And what are we to understand Him to mean?  Surely He is declaring that through the revelation of God that He is, there is a new stage in God’s work for man being entered upon, and that this new stage will be characterised by the emergence of a new set of relations, relations so important that they throw into the background the ordinary relations of life.  He is proclaiming to them the advent of the Kingdom of God; and in that Kingdom, the service of God will be put first, before all human relations.  It will not be antagonistic to human relations; indeed, it will hallow them and raise them to a higher level; but in case they, as not infrequently they will, decline to adjust themselves to the work of the Kingdom, or set themselves in opposition to it, then will they be brushed aside, no matter what they be.  If we can consecrate our human relations and bring them into God, then will they be ours still with a vast enrichment and a rare spiritual beauty; but if they remain selfish, insist on absorbing all attention and energy, then they must be broken.  The love of father and mother and children is an holy thing wherever we find it, but it is capable of becoming a selfish and perverse thing, insistent upon its own ends and declining wider responsibilities.  In that case it must be regarded from the standpoint of a higher good:  if it stand in the path of the Kingdom it must be swept aside.  So our Lord declared in one of the most searching of His utterances; one of the utterances which we feel could come only from the lips of God:  “Think not that I am come to send peace on earth:  I came not to send peace, but a sword.  For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.  And a man’s foes shall be those of his own household.  He that loveth father or mother more than me is not worthy of me:  and he that loveth son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.”

That is the teaching of the incident before us.  Our Lord’s primary mission is to declare the will of God, and to make known the mind of the Father to all who will heed.  Their acceptance of this will of the Father will bring them into a new relation to Him more important than, and transcending, all relations of flesh and blood.  But—­and this is important to mark—­it does not exclude relations of flesh and blood; but it demands that they shall be put on a new basis and be assimilated to the higher relation.  In our Lord’s case they were in fact so assimilated.  The blessed Mother and the brethren did not resist God’s will when they came to understand it.  They were, we know, glad of the higher relation, the new privilege.  There is no ground at all for the suggestion of any breach between them.  They are of the inner circle always in the Kingdom of the regenerate.