“How do I do what this says?” lingers in every man, woman, and child who wants to honor God—every person who reads Mark 3:35 and really desires to be the person who does the will of God. Jesus, in normal fashion, is told his family is looking for him and then challenges the concept of who his true family is.

32 And a crowd was sitting around him, and they said to him, “Your mother and your brothers are outside, seeking you.” 33 And he answered them, “Who are my mother and my brothers?” 34 And looking about at those who sat around him, he said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! 35 For whoever does the will of God, he is my brother and sister and mother” (Mark 3:32-35).

Joseph Hellerman, pastor and professor, summarizes this passage well.

Jesus radically challenged His disciples to disavow primary loyalty to their natural families in order to join a new surrogate family of siblings He was establishing—the family of God. Relationships among God’s children were to take priority over blood family ties (Hellerman, When the Church Was a Family, 64).

Two questions come to me from this passage. First: What is the new relationship Jesus establishes? Second: How do we do the will of God? We’ll look at both, with specific attention to the second.