in heart and ears, ye do always resist the Holy Spirit.” Here is genuine striving and genuine resisting. The Spirit strives the man resists. The gnashing upon Stephen with their teeth expresses desperate malice. It was malice proceeding from deep conviction that Stephen was right and they were wrong. It followed “being cut to the heart.”
The sin must be wilful. This involves the double idea of premeditation and decision. The mind has not only deliberated it has chosen. The love of pleasure, or of money, or of power, is deliberately preferred to the love of God. The “will” settles the matter. However long the time, complex the forces, or inscrutable the processes which determine the resultant character which makes the decision, that decision itself is one definite act of the will. The preparation of mind and heart which fitted the man to make such awful choice may indeed have extended over a period of years, the man meanwhile waxing worse and worse, the heart indurating, the soul petrifying. Yet, in one moment, at last, the border of possible salvation is crossed over forever. The “will” steps across the line. “I will not to do the will of God.” “I will not go to Jesus. I will not have this Man to reign over me.”
It is a sin of presumption. It is not difficult to get a clear idea of the meaning of this word. An irreverent, overweening, daring confidence for which there are no just grounds. Presumption draws false conclusions from God’s forbearance. Because sentence against an evil deed is not speedily executed the presumptuous heart is fully set to do evil. God suspended judgment that the man might repent. The sinner concludes that God does not mark iniquity. So many times has he trifled with the overtures of mercy) he presumes that he may continue to trifle with impunity. God’s patience, erroneously construed, has made him irreverent and daring. He can recall, and despise as he recalls, the number of times he has been touched somewhat in other meetings. He presumes that what has been will be again, in case it becomes necessary to revise his decision. Time enough for that if one chooses to turn back later on. Nothing tells him that this is the last time. He presumes as if he had a lease on life and as if the sovereign and eternal Spirit of God must come to his call.
Just here I desire to quote a scripture which some high human authorities affirm to be applicable to the subject under consideration. I very greatly respect them and very readily concede my own fallibility of judgment. But where my convictions are strong I speak. Here is the scripture: “For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins. But a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. He that despised Moses’ law died without mercy under two or three witnesses. Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace” (Heb 10:26-29 ). My present brief comment on the passage is:
There appears to be a manifest reference, in some sort, to apostasy. I mean by apostasy the final loss of all that is accomplished by regeneration and justification.
It clearly teaches, and for obvious reasons, that in case of such a loss, renewal would be impossible. The remedial resources of grace in such case being completely exhausted, there would be nothing more to draw upon for recovery.
But the reference is not to such calamity as objectively possible. The context and all the letter to the Hebrews as unequivocally teach the final perseverance of all the saints as does the letter to the Romans, or any other scripture. And to my mind the Bible teaches no doctrine more clearly than the ultimate salvation of all the elect. The reference then is to apostasy as hypothetically and even, perhaps, subjectively possible.
If then the reference is to apostasy, though not hypothetically and not really possible, how can it be applicable to the sin under discussion? This pertinent question I will now answer. While only a hypothesis concerning one thing, it yet contains an argument fairly applicable to another thing. It discusses wilful sin after enlightenment. The greater the enlightenment, the greater the sin. In the hypothetical, but actually impossible case of apostasy, there would be no more sacrifice for sin. The blood of Christ, and the Spirit power, beyond which grace has nothing to offer, would have been found inefficacious after fair trial. Now apply this same principle of argument to an unregenerate man. To him the Father’s love is offered and rejected. To him Christ as the highest expression of that love is offered and rejected. To him, the Spirit’s testimony to Christ is offered in such a way that he knows and feels that Spirit’s presence and power, and in such a way that his conscience recognizes and confesses the truth of the testimony. But from love of sin and hatred of known truth he blasphemes that Holy Spirit. Then in his case it would be true that “there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin,” not because he had experimentally tried its efficacy and used up all its power to save, but that from his rejection of such sacrifice in the blaze of spiritual light demonstrating its efficacy, such efficacy is no longer available to him. On this passage Dr. Kendrick says: “If others fall away who have reached a very high grade of spiritual enlightenment, who have experienced all of the divine influence but regeneration, their recovery is morally impossible. God will not bless the efforts for their renewal but, like the field that has answered the rains and sunshine only with thorns and thistles, will give them over to the burning.” (See American Commentary Hebrews.)
