When Jesus said to Mary, “Go to My brothers…” He was saying something not only about His relationship with them, but about their relationship with each other. [Side note: that Jesus was talking not about his biological half-brothers but about His disciples is clear from the fact that Mary went to the disciples.]
As they were all brothers with Christ, they were also brothers with each other (that seems pretty obvious, doesn’t it??).
And that singular truth had profound implications for the way they related to one another. While it was not unusual for followers of God in the OT to call themselves brothers, the concept is not nearly as common in the NT. Approximately 250 times in Acts and the Epistles the word group “brother” is used, the vast majority of those to denote the spiritual relationship between two believers.
Paul in particular uses this truth in his letters, often using it as an address to his readers in contexts where he is appealing to them on difficult issues (e.g., Rom. 1:13; 7:1; 12:1; 1 Cor. 1:10; 12:1; 1 Thess. 4:1; 5:14; Philemon 7). The reminder of their mutual brotherhood seems to be a reminder that “I’m about to say something difficult, but remember that we are one in Jesus Christ — united to Him and united to one another and I am making this appeal on that basis.”
Because we are united to Christ, we have a unique relationship with each other. John White notes the significance of that relationship:
You were cleansed by the same blood, regenerated by the same Spirit. You are a citizen of the same city, a slave of the same master, a reader of the same Scriptures, a worshiper of the same God. The same presence dwells silently in you as in them. Therefore you are committed to them and they to you. They are your brothers, sisters, your fathers, mothers and children in God. Whether you like or dislike them, you belong to them. You have responsibilities toward them that must be discharged in love.…Whether they have done much or little for you, Christ has done all. He demands that your [love] to him be transferred to your new family.
Christ has given us the grace a familial relationship with Him so that we might delight in Him, and so that we might out of our delight in and grace from Him minister to and with our fellow brothers. Through the cross Christ makes us to realize the delights of heavenly fellowship, and also the sweetness of earthly fellowship as it was intended to be at creation. In the church and in the brotherhood of believers caring for one another, we know something of what God-glorifying relationships can and should be, and something of what our fellowship in heaven will be like. And that is achieved only through Christ’s cross.
Words of Grace 