NOTES for Mat 12:46-13:3
As can be seen, Jesus' attitude toward blood ties is, if not always negative, always restrained and critical. Such an attitude seems surprising if we consider the role that tribal and clan identity played in Jewish society. In fact, belonging to the people of God itself was defined by clan and tribal lines. Yet Jesus pushes family ties into the background.
One might, of course, think that Jesus is a man of another era, the era of Hellenistic civilization and great empires. In that era a person's origin meant less than his personality. But the issue, as can be seen, is still not only the era, especially since Jewish society remained very conservative with regard to clan and family ties.
Jesus, of course, does not say by chance that his relatives are those who do the will of God. And the point here is not only that he needed like-minded people and helpers. The point lies in the very essence of blood relationships. They are certainly a powerful binding factor among people in a fallen world, and in this lies their strength. But in this also lies their weakness: by binding people to one another, they also bind them to the untransformed order of things, including them in that order as firmly as nothing else can. Then it turns out that for the sake of the Kingdom blood ties must, if not be broken completely, at least be pushed into the background.
It would seem that such a decision rules out the very possibility of doing anything for the salvation of one's loved ones. But that is not always so. In order to save others, one must first oneself share in the life of the Kingdom, whose breath alone is saving. As long as relationships that were purely natural do not change their quality, such sharing will remain impossible. On the other hand, the spiritual transformation of a Christian's life often objectively disrupts former blood ties if relatives do not walk the same path with him: if one of them is ready to build relationships with a neighbor according to the laws of the Kingdom and the other is not, relations between them will in essence become impossible. But the one who has not yet begun his path into the Kingdom will have the opportunity to make use of the support of his Christian relative if and when he does begin that path, because that relative will be ready for new relationships and will "catch" them as soon as the person taking the first step feels the need for them.
Such blood ties, transformed by the breath of the Kingdom, can become not a brake but a help for spiritual life. And Jesus, knowing this, does not cling to the old, but offers his followers a new life with renewed relationships.