Now our theory of the unpardonable sin necessarily supposes spiritual light to make it a sin against the Spirit, and a very high degree of spiritual light to make it so heinous as to constitute it the only unpardonable sin. That there is shed forth such spiritual light, that there is put forth such spiritual influence light which may be seen and influence which may be felt, and yet light and influence which, through the sinner’s fault, do not eventuate in salvation is the clear and abundant teaching of the Bible. I know of no great theologian in the Baptist ranks who denies it. I refer to such acknowledged teachers of systematic theology as Gill, Boyce, Strong, Dagg, Hovey, Pendleton, and Robinson, and among the Presbyterians such authors as Calvin, Hodge, and Shedd all of whose books I have studied on this specific point.
We may here, I think, conclude the analysis of this sin. Its conditions are clearly before us: The age of discretion, a sound mind, a high degree of spiritual light, a character fixed in opposition to God, a life under the dominion of confirmed evil habits. Its constituent elements are: Premeditation, or deliberation, a decisive choice, presumption and malice. We come now to consider the state of one guilty of this eternal sin. This is an important phase of the subject. Such a state surely evidences itself in some way. The marks which distinguish it from other states ought, one would naturally suppose, to be sufficiently visible for recognition. As an introduction to my discussion of these marks it is thought appropriate to give the most remarkable poem on the subject in all literature. It is Alexander’s hymn:
There is a time, we know not when, A point, we know not where, That marks the destiny of men, To glory or despair.
There is a line by un unseen, That crosses every path, The hidden boundary between God’s patience and His wrath.
To pass that limit is to die To die as if by stealth; It does not quench the beaming eye, Nor pale the glow of health.
The conscience may be still at ease, The spirit light and gay; That which is pleasing still may please, And care be thrust away.
But on that forehead God hath set Indelibly a mark, Unseen by man, for man as yet Is blind and in the dark.
And yet the doomed man’s path below, Like Eden may have bloomed; He did not, does not, will not know Or feel that he is doomed.
He knows, be feels that all is well, And every fear is calmed; He lives, he dies, he wakes in hell, Not only doomed, but damned.
Oh I where is this mysterious bourne, By which our path is crossed? Beyond which God himself hath sworn, That he who goes is lost?
How far may we go on in sin? How long will God forbear? Where does hope end, and where begin The confines of despair?
An answer from the skies is sent; Ye that from God depart, While it is called to-day, repent, And harden not your heart.
Confining my own diagnosis strictly to the Scriptures I would say that the state of one who has committed the unpardonable sin is one of awful deprivation. We say “Darkness is deprivation of light; death deprivation of life.” The deprivation in this case is:
Of the Holy Spirit whom he has reviled and despised. To that Spirit God has said, “Let him alone; he is wedded to his idols.” This insures his death. This makes his sin eternal. He cannot now ever find Christ, the door. Without the Spirit he can never repent, believe, be regenerated, be justified, or sanctified. “There remaineth no more sacrifice for sin,” that is, to him there is no Christ. I think that there are such men today, from whom the Holy Spirit has taken his everlasting flight.
It is a deprivation of the prayers of God’s people. God who said to his Spirit, “Let him alone,” now says to his people who would pray for such a man, “Let me alone.” Awful words: Let him alone let me alone!
The friends of Job had sinned, but not beyond the reach of prayer (Job 42:7-10 ). Paul had sinned by persecution and blasphemy of Jesus, but not beyond the reach of Stephen’s dying prayer: “Lord Jesus, lay not this sin to their charge” (Act 7:60 ). The crucifiers of Jesus had sinned, but not all of them beyond the reach of his dying prayer: “Father forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luk 23:34 ). But God’s people cannot pray acceptably without the Spirit’s prompting (Rom 8:26-27 ). The Spirit never prompts one to pray against the will of God. Hear the word of God (1Jn 5:16 ): “If any man see his brother sin a sin which is not unto death, he shall ask, and he shall give him life for them that sin not unto death. There is a sin unto death: I do not say that he shall pray for it.” (Jer 15:1 ): “Then said the Lord unto me, Though Moses and Samuel stood before me, yet my mind could not be toward this people; cast them out of my sight, and let them go forth.”
It is a deprivation of the protection usually afforded to the wicked by the presence of the righteous. The presence of ten righteous men would have protected Sodom and Gomorrah from overthrow (Gen 18:23-32 ). The righteous are the salt of the earth. Their presence preserves it from immediate destruction. Paul and Christ taught that when the righteous are garnered off the earth then comes the deluge of fire. But one who has committed the unpardonable sin, at once is deprived of all protection arising from the contiguity of the righteous. To repeat a scripture: “Though Noah, Daniel, and Job were in the city, as I live saith the Lord they shall deliver neither son nor daughter; they shall but deliver their own souls by their righteousness” (Eze 14:20 ). No Spirit, no prayers) no protection.
