[My Brethren.]

OUR Lord Jesus Christ calls those for whom He died and who have believed on Him “My Brethren.” What a word it is! The Brethren of the Man in Glory! Brethren of Him who is at the right hand of God, the upholder and heir of all things! Pause for a moment, dear reader. Let your heart lay hold anew of this wonderful message of God’s Grace; Brethren of the Lord Jesus Christ! What depths of love and grace these words contain! What heights of glory they promise to us, who were bought by His own precious blood! His Brethren now; His Brethren forever. One with Him, one with His Father and His God. Sharers of His life, sharers of His Spirit, sharers of His glory and His inheritance. Blessed, glorious truth, He calls us His Brethren.

It is in the twenty-second Psalm where we find this truth revealed prophetically for the first time. That Psalm begins, as we have seen before, with the utterance of the deepest distress. It closes with the shout of victory and of triumph. He who was forsaken of God on the cross, the blessed sin bearer, has received glory. In the midst of the congregation, His redeemed people, He praises God, who has delivered Him and who gave Him Glory. In God’s own time, in the coming day of His visible manifestation, all the ends of the world shall remember and turn unto the Lord, and all the kindreds of the nations shall worship before Him. Then the Kingdom will be the Lord’s.

He who suffered on the cross was heard “from the horns of the unicorn” (Ps. xxii:21). Resurrection was the answer from God; the power of God raised Him from the dead. At once, after the great work had been accomplished, there follows the triumphant declaration of Him whose voice had cried so bitterly in death, “I will declare Thy Name unto my brethren; in the midst of the congregation will I praise Thee.” And blessed was the fulfilment on that day of joy, when the tomb was empty and He had come forth, the risen Christ. To Mary Magdalene He said on that glorious resurrection morning, “But go and tell my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my God and your God” (John xx:17). What joy must then have filled His loving heart. From His gracious lips there bursts forth a message such as He never gave to His own before His resurrection.