English 
Chinese 
Dutch 
Arabic 
Spanish 
Portuguese 
Russian 
French 
Italian 
German 
Japanese Yes. The New Testament calls Jesus the brother of everyone who belongs to God. Hebrews says he “is not ashamed to call them brothers” (Hebrews 2:11), Paul calls him “the firstborn among many brothers” (Romans 8:29), and Jesus said that whoever does his Father’s will “is my brother and sister and mother” (Matthew 12:50).
When the risen Jesus speaks of his disciples, he calls them family. He sends Mary Magdalene to “my brothers” with the news that he is ascending “to my Father and your Father” (John 20:17). His Father has become theirs. We come to God in his company, as children of one house, and he is not ashamed of us.
Where does the Bible call Jesus our brother?
Jesus called his disciples his family on a day when his own mother and brothers were waiting outside to speak with him. When someone told him they were there, he answered: “Who is my mother, and who are my brothers?” Then, stretching out his hand toward his disciples, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! For whoever does the will of my Father in heaven is my brother and sister and mother” (Matthew 12:48–50; also Mark 3:31–35).
After the resurrection he uses the word again. He tells the women at the tomb, “go and tell my brothers to go to Galilee, and there they will see me” (Matthew 28:10), and sends Mary Magdalene to “my brothers” with the message that he is ascending “to my Father and your Father” (John 20:17).
The fullest passage is in the Letter to the Hebrews:
“For he who sanctifies and those who are sanctified all have one source. That is why he is not ashamed to call them brothers, saying, ‘I will tell of your name to my brothers; in the midst of the congregation I will sing your praise.’” (Hebrews 2:11–12)
The words Hebrews puts in Jesus’ mouth come from Psalm 22:22. The letter then explains how the Son of God came to share the family likeness: “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil” (Hebrews 2:14). “Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people” (Hebrews 2:17).
Paul makes the same point in terms of adoption. Those led by the Spirit “have received the Spirit of adoption as sons, by whom we cry, ‘Abba! Father!’”, and “if children, then heirs—heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ” (Romans 8:15–17). God’s purpose was that his people should “be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers” (Romans 8:29). In the Greek of these passages, adelphoi can mean brothers and sisters together, and many modern translations render it that way.
What does it mean that Jesus is our brother?
In Hebrews, the brotherhood rests on the Incarnation. John Chrysostom, preaching on Hebrews 2, said that Christ “was willing and earnest to become our brother in all things” (Homilies on Hebrews 5). Jesus shares human flesh and blood, and because he “has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted” (Hebrews 2:18). The same letter says he is a high priest “who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin” (Hebrews 4:15).
The brotherhood does not make him an equal. He is the “firstborn” among the brothers (Romans 8:29), and Colossians calls him “the firstborn from the dead, that in everything he might be preeminent” (Colossians 1:18). We are his brothers and sisters by gift. Catholics confess that Christ’s resurrection “brings about filial adoption so that men become Christ’s brethren,” but “we are brethren not by nature, but by the gift of grace” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 654), and the Catechism gives Irenaeus of Lyons, writing in the second century, on why the Son of God became man: “so that man, by entering into communion with the Word and thus receiving divine sonship, might become a son of God” (Against Heresies 3.19.1, as quoted in Catechism 460). Protestants say the same with the word adoption: in the Westminster Confession, God makes all who are justified “partakers of the grace of adoption” “in and for His only Son Jesus Christ” (chapter 12).
Jesus remains the only Son by nature. The New Testament never calls him the Father of believers; he taught them to pray to God as “Our Father” (Matthew 6:9).
Is everyone Jesus’ brother, or only Christians?
In the New Testament the word is used for his disciples: those who do the Father’s will (Matthew 12:50), “those who are sanctified” (Hebrews 2:11), and those who have received “the Spirit of adoption” (Romans 8:15). John’s Gospel says that “to all who did receive him, who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God” (John 1:12). On this reading, being Jesus’ brother or sister belongs to those who are joined to him by faith.
Two passages are read more widely. In the parable of the sheep and the goats, the King says, “as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me” (Matthew 25:40). Scholars differ over whether “the least of these my brothers” means everyone in need or, as Reginald Fuller and others hold, the disciples Jesus sent out. Hebrews, for its part, grounds the brotherhood in the flesh and blood that all “the children” share (Hebrews 2:14), and the Second Vatican Council taught that “by His incarnation the Son of God has united Himself in some fashion with every man” (Gaudium et Spes 22).
Brothers and sisters in Christ
Because believers share one Father, the writers of the New Testament address fellow Christians as brothers and sisters. Paul writes, “Love one another with brotherly affection” (Romans 12:10), and John writes, “We know that we have passed out of death into life, because we love the brothers” (1 John 3:14). Christians still call one another brothers and sisters in Christ.
Did Jesus have brothers and sisters?
The Bible gives God no brother, but the Gospels do name brothers and sisters of Jesus, and churches disagree about how they were related to him. The people of Nazareth asked, “Is not this the carpenter, the son of Mary and brother of James and Joses and Judas and Simon? And are not his sisters here with us?” (Mark 6:3; Matthew 13:55–56 has Joseph for Joses). During his ministry “not even his brothers believed in him” (John 7:5), but after the Ascension they were praying with the apostles and Mary (Acts 1:14). Paul met “James the Lord’s brother” in Jerusalem (Galatians 1:19) and mentions that “the brothers of the Lord” took believing wives with them on their travels (1 Corinthians 9:5). The Jewish historian Josephus records the stoning of “the brother of Jesus, who was called Christ, whose name was James” (Antiquities 20.9.1).
In the Bible “brother” can also mean a close relative; Abram calls his nephew Lot his brother (Genesis 13:8; 14:14, King James Version). Three explanations go back to the fourth century. Helvidius, writing about 380, held that they were children of Joseph and Mary born after Jesus, and this is the most common Protestant view today. The second-century Protoevangelium of James, and later Epiphanius, made them Joseph’s children by an earlier marriage; the Eastern Orthodox Church holds this view. Jerome, in Against Helvidius (about 383), argued that they were cousins, and the Catholic Church teaches that they were “close relations of Jesus,” saying that James and Joseph were “the sons of another Mary” (Catechism 500; compare Matthew 27:56). Martin Luther, Huldrych Zwingli and John Wesley also held that Mary remained a virgin; John Calvin left the question open.
Latter-day Saints and Jesus as elder brother
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints teaches that Jesus is our brother in a further sense. Latter-day Saints believe that every person lived with God as a spirit child before birth, and that “Jesus was the firstborn of the spirit children of our Heavenly Father” (Guide to the Scriptures, “Firstborn”). A 1909 statement of the church’s First Presidency, “The Origin of Man,” says of him, “He is our elder brother.” Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches teach instead that the Son is eternal, “begotten, not made,” as the Nicene Creed says, and that believers become his brothers and sisters through the Incarnation and adoption. The risen Jesus said it simply when he sent Mary Magdalene to his brothers. The God he was going to is “my Father and your Father” (John 20:17).
Leave a Reply