Matthew 12:50

Matthew 12:50

We have here two things a character and a blessing.

I. "Whosoever shall do the will of God." So, then, God has a will. This thought, familiar as it is to us, was a thought to which man by searching could not attain. God is no mere personification or idealization of accident or destiny. God is no mechanical setter in motion or preserver in motion of the wheel of nature or the world of being. (1) God has a will concerning our condition. The will of God is that we should become a new creation by means of the work of the Holy Ghost. It is the will of God that our condition may be changed, so that they who before fulfilled the desires of the flesh and of the mind should become altogether holy, which is, being interpreted, altogether His. (2) God has a will concerning our conduct. I know not that anything more wonderfully expresses God's love for us than this thought: God cares how I act. "It is the will of God that ye stand perfect and complete." Can any lot be abject, can any life be trivial, can any day or hour be without its glory, if the eye of God is upon it, and if the mind of God is exercised upon its being this or that? (3) God has a will concerning our destiny. The words are His own. He will have all men to be saved. He would have you for one of those vessels of mercy which He hath before prepared unto glory.

II. Consider, next, the blessing. "The same is My brother and sister and mother." There is a higher than any natural relationship into which he enters who has drunk Christ's Spirit. He that doeth the will of God is Christ's brother. Not connected with Him by home or parentage, he shall have a dearer and a closer tie still; he shall have the same spirit; he shall be nearer to Him for ever than the dearest son of His mother could have been to Him for one moment below; he shall have Christ to dwell in his heart by faith, and he who so dwells shall be not more his God than his brother. Miss not that dignity, that glory, for any other; for anything that is of the earth earthy. Whatever else thou hast or hast not, yet miss not this; for it is a tie which nothing can sever, it is a crown of beauty which can never fade away.

C. J. Vaughan, Christian World Pulpit,vol. i., p. 177.

References: Matthew 12:50. Homiletic Quarterly,vol. i., p. 235; J. Hiles Hitchens, Christian World Pulpit,vol. xxvi., p. 347; R. Heber, Parish Sermons,vol. ii., p. 410.