Believing Brothers

Among the 120 that made up the earliest body of believers after the Resurrection, were not only the Disciples, the women, but “His brothers.” (Acts 1:14b). His brothers![1] You mean the brothers who it says in John 7:5 didn’t believe in Him? His family who thought He was mad (Mk 3:21). Those brothers, James, Joseph, Simon and Judas (Mt 13:55)? Yes!

They grew up with Jesus, no doubt beholding His uniqueness, but also His commonness. They had difficulty believing He was their Messiah. Perhaps difficulty seeing what their mother, Mary, saw.

Yet, somewhere in the 40 days between the Resurrection and the Ascension they saw their Risen brother and came to believe. Everything that had happened to Him, including His perfect life lived before their eyes, now made sense when the one they’d [presumably] seen slain, they now saw risen from the dead in glory.
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The most famous of these, James, went on to be a pillar in the Jerusalem church and author of the Book of James. He came to be a slave of the very brother he had once not believed in (James 1:1).
The mere words “His brothers” should cause two things in us:

1. It should serve as further testimony concerning the Risen Lord. If Jesus’ own brothers saw and believed, we can trust and believe too.
2. It should also give us confidence that the Lord can save even the hardest of hearts and blindest of souls. May we pray to this end. All that stands between disbelief and belief is the ability to see and the will to believe. In an instant God can remove the scales of disbelief from someone’s eyes and soften the hardest heart. Once they see Jesus for who He really is, like these brothers, they’ll believe too.

[1] Joseph and Mary went on to have other children and then, presumably, Joseph had died before Jesus’ ministry.