It is a deprivation of spiritual sensations. What is meant here? Speaking naturally, our sensations are from our five senses. One who is blind loses the sensations that come from sight; one who is deaf, those from hearing. So with taste, and smell, and touch or feeling. A body that cannot see, hear, feel, taste or smell is dead to the world around it. So with the senses of the inner man. When the spiritual or moral perceptive faculties are so paralyzed that they cannot take hold of God, that soul is dead to God, however much it may be alive to the devil. Having eyes it sees not. Having ears it hears not. Having a heart it feels not. The conscience is seared as with a hot iron. They are past feeling (Eph 4:18-19 ) : “Having the understanding darkened, being alienated from the life of God, through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart: who being past feeling having given themselves over to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness.” Old soldiers recall that when mortification took place in a wounded limb there was no longer any pain. The wounded man felt unusually well. It was the prelude of death.
In his book, Over the Teacups, Oliver Wendell Holmes says: “Our old doctors used to give an opiate which they called ‘the black drop.’ It was stronger than laudanum, and, in fact, a dangerously powerful narcotic. Something like this is that potent drug in Nature’s pharmacopeia which she reserves for the time of need, the later stages of life. She commonly begins administering it at about the time of the ‘grand climacteric,’ the ninth septennial period, the sixty-third year. More and more freely she gives it, as the years go on, to her gray-haired children, until, if they last long enough, every faculty is benumbed, and they drop off quietly into sleep under its benign influence. Time, the inexorable, does not threaten them with the scythe so often as with the sandbag. He does not cut, but he stuns and stupefies.”
But the “black drop” administered by Satan, when, at any age, the unpardonable sin is committed, has no such kindly intent. It puts one past feeling as to heaven, but full of sensation as to hell. There are no kindlings to repentance, however keen may be the biting and sting of remorse. It is quite possible that one who is past feeling to spiritual impressions may dream as Shakespeare’s Macbeth and Richard III , or Scott’s “Glossin” in Guy Mannering. And so to such a one there may remain nothing “but a certain fearful looking for of judgment and fiery indignation which shall devour the adversaries.” What time these apprehensions last they are the foretaste of hell.
It is not only a state of deprivation, but of positive infliction. When “the Spirit of the Lord departed from Saul, an evil spirit from the Lord troubled him” (1Sa 16:14 ). To the man who closes his eyes to the Spirit’s testimony, God sends judicial blindness and hardness of heart. Not only so, when the Lord refused to answer Saul, “neither by dreams, nor by Urim, nor by prophets,” he allowed him to return to spiritualism and “inquire of one who had a familiar spirit” (1Sa 2:5-7 ). God chooses the delusions of the hopelessly lost. He sends them a strong delusion that they may believe a lie and be damned (Isa 66:4 ; 2Th 2:11 ). This delusion may be spiritualism, or science, or philosophy, or anything else. Whatever it is, for the time being it fills the vision and the heart. It points out a path “whose steps take hold on death and hell,” and though the end thereof is death, it seems right to him.
Such, I think, is the Bible teaching concerning the unpardonable sin. It is a sin of today as well as yesterday. The liability of its commission is greatly increased during revivals of religion.
That hazard is unspeakably awful when men know and feel God’s presence and power, and though convicted and trembling, turn away with a lie on their lips and hatred of holiness in their hearts.
To younger people would I urgently say:
Beware of those insidious beginnings which tend to the formation of an evil character. Cultivate most assiduously such tenderness of heart, such susceptibility to religious impressions as you now have. Follow every prompting toward heaven. Transmute every spiritual emotion to action. Beware of becoming hardened. Beware of dominant passions, such as the love of pleasure, the pride of opinion, the pride of life, the love of money. Distrust as an enemy, anything or anybody, whose influence keeps you apart from the use of the means of salvation. Shun, as you would a tiger’s Jungle, all associations that corrupt good manners. Beware of all people who make a mock at sin and speak irreverently of holy things.
Oh, the beginnings! The beginnings I These are the battlegrounds of hope. Hear today, turn today, escape for thy life today. For when once under the dominion of pleasure, or lust, or wine, or pride, or especially the love of money, that root of all kinds of evil, then O then how easily, how unconsciously you may commit the unpardonable sin.
And then, though the world were full of Bibles to the stars, and Christians more numerous than the sands and forest leaves, and every church ablaze with revivals for you there remaineth no more sacrifice for sin. You are now and forever lost.
