Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 592. The Unbelief of the Brothers
Subjects in this Topic:
The Unbelief of the Brothers
1. John, in speaking of the brethren of Jesus, records that they did not believe on Him, which can mean nothing else than that they did not believe Him to be the Messiah; and though the statement is made in connexion with a particular event, whose chronological place in the life of Christ is not certain, it may fairly be concluded from it that they continued in the same state of unbelief throughout the period of His ministry. It is hardly to be wondered at that such should have been the case. That Jesus made a great impression upon His younger brothers during their boyhood life in Galilee cannot be doubted. They must have grown up with an unbounded affection and admiration for Him. And yet the very intimacy of their association with Him, and the simplicity and naturalness of His life in the home circle, would make it difficult for them to see in Him the Messiah; and much as they loved Him, and confident as they must have been of His honesty and purity of purpose, they could hardly think of one of their own number, who was of humble extraction like themselves, and had passed with them through all the simple and homely experiences of boyhood and youth, as the great Messiah of God, as the Chosen One who was to deliver Israel from the yoke of the oppressor and to establish the kingdom foretold by the prophets. All those difficulties which hindered His townspeople and fellow-countrymen from recognizing Him as the Messiah must have acted upon them with double force. The words, “A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and in his own house,” were spoken by Jesus out of His own experience, and no other experience was possible in the circumstances.
There is a famous story told concerning James Russell Lowell. In the days of his youth he spent one memorable summer vacation in the White Mountain district. One day when enjoying a stroll through the Franconia Notch, he became absorbed in conversation with a man who was in charge of a sawmill. The man chatted on, feeding his mill with logs the while. Presently the poet asked his new acquaintance if he could direct him to a point from which he could obtain a good view of the “Old Man of the Mountain.” “Dunno” replied the man, “never seed it!” Lowell immediately expressed his astonishment that any one living so near such a marvellous spectacle, which people came from long distances to see, should never have taken the pains to gaze upon it. “And how far have you come?” asked the man. With evident pride the poet answered that he had come from Boston. “D'you tell?” exclaimed the countryman. “I'd like to see Boston. Why, just to stand for once on Bunker Hill! You've been there often, likely?” And James Russell Lowell confessed with shame and confusion of face that he never had!1 [Note: F. W. Boreham, The Golden Milestone, 113.]
2. It is not simply that Jesus' brethren did not believe in His Divinity. Nobody, not even Peter or John, did that during His lifetime; they did not believe in Him; did not believe that He was the Christ, or even that He was a prophet, a teacher sent from God. They must have known Him too well to have shared the theory of the Jewish authorities-in which they could scarcely have honestly believed-that He was an impostor. But they thought He was a self-deluded dreamer, needlessly courting danger, who ought to be saved from Himself. So they said once that He was “beside Himself,” either actually imagining that He must have been out of His mind, or wishing to shield Him from the consequence of His dangerous utterances by intimating that He was not responsible for them; and, on another occasion, they sent a message through the crowd from His mother, as well as from themselves, asking Him to come to them, with the evident intention of rescuing Him. They failed in this act of well-meant but really impertinent interference; and the result was that, apparently, He disowned them, claiming all who did God's will as His brethren, His very nearest relations. The reply was more than a rebuke for the moment. It flashed out a new far-reaching principle of the Kingdom of Heaven. There are ties even closer than blood-relationship.
The man who believes in Christ, who has the spirit of Christ in him, who shows in his life the fruits of that spirit, who, denying himself and taking up his cross, is following Christ in toilsome but loving labour for the salvation of men-he is my brother, and nothing shall hinder me from offering him the right hand of fellowship. I do not care what name they call him by, whether he is a Churchman or Quaker, Universalist or Roman Catholic, he who is united to my Master shall not be divided from me. And when such a man has found a company of people who love him, not because of any brilliancy of wit that has dazzled them, nor because of any tricks of sensationalism that have amused them, but just because of the Christ life that is in him-and want him to live among them and show them how to serve and follow Christ-and when he asks me to come and help to join him in loving bonds as pastor to this people, I shall go, every time! My blessing is not worth much, but, such as it is, God forbid that I should withhold it! And if anybody bids me be cautious, I answer, Yes, I will be very cautious lest I hinder in his work a true servant of Jesus Christ! I will take great care always lest I exalt the letter above the spirit, the dogma above the life. For I would rather make two mistakes on the side of charity than one on the side of bigotry.1 [Note: Washington Gladden, Recollections, 263.]
