“Isn’t this Mary’s son and the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon?” — Mark 6:3 NIV
One group stands out. I gather weekly with believers at Sunday morning church and in mid-week Bible studies, yet there is another group with which I have become especially close: my Kairos Prison Ministry brothers. We have repeatedly entered one mission field in particular: men held in incarceration. Weeks before a Kairos Weekend inside the prison, the team prepares and gels as one, and when it is time to enter, each man executes his assigned role, relying on all the others to do the same. It is a unity forged not only out of shared conviction of Biblical truth, but also the action toward which faith and freedom compel us. Then through this unified brotherhood, God’s light shines in a very dark place. And lives change.
Jesus was teaching as a houseguest one day, when some around him said, “Your mother and your brothers are outside, seeking you.”1 They spoke of Mary, of course, and also His natural brothers who did not believe in Him at the time.2 Perhaps Jesus recalled this lyric from a messianic psalm: “I have become a stranger to my brothers, an alien to my mother’s sons.”3 Regardless, Jesus turned the occasion into a teaching opportunity: “And he answered them, ‘Who are my mother and my brothers?’ And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother.’”4
Was Jesus being disrespectful or dismissive of His earthly family? No, He was pointing His hearers to a closer, grander kinship — our eternal oneness with God through His Messiah. For through the sufferings of Jesus the Son, God the Father brought “many sons and daughters to glory,”5 which is to say He made us His children. In Hebrews we read, “Both the one who makes people holy [Jesus] and those who are made holy [us] are of the same family. So Jesus is not ashamed to call [us] brothers and sisters”6
Jesus came to the world as God’s only Son,7 then “to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God.”8 Christ is our brother, and in Him we who were alienated from God are now His sons and daughters — “children of light, children of the day.”9 Then together as Jesus’ brothers and sisters, may we daily shine His light into very dark places. Lives will change.
Father, thank You for making us Your children through Jesus — Your Son, our brother. Shine through us, each as called, into dark places, that lives will change and Your Kingdom expand. In Christ we pray. Amen.
1 Mark 3:32 ESV
2 John 7:53
3 Psalm 69:8 ESV
4 Mark 3:33-35 ESV
5 Hebrews 2:10 NIV (emphasis added)
6 Hebrews 2:11 NIV
7 John 3:16
8 John 1:12 ESV (emphasis added)
9 1 Thessalonians 5:5 ESV
We met several faculty and administrators the weekend we took our son Matthew to school in St. Louis. One shared his observation of how society stereotypes its own. “When we moved here, one of the first questions people would ask us was, ‘Where did you go to high school?’ But when we lived in North Carolina prior to this, the question was, ‘What church do you go to?’” We peg people in various ways, quite often by asking, “Where are you from?” But what do you do with the man who answers, “I came down from heaven?” How do we categorize that guy?
We try. Consider the crowds’ attempts to stuff a 3D Jesus into their 2D frame of reference. “Who are you?”1 “Where is your father?”2 “Are you the one who is to come?”3 “Are you the Son of God?”4 “Are you the king of the Jews?”5 “Where did this man get this wisdom and these mighty works?”6 “How is it that this man has learning, when he has never studied?”7 And of course, “Where are you from?”8 Oh, how we try.
Yet Jesus made His origins clear. To the crowd of 5000 who sailed after Him in search of another miraculous meal, He said, “I have come down from heaven.”9 Perhaps for clarity, context, or emphasis, Jesus then doubled down, “I am the living bread that came down from heaven.”10 They said among themselves, “Isn’t this Jesus, the son of Joseph? We know his father and mother. How can he say, ‘I came down from heaven’?”11 But there in heaven — and from before the world existed — Jesus lived with the glory he had with the Father.12
Jesus is a category of one. No other has come down from heaven to live among us.13 “No one has seen the Father except the one [Jesus] who is from God; only he has seen the Father.”14 Moreover, “there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”15 For having shed His blood to cover our sins — His life for ours — Jesus “entered heaven itself, now to appear for us in God’s presence,”16 as only He can. He will come again to take us to be with Him that we also may be where He is.17 No longer will we ask, “Where are you from?” We will see for ourselves. For “we will be with the Lord forever.”18
So, “set your hearts on things above, where Christ is, seated at the right hand of God.”19 It’s where He’s from. It’s where we’re going.
Father, thank You for sending Jesus from heaven, that we would live there, too. Grace us to live this life with our sights on the next. In Christ we pray. Amen.
1 John 8:25 ESV
2 John 8:19 ESV
3 Luke 7:19 ESV
4 Luke 22:70
5 John 18:33 ESV
6 Matthew 13:54 ESV
7 John 7:15 ESV
8 John 19:9
9 John 6:38 ESV
10 John 6:51 ESV
11 John 6:42 NLT
12 John 17:5
13 John 6:42
14 John 6:46 NIV
15 Acts 4:12 ESV
16 Hebrews 9:24 NIV
17 John 14:3
18 1 Thessalonians 4:7 NIV
19 Colossians 3:1 NIV
Categories
Sent with Purpose
“Shout and be glad, Daughter Zion. For I am coming, and I will live among you,” declares the Lord. 11 “Many nations will be joined with the Lord in that day and will become my people. I will live among you and you will know that the Lord Almighty has sent me to you.” — Zechariah 2:10-11 NIV
I find this to be one of the most astounding Old Testament prophecies about not only the coming Messiah, but the nature of God. Did you catch it? The Lord is sending the Lord. Read it again. Who promises twice to come and live among us? The Lord. And who is sending the Lord to live among us? The Lord Almighty. The Lord sends the Lord — the Father sends the Son — in perfect unity and with glorious purpose: to gather us from the nations and join us to Himself as His own people. And so He has. It is finished.
We often think of eternal Son’s incarnation from our own perspective — our need, our relief, and our gratitude. Today, let’s view His coming through the lenses of the Father who sent the Son and the purposes for which He sent Him.
Sent to deliver us from darkness into light. “And Jesus cried out and said . . . ‘whoever sees me sees him who sent me. I have come into the world as light, so that whoever believes in me may not remain in darkness.’”1
Sent to spread good news. Jesus said, “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God . . . for I was sent for this purpose.”2
Sent to save the world. “God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”3
Sent to give us eternal life. “God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him.”4
Sent to make us His own again. “God sent forth his Son . . . to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.”5
Sent to deliver us from evil. “The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.”6
Sent to glorify the Father. Jesus prayed: “I glorified you [Father] on earth, having accomplished the work that you gave me to do.”7
Sent to send us. Jesus said, “As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.”8
So now we go: listening, praying; trusting, obeying. This is His plan for us; He sends us with purpose, His purpose.
Father, thank You for sending Jesus to fulfill Your plan. Be glorified in Your church, and fill us with Your Spirit, that we would be equipped for the divine plans You have for us. Send us. In Christ we pray. Amen.
1 John 12:44-46 ESV
2 Luke 4:43 ESV
3 John 3:17 ESV
4 1 John 4:9 ESV
5 Galatians 4:4-5 ESV
6 1 John 3:8 ESV
7 John 7:4 ESV
8 John 20:21 ESV
Paul Nordman—Author 