In response to this discussion of our Lord upon the sin against the Holy Spirit the Pharisees demanded of him a sign, to which he replied that no sign should be given them except the sign of Jonah, i. e., his burial and resurrection. This test of his messiahship he submitted time and again both to his enemies and to his disciples. Here he again announces a principle of the judgment, viz: that men will be judged according to the light they have here. The Ninevites and the queen of the south will stand up in the judgment and condemn the Jews of his day because with less light than these Jews had they responded to God’s call while that generation rejected their light. Then he closes that discussion with a comparison of the Jewish nation to a man whom the evil spirit volunteered to leave and re-enter at pleasure with the assurance that every time he returned, after a leave of absence, the last state was worse than the first.
It is necessary to add a word of comment on Section 50 (Mat 12:46-50 ; Mar 3:31-35 ; Luk 8:19-21 ) of the Harmony. Here on the same day and on this same occasion the mother of Jesus and his brothers come to him for an interview, ostensibly to arrest him from so great a zeal. Perhaps they thought he ought to stop and eat, but he, knowing their purpose toward him, announced the principle of spiritual relation above the earthly relation that whosoever would do the will of God was nearer to him than earthly relations. What a lesson for us!
QUESTIONS
1. What is the difficulty of Mar 3:29 and what is its solution?
2. What is the meaning of “eternal sin”?
3. By whom and how must this sin be committed?
4. What is the first constituent element, or condition, of the unpardonable sin? Give biblical illustrations and proof.
5. What is the second constituent element? Explain and illustrate by the case of Paul.
6. What theological controversy here and what is the author’s position?
7. What principle of judgment here involved and what is the biblical proof?
8. Describe the spiritual conditions under which a soul may commit the unpardonable sin.
9. What is the third element and what is the proof? Recite the struggle of a soul on the verge of this awful sin and Satan’s rejoinder.
10. What is the fourth element and what is involved in it?
11. What is the fifth element and what its meaning? Illustrate.
12. What passage of Scripture here introduced, what is the author’s points of interpretation, and how does this passage apply to the subject under discussion?
13. What is the state of one who is guilty of the unpardonable sin and what poem quoted on this point? Quote it.
14. What are the items of deprivation which constitute the state of such a soul? Explain each.
15. In response to our Lord’s discussion of this sin against the Holy Spirit what demand did the Pharisees make, what was our Lord s reply and what does he mean?
16. How does our Lord here characterize these Jewish people?
17. What was the incident of Section 50 of the Harmony and what is its lesson for us?
Fuente: B.H. Carroll’s An Interpretation of the English Bible
19 Then came to him his mother and his brethren, and could not come at him for the press.
Ver. 19. See Mat 12:46 ; Mar 3:31 .
Fuente: John Trapp’s Complete Commentary (Old and New Testaments)
19 21. ] THE MOTHER AND BRETHREN OF JESUS SEEK TO SEE HIM. Mat 12:46-50 . Mar 3:31-35 . The incident is introduced here without any precise note of sequence; not so in Matt., who says, after the discourse in ch. 12, and Mark having before stated, Luk 8:21 , that His relations went out to lay hold of Him, for they said, “He is beside Himself.” We must conclude therefore that they have it in the exact place , and that Luke only inserts it among the events of this series of discourses, as indeed it was, but without fixing its place . His account is abridged, and without marks of an eyewitness, which the others have.
Fuente: Henry Alford’s Greek Testament
Luk 8:19-21 . Mother and brethren (Mat 12:46-50 , Mar 3:31-35 ). Given in a different connection from that in Mt. and Mk. The connection here seems purely topical: the visit of the friends of Jesus gives Him occasion to indicate who are they who represent the good, fruitful soil (Luk 8:21 ).
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
Luk 8:19 . : a crowd seems unsuitable here (though not in Mt. and Mk.), for just before, Jesus has been conversing with His disciples in private.
Fuente: The Expositors Greek Testament by Robertson
NASB (UPDATED) TEXT: Luk 8:19-21
19And His mother and brothers came to Him, and they were unable to get to Him because of the crowd. 20And it was reported to Him, “Your mother and Your brothers are standing outside, wishing to see You.” 21But He answered and said to them, “My mother and My brothers are these who hear the word of God and do it.”
Luk 8:21 “My mother and My brothers” This shocking statement shows Jesus’ self-understanding and the radical nature of biblical faith that can only be described in terms of a new birth, a new family. Family life was such an important aspect of Jewish life (cf. J. Duncan, M. Derrett, Jesus’ Audience, pp. 38-45) that to use this of fellow believers is significant. Believers relate to deity as family members; God is Father, Jesus is the unique Son and Savior, but believers, even the least, are children of God too!
