Jesus Is Not Ashamed to Call You His Brother

God’s Love Demonstrated

Let us now take a view of our Savior in his behavior after his resurrection; whence a further indication of his heart, how it would stand toward sinners when he should be in heaven, may be taken, and his love demonstrated.

For his resurrection was the first step to his glory, and indeed an entrance into it; when he laid down his body, he laid down all earthly weakness and passions of flesh and blood. “It was sown,” as ours is, “in weakness”; but with raising of it up again, he took on him the dispositions and qualifications of an immortal and glorious body, “it was raised in power” (1 Cor. 15:43). And “the days of his flesh,” or frail estate, as the author to the Hebrews by way of distinction speaks (Heb. 5:7), were past and over at his resurrection; and the garment of his body was new dyed and endowed with new qualities; and thereby it was made of a stuff fit to bear and sustain heaven’s glory; and therefore, what now his heart on his first rising shall appear to be toward us will be a certain demonstration of what it will continue to be in heaven.

And to illustrate this the more, consider that if ever there were a trial taken, whether his love to sinners would continue or not, it was then at his resurrection; for all his disciples (especially Peter) had carried themselves the most unworthily toward him, in that interim, that could be; and this then when he was performing the greatest act of love toward them—namely, dying for them—that ever was shown by any. And by the way, so God often orders it that when he is in hand with the greatest mercies for us and bringing about our greatest good, then we are most of all sinning against him; which he does to magnify his love the more.

You know how they all forsook him, and in the midst of his agony in the garden, in which he desired their company merely for a relief to his saddened spirit, they slept and lay like so many blocks utterly senseless of his griefs. Had they any friendly sympathy of them, they could never have done this: “Could you not watch with me one hour?” (Matt. 26:40). Then you know how foully Peter denied him with oaths and curses; and after that, when he was laid in the grave, they are giving up all their faith in him; “We trusted it should have been he,” say two of them, “that should have redeemed Israel.” They question whether he was the Messiah or not, Luke 24:21.

Now when Christ came first out of the other world, from the dead, clothed with that heart and body that he was to wear in heaven, what message sends he first to them? We would all think that as they would not know him in his sufferings, so he would now be as strange to them in his glory; or at least, his first words shall be to berate them for their faithlessness and falsehood. But here is no such matter; for John 20:17, his first word concerning them is “Go tell my brethren.”

You read elsewhere how that it is made a great point of love and condescending in Christ so to title them; Hebrews 2:11, “He is not ashamed to call them brethren”; surely his brethren had been ashamed of him. Now for him to call them so when he was first entering into his glory, argues the more of the love in him toward them. He speaks it as Joseph did in the height of his advancement, when he first broke his mind to his brethren; “I am Joseph your brother,” says he, Genesis 45:4. So Christ says here, “Tell them you have seen Jesus their brother; I own them as brethren still.”

This article is adapted from The Heart of Christ for Sinners by Thomas Goodwin.

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