Our spiritual family

“He replied to him, ‘Who is My mother, and who are My brothers?’ Pointing to 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
Have you ever noticed how we can feel a closer kinship with certain other believers, than we do with our unsaved natural family members? Being related to somebody by ancestry may be the only way that we relate to them – we may have nothing else in common.
Sure, we may have friends who we feel close to, but there’s something about the fellowship that Christian believers have together that is on a different plane – and it’s because that difference is a spiritual one. We know that this planet is not our final destination, but that we are only passing through. We know where we will be spending eternity. We know that we serve the same God, who loves us and sent His Son to die for our sins, in our place.
Jesus felt the same way. None of his brothers believed He was the Messiah, until after the Resurrection (John 7:5). His mother Mary knew, of course, but as a woman living in those times her opinion would have been considered of little value.
This verse also relates to Mark 10:31-32 – “... no-one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for Me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age... and in the age to come, eternal life.” The ‘hundred times as much’ refers to this age, not eternity. What family affections we might lose in order to follow Christ, we will receive a hundred times as much from other believers. Spiritually speaking, we really are family.