“who hear the word of God and do it” This reflects the Hebrew word Shema (cf. Deu 5:1; Deu 6:4), which means hear so as to do (cf. Luk 11:28). This is the emphasis of the book of James. Eternal life has observable characteristics!
Fuente: You Can Understand the Bible: Study Guide Commentary Series by Bob Utley
Then came, &c. For the motive, see Mar 3:21 -with Mar 3:31-35. Compare Mat 12:47.
could not = were not able to.
come at Him = fall in with Him. Greek suntunchano. Occurs only here in N.T.
for = on account of. Greek. dia. App-104. Luk 8:2.
press = crowd.
Fuente: Companion Bible Notes, Appendices and Graphics
19-21.] THE MOTHER AND BRETHREN OF JESUS SEEK TO SEE HIM. Mat 12:46-50. Mar 3:31-35. The incident is introduced here without any precise note of sequence; not so in Matt., who says, after the discourse in ch. 12, and Mark having before stated, Luk 8:21, that His relations went out to lay hold of Him,-for they said, He is beside Himself. We must conclude therefore that they have it in the exact place, and that Luke only inserts it among the events of this series of discourses, as indeed it was, but without fixing its place. His account is abridged, and without marks of an eyewitness, which the others have.
Fuente: The Greek Testament
Luk 8:19-21
17. THE KINDRED OF JESUS
Luk 8:19-21
19 And there came to him his mother and brethren,-Parallel records of this incident are found in Mat 12:46-50 and Mar 3:31-35. The place of this visit is not mentioned, but it is generally supposed that it was in or near Capernaum. “His mother and brethren” came to see him. Both Matthew and Mark place the time of this visit before the speaking of the parable of the sower; usually Luke follows Mark’s order, but he does not do so here. At first the brothers of Jesus, who were younger sons of Joseph and Mary, were not unfriendly to the work of Jesus, as seen in Joh 2:12, when they with the mother of Jesus are with him and the small group of disciples in Capernaum after the wedding in Cana. But as Jesus went on with his work and was rejected at Nazareth (Luk 4:16-31), there developed an evident disbelief in his claims on the part of the brothers who ridiculed him six months before the end (Joh 7:5). It seems that at this time they had come with Mary to take Jesus home out of the excitement of the crowds, perhaps sharing in the sentiment of others, that he was beside himself. (Mar 3:21.)
20 And it was told him,-Jesus was in the crowd; he was busy teaching and healing; someone brought him word that his mother and brethren were desiring to speak to him. Who the “brethren” were has caused much discussion. Many think that they were only “cousins” or near relatives, but not “brothers,” that is, sons of Mary. Others think that they were sons of Joseph by a former marriage, hence only half brothers in a legal sense. The natural meaning would be that they were his own “brothers.” There is no evidence that Mary had no other children, and the easy, natural construction of this and the parallel accounts is that they were his brothers in the flesh. This view must be accepted until some valid objection is established against it.
21 But he answered and said unto them,-Here Jesus makes spiritual ties take precedence above fleshly ties; family ties are at best temporal, but spiritual ties are eternal. Luke gives a very brief statement of Jesus and makes it clear that those who “hear the word of God, and do it,” are mother and brothers to him. No one is a child of God because of human parentage. (Joh 1:13.) Luke emphasizes that they must “hear” the word of God and “do” it in order to be called his brethren. Jesus makes “doing” a test of friendship for him. (Joh 15:14.) Hence those who hear the word of God and do it are the nearest relatives of Jesus; this spiritual relationship outranks in tenderness the natural or fleshly relationship. The spiritual kinship is more vital than any relationship of blood or of nature; it results in a fellowship at once blessed which is possible for all. The reply of Jesus could not have offended his brethren even though it did contain a delicate rebuke.
Fuente: Old and New Testaments Restoration Commentary
Mat 12:46-50, Mar 3:21, Mar 3:31-35
Reciprocal: Joh 7:3 – brethren
Fuente: The Treasury of Scripture Knowledge
9
The press means the crowd that pressed about the door.
Fuente: Combined Bible Commentary
Luk 8:19-21. THE MOTHER AND BRETHREN OF JESUS SEEK HIM. See on Mat 12:46-50; Mar 3:31-35. Luke presents no new incidents. The reason for putting this occurrence out of the exact order, may have been thus to enforce the lesson of the parable concerning the right hearing and doing of the word.
Fuente: A Popular Commentary on the New Testament
Two things are here observable, 1. The truth and verity of Christ’s human nature: he had affinity and consanguinity with men, persons near in blood to him, by the mother’s side, called here his kinsmen.
Observe, 2. That Christ’s spiritual kindred were much dearer to him than his natural.