3. Any faint hopes which they may possibly have cherished that He might prove Himself to be the Messiah were shattered by the crucifixion. His death was the verdict of God on His claims. However highly they honoured His character, however keenly they resented His unjust sentence, they could not but consider it impossible to hold now that He was the Messiah. The faith even of the Apostles was shattered by His execution, how much more that of the brothers who had never owned His claims! Moreover, the notion of a resurrection was still more foreign to the minds of the brothers than to those of the Apostles.
There are moments when life's shadows
Fall all darkly on the soul,
Hiding stars of hope behind them
In a black, impervious scroll;
When we walk with trembling footsteps,
Scarcely knowing how or where
The dim paths we tread are leading,
In our midnight of despair.2 [Note: F. D. Gage.]
4. They were not with Him during the last scenes: they were not at the Last Supper; they were not in the Garden; they drew no sword for Him; they did not follow Him to the Hall of Caiaphas; they did not defile themselves for the feast by entering the Prætorium; they did not stand beside the cross; they did not, so far as we know, visit with sorrowing gifts His tomb.
Yet, strange to say, when next we meet with them they have thrown themselves heart and soul into the struggling fortunes of the Church! It is after the Ascension. The Eleven have returned from the Mount of Olives, and go to the Upper Room, which is their regular place of meeting in Jerusalem; and in that Upper Room are not only the Eleven, but also Mary the mother of Jesus and His brethren. From that moment, as a body they disappear, and we hear no more of either Joses or Simon. But Jude lived to travel as a Christian missionary, and to write the Epistle which bears his name; and James lived to furnish the nearest approach to a bishop which is to be found in the Apostolic Age, and to be for twenty years a main pillar of the persecuted Church.
Whence came this marvellous change?
We have no account of it, we have no means of even conjecturally explaining it, unless the explanation lies in three words of the Apostle Paul. In his relation of the appearances of Christ after His resurrection, he says that He was seen of Cephas, then of the Twelve, then of more than five hundred brethren at once; “then he was seen of James.”
James came to believe at last, and was a great personage among those who confessed that Jesus was the Christ. He too discovered how great our Lord was. He does not presume to describe himself as the brother of our Lord, though other men so described him. He is “the servant, the slave, of God and of our Lord Jesus Christ.”
By picturing to ourselves the religious history of James, we come to understand the conflicting impressions made upon him by the life of Jesus, his brother. The personal sanctity of that life, drawn from habitual communion with God, no doubt attracted and satisfied him. But those exorbitant pretensions, that arrogation of the title of one sent from God to fulfil the prophecies and bring in the Kingdom of Heaven, must have seemed to him signs of over-weening self-exaltation, and even of madness.1 [Note: F. Godet, in the Contemporary Review, xliv. 68.]
That extreme nearness retards perception is a matter of daily observation. It is just as true of our perception of things as of our perception of persons. One would suppose, for example, that the habitual dwellers in a scene of rare beauty would be peculiarly alive to the attractions of physical nature. The reverse is the case. These are of all people the least responsive to the beautiful. If a stranger comes in among them, he is transfixed, dazzled, by the splendour of the scene; but his enthusiasm rather surprises them. We should suppose, again, that the constant inhabitants of a city would know more about that city than those coming into it from other places. Yet it often happens that a traveller learns more of a town in a week than many of its population learn all through their lives. We should suppose, once more, that those living continuously in a salubrious atmosphere would be free from all illness arising from atmospheric causes. Yet this is not the case. The unvaried presence of one climate is like the unvaried application of a somnolent drug-it loses its effect. A change of air will eventually be found beneficial, even though the new air be less balmy than the old. The mind must co-operate with the body to preserve the health of man. It is not enough that an atmosphere is genial; I must feel it to be genial. It must enter into me not only as a draught, but as a joy. And if this joy is to be felt, it must not be an unvaried possession. It must be interrupted to be known; it must be withdrawn to be appreciated; it must be supplanted by a shadow to be valued as a light.1 [Note: G. Matheson, The Representative Men of the New Testament, 233.]