Jesus our Big Brother
Romans 8:29
“For those whom he foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.”
J.I. Packer in his book Knowing God says that to believe this - “I am a child of God. God is my Father; heaven is my home; every day is one day nearer. My Savior is my brother; every Christian is my brother/sister too” - is the secret to the Christian life. I have found that in the church we regularly talk about Jesus as our Savior, our Lord, the Messiah, even our friend, but we do not often talk about him as our elder brother. I did not think about Jesus in that way either until this secret passed down by Packer was revealed to me. This was something that really resonated with me and over the last 10 years or so has brought me great comfort.
Having two big brothers as I was growing up (one from the same mother, the other from another) it’s natural to me to look up to a big brother. Being the little brother could sometimes be painful and unfortunate (I have torture stories and scars to prove it) but I always knew that they had my back. I felt comfortable and safe around them and always loved tagging along with them and their friends and felt really cool when I got to.
It took me a while to realize this, but I also realized that in my friend groups as a teenager I always gravitated towards a big brother, always a tough guy, for the same reasons. I made quite a few stupid decisions in my teenage years and having a tough guy as a friend kept me from getting beat up on multiple occasions. If the presence of a tough guy could embolden me in my folly, how much more could the ever present Christ as my big brother embolden me to not live in fear but to walk down the path and in the calling that he has laid out for me?!
Packer also says in the same book that adoption into the family of God for the Christian is “the highest privilege that the gospel offers: higher even than justification.” We have a perfect big brother who took the punishment that we deserve so that we could get what he deserves, that is, to be treated and accepted as a son of God (Romans 8:15). He went beyond his realm of responsibility taking on our debt and our punishment.
Jesus told his disciples before he ascended that he would always be with us and that he would never leave nor forsake us (Matthew 28:20; Hebrews 13:5). If the presence of Jesus does not embolden us to live out his commandment to love one another, I don’t know what will.
I think we need to think about and talk about Jesus as our big brother a lot more than we do. “I am a child of God. God is my Father; heaven is my home; every day is one day nearer. My Savior is my brother; every Christian is my brother/sister too.” I encourage you to memorize this and say this to yourself regularly until it’s etched into the core fiber of your being.