Alliance by faith is more valued by Christ, than alliance by blood: to bear Christ in the heart is greater honor than to carry him in the womb. Blessed be God, this great and gracious privilege is not denied us even now.
Although we cannot see Christ, yet love him we may, his bodily presence cannot be enjoyed by us, but his spiritual presence is not denied to us. Though Christ be not ours in house, in arms, in affinity, and consanguinity, yet in heart, in faith, in love, and service, he is or may be ours.
Verily spiritual regeneration brings men into a more honorable relation to Christ than natural generation ever did. O how dear are obedient Christians to Christ! He prefers them in esteem before those of his own flesh and blood. My brethren are these which hear the word of God, and do it.
Fuente: Expository Notes with Practical Observations on the New Testament
Luk 8:19-21. Then came to him his mother, &c. See the notes on Mat 12:46-50; and on Mar 3:31. My mother and my brethren are they which hear the word of God and do it In these words we have an important branch of the character and the great dignity and happiness of the true disciples of Christ. As they make conscience of embracing all proper opportunities of hearing the word of God, so they take heed what and how they hear, as directed in Luk 8:18; and endeavour to hear it in the manner and spirit explained and inculcated in the last note. And their great honour and dignity Isaiah , 1 st, That they are regarded and esteemed by the Lord Jesus as his nearest and dearest relations; they are not only his subjects and his servants, but his brethren, his spouse, his members. They bear his name and image, and share his nature. The consequence of which is, that the relation in which they stand to him shall subsist, when all the relations of flesh and blood shall have ceased for ever. 2d, They are unspeakably dear to him; he loves them above all other men, and it should seem above all angels. He has their welfare infinitely at heart; in all respects acts the part of a kinsman, in caring and providing for them: he sympathizes with them in their infirmities and afflictions, and takes a share in their joys and sorrows. 3d, He admits them into his presence, to his table, and the rich provisions of his house, allows them the nearest access to, and greatest intimacy and familiarity with himself. He converses and corresponds freely with them, and even dwells among them. 4th, He is not ashamed of them, although poor and mean. When he died, he left them rich legacies; and does not forget them now he is in his kingdom; but defends, supports, directs, and comforts them many ways; sends them many rich presents and donations; will confess them as his friends and relations before all the principalities and powers of the universe, and will have them all, at last, to live eternally with him. Now from this near relation, in which those that hear the word of God, and do it, stand to the Lord Jesus, and from the great regard he has for them, it is easy to infer that all such should consider themselves as being nearly related to each other, and therefore should be very dear to one another. Being the sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty, 2Co 6:18; and the brethren and sisters of his blessed Son, they are of course brethren and sisters to each other; not only bearing the same common name of Christian, but partaking of the same heavenly nature, and manifesting the same divine likeness, as the children of the same family generally resemble each other. And as their relation to each other, like that in which they stand to the Lord Jesus, shall subsist and be a firm bond of union among them, when all the relations merely human, and all the ties of nature, civil society, and worldly interest shall have ceased for ever; surely a consideration of this ought to make them esteem and love each other with pure hearts fervently, notwithstanding any little difference of opinion, or mode of worship, or such like circumstance which may have place among them. And they should show how dear they are to each other every way in their power; and in particular by their delighting in each others company, and being free and familiar with each other, and by cultivating a spirit of sympathy and fellow-feeling with and toward one another; never being ashamed of each other, however poor or despised by the world; but acknowledging, supporting, and comforting one another, as children of the same family, and members of the same body; and, above all, always endeavouring to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace.
Fuente: Joseph Bensons Commentary on the Old and New Testaments
8. Visit of the Mother and Brethren of Jesus: Luk 8:19-21.
We should have been ignorant of the real object of this visit, unless, in this as in several other cases, Mark’s narrative had come in to supplement that of the other two. According to Mark, a report had reached the brethren of Jesus that He was in a state of excitement bordering on madness; it was just the echo of this accusation of the Pharisees: He casteth out devils by Beelzebub. Comp. Mar 3:21-22. His brethren therefore came, intending to lay hold on Him ( , Luk 8:21), and take Him home. Matthew also connects this visit (Luk 12:46) with the same accusation. In John, the brethren of Jesus are represented in a similar attitude in regard to Him (Luk 7:5): His brethren also did not believe on Him. As to Mary, it is not said that she shared the sentiments of her sons. But when she saw them set out under the influence of such feelings, she would naturally desire to be present at the painful scene which she anticipated would take place. Perhaps also, like John the Baptist, she was unable to explain to herself the course which her Son’s work was taking, and was distracted between contrary impressions.
