And his mother and his brothers came, and standing outside they sent to him and called him. 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.” By this point, Joseph seems to have died, but not before fathering children with Mary. Matthew 1:25 suggests that they engaged in marital relations after the birth of Christ, and Luke 2:7 says that Jesus is her firstborn . Over the years, the Roman Catholic Church developed the false idea that Mary remained a perpetual virgin, a theory never taught in Scripture and disproved by this text. Jesus had siblings, but there are even more powerful truths here. First, Jesus’s earthly family weren’t His fir...
