Mark 3:31-35 “Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, ‘Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.’ Who are my mother and my brothers?’ he asked. Then he looked around him and said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.’”

A greater question than, “What do people think of Jesus?” is “What does Jesus think of us?” His natural family thought he had lost his mind. Not true. Now Jesus reveals whom he really regards as his family. Jesus claims as members of his own family “whoever does God’s will.”

This is not salvation by works. This is not keeping the 10 commandments so faithfully and so perfectly that our love and perfection rival Jesus’ own. Jesus describes doing God’s will this way in John 6, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”

And what are the people around him doing, the ones about whom he says, “Here are my mother and my brothers!”? They aren’t out turning the world upside down with their charity and kindness, at least not yet. They are sitting around Jesus and listening to his words. They are letting him serve them. They hear Jesus and they believe the good news.

They are Jesus’ family, his mother and brothers and sisters, because the good news is that Jesus came to take away our sins. He lived the perfect life of love and mercy to fulfill God’s law for us. He came to give his life in place of ours as the payment for our sins. By declaring us not guilty, by so removing our sin, he makes for himself a people who are qualified to be claimed as his own family.

Who are his mother and brother and sisters today? They are still the people who are gathered around to hear his words and believe them. They are the people who let Jesus serve them with the gospel. At church, studying the Scriptures, or even reading this little meditation on his words, they are you and me.