Vers. 19-21. The word without (Luk 8:20) might be understood to mean: outside the circle which surrounded Jesus. But Mark expressly mentions a house in which He was receiving hospitality (Luk 8:20), and where a large crowd was seated around Him (Luk 8:32; Luk 8:34).
Are these brethren of Jesus younger sons of Joseph and Mary, or sons of Joseph by a previous marriage; or are they cousins of Jesus, sons of Cleopas (the brother of Joseph), who would be called his brethren, as having been brought up in the house of their uncle Joseph? We cannot discuss this question here. (See our Commentary on the Gospel of John, Joh 2:12.) One thing is certain, that the literal interpretation of the word brother, placed, as it is here, by the side of the word mother, is the most natural.
The answer of Jesus signifies, not that family ties are in His eyes of no value (comp. Joh 19:26), but that they are subordinate to a tie of a higher and more durable nature. In those women who accompanied Him, exercising over Him a mother’s care (Luk 8:2-3), and in those disciples who so faithfully associated themselves with Him in His work, He had found a family which supplied the place of that which had deliberately forsaken Him. And this new. spiritual relationship, eternal even as the God in whom it was based, was it not superior in dignity to a relationship of blood, which the least accident might break? In this saying He expresses a tender and grateful affection for those faithful souls whose love every day supplied the place of the dearest domestic affection. He makes no mention of father; this place belongs in His eyes to God alone. We see how the description of the actual circumstances, given by Mark, enables us to understand the appropriateness of this saying. This fact proves that Luke knew neither the narrative of this evangelist, nor that of the alleged proto-Mark. How could he in sheer wilfulness have neglected the light which such a narrative threw upon the whole scene?
Fuente: Godet Commentary (Luke, John, Romans and 1 Corinthians)
L.
CHRIST’S TEACHING AS TO HIS MOTHER AND BRETHREN.
(Galilee, same day as the last lesson.)
aMATT. XII. 46-50; bMARK III. 31-35; cLUKE VIII. 19-21.
a46 While he yet speaking to the multitudes, behold, his mother and his brethren stood without seeking to speak to him. [Jesus was in a house, probably at Capernaum– Mar 3:19, Mat 13:1.] c19 and there came {bcome} cto him his mother and bhis brethren; cand they could not come at him for the crowd. aand, standing without, they sent unto him, calling him. 32 And the multitude was sitting about him [We learn at Mar 3:21, that they came to lay hold of him because they thought that he was beside himself. It was for this reason that they came in a body, for their numbers would enable them to control him. Jesus had four brethren ( Mat 13:55). Finding him teaching with the crowd about him, they passed the word in to him that they wished to see him outside. To attempt to lay hold of him in the midst of his disciples would have been rashly inexpedient. The fact that they came with Mary establishes the strong presumption that they were the children of Mary and Joseph, and hence the literal brethren of the Lord. In thus seeking to take Jesus away from his enemies Mary yielded to a natural maternal impulse which even the revelations accorded to her did not quiet. The brethren, too, acted naturally, for they were unbelieving– Joh 7:5.] a47 And one said {bthey say} unto him, c20 And it was told him, aBehold, thy mother and thy brethren bseek for thee. cstand without, desiring to see thee. aseeking to speak to thee. [310] [This message was at once an interruption and an interference. It assumed that their business with him was more urgent than his business with the people. It merited our Lord’s rebuke, even if it had not behind it the even greater presumption of an attempt to lay hold on him.] 48 But he answered {b33 And he answereth} aand said unto him that told him, band saith, {cand said unto them,} aWho is my mother? and who are my brethren? b34 And looking round on them that sat round about him, ahe stretched forth his hand towards his disciples, and said, {bsaith,} aBehold, my mother and my brethren! cMy mother and my brethren are these that hear the word of God and do it. b35 For whosoever shall do the will of God, amy Father who in heaven, he {bthe same} is my brother, and my sister, and mother. [In this answer Jesus shows that he brooks no interference on the score of earthly relationships, and explodes the idea of his subserviency to his mother. To all who call on the “Mother of God,” as Mary is blasphemously styled, Jesus answers, as he did to the Jews, “Who is my mother?” Jesus was then in the full course of his ministry as Messiah, and as such he recognized only spiritual relationships. By doing the will of God we become his spiritual children, and thus we become related to Christ. Jesus admits three human relationships–“brother, sister, mother”–but omits the paternal relationship, since he had no Father, save God. It is remarkable that in the only two instances in which Mary figures in the ministry of Jesus prior to his crucifixion, she stands forth reproved by him. This fact not only rebukes those who worship her, but especially corrects the doctrine of her immaculate conception.] [311]
[FFG 310-311]
Fuente: McGarvey and Pendleton Commentaries (New Testament)
CONSANGUINITY OF THE HOLY GHOST
Mat 12:46-50; Mar 3:31-35; & Luk 8:19; Luk 8:21; Luk 11:27-28. And it came to pass while He was speaking these things, a certain woman, lifting up her voice from the crowd, said to Him, Blessed is the womb having born Thee, and the breast which Thou didst suck. And He said, Truly, blessed are those who hear the Word of God and keep it. This is simply the gushing ejaculation of a woman in the crowd, so carried away with admiration of His mighty works and wonderful preaching that she is electrified with the conception of the glorious honor appertaining to the woman who enjoyed the privilege and the blessing of motherhood, thus giving the world such a Son. Matthew: And He, speaking to the multitudes, behold, His mother and brothers are standing without, seeking to speak to Him. And responding, He said to the one having spoken to Him, Who is My mother and who are My brothers? Reaching forth His hand toward His disciples [Mark says they were all sitting down around Him in a circle], said, Behold, My mother and My brothers. For whosoever may do the will of My Father who is in the heavens, the same is My brother, My sister, and My mother. Luke says, My mother and My brothers are those who hear the Word of God and do it. His reputed father, Joseph, is not mentioned here in connection with the family, neither have we a single word in reference to him since Jesus accompanied them to the temple when He was twelve years old. There is not doubt but he died during the ensuing eighteen years. We hear of Jesus having sisters living in Nazareth; doubtless married. Questions arise in reference to these brothers of Jesus four in number, James, Judas, Simon, and Joses the Roman Catholics, conservatively to their Mariolatry, claiming that they were the sons of Joseph by a former marriage; and the Protestants, certainly with more plausibility, that they were the uterine brothers of Jesus, and of course younger than Himself, as we have not an intimation that Joseph had a former marriage, and especially from the fact that we always find them in company with Mary, which looks much like she was their mother. Jesus then being thirty-two years old, if they were children of Joseph by a former marriage, it would put them up considerably in bachelorhood, and not seem very plausible that they would have been giving a stepmother so much attention. There is no doubt but they, thinking that He was wearing Himself out, wanted to prevail on Him to relax labor, and go home with them, and take a good rest, which was incompatible with the urgency of His important ministry. We see here, His natural relatives go into eclipse when contrasted with the spiritual. So we all find, as we become more spiritual, our physical consanguinity sinks into deeper eclipse; not that we love our natural relatives less, but the consanguinity of the Holy Ghost is so much sweeter and richer than that of this world, that we find our affections absorbed and literally captured by the saints of God, admiring and appreciating them in proportion to their approximation to that Perfect Man, the fairest among ten thousand and altogether lovely.
Fuente: William Godbey’s Commentary on the New Testament
Luk 8:19-21. Intervention of Jesus Family (Mar 3:31-35*, Mat 12:46-50*).Lk. abbreviates and softens. The influence of the parable of the Sower is seen in Luk 8:21.
Fuente: Peake’s Commentary on the Bible
Verse 19
His brethren are enumerated Mark 6:3. It would appear from Mark 3:21-35, that they were alarmed for his personal safety, fearing violence from the crowd, and that they wished to withdraw him from the danger.
Fuente: Abbott’s Illustrated New Testament
8:19 {4} Then came to him [his] mother and his brethren, and could not come at him for the press.
(4) There is no relationship of flesh and blood among men so intimate and upright as the band which is between Christ and those who embrace him with a true faith.
Fuente: Geneva Bible Notes
4. The true family of Jesus 8:19-21 (cf. Matthew 12:46-50; Mark 3:31-35)
Apparently Luke moved this teaching from Jesus’ earlier controversy with the Pharisees over His authority to provide a conclusion for this section of teaching (cf. Mat 12:22-50; Mar 3:19-35). It continues the theme of the importance of obedience that has been dominant in the preceding context.
Jesus was not dishonoring His human family members but honoring those who obey God. Some people feel close to God when they read the Bible, pray, hear a certain type of music, contemplate nature, or sit in a great cathedral. However, Jesus taught that the way to get close to God is to listen to and obey God’s Word (cf. Luk 6:46-49; Jas 1:22-23). Obedience brings the believer into intimate relationship with Jesus. This saying would have helped Luke’s original readers understand that Jewish blood did not bring believers into closer relationship to Jesus than Gentile blood did. Probably Luke omitted "and sister" (Luk 8:21), which Matthew and Mark included, simply for brevity. His account of the incident is the most concise of the Synoptics.