He Calles You Friend

“He Calls You Friend”

John 15:12-17

It would be difficult to overestimate the value of friends. It is often said that a real and true friend is someone who is there in bad times as well as good. Someone who doesn’t leave your side when you need them the most. Someone has said, A true friend is hard to find, difficult to leave and impossible to forget. It is always an honor when someone wants to be our friend. Friends are a wonderful resource in our lives. People have childhood friends, friends from our school days and we even have friends that we talk to scattered all around the world. We have friends that have to move away from us, and we sometimes gain friends in the most unlikely of situations.

Making friends is not always as easy as it sounds. When faced with prospect of making new friends there are always three possibilities; 1.) We may not like them, 2) they may not like us, 3) or there is a mutual attraction.

Henri J. M. Nouwen, Dutch writer and theologian wrote, “When we honestly ask our-selves which persons in our lives mean the most to us, we often find that it is those who, instead of giving advice, solutions, or cures, have chosen rather to share our pain and touch our wounds with a warm and tender hand. The friend who can be silent with us in a moment of despair or con-fusion, who can stay with us in an hour of grief and bereavement, who can tolerate not knowing, not curing, not healing and face with us the reality of our powerlessness, that is a friend….” [ Henri J.M. Nouwen, Out of Solitude: Three Meditations - www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/friendship

William Shakespeare wrote, “A friend is one who knows you as you are, understands where you have been, accepts what you have become and still gently allows you to grow!” Friendship is such a precious thing that we cannot put a price upon it. Dollars and cents can never measure the treasure of loyalty and trustworthiness we find in a friend.

All of chapter fifteen is concerned with the believer’s relationships, verses 1-11 concerns the relationship between Christ and the believer, verses 12-17 deal with relationships between the believers and verses 18- 27 deal with the relationship between believer’s and the world. In His discussion of how believers should conduct themselves He highlighted the importance of close friends.

But the thing is most amazing of all is that our Lord, and Savior calls us “friend.’ Now in verses 12-17 of John chapter 15 Jesus introduces a new level of relationship available with God, that of “friend.” There have only been a few men down through the centuries that have been called the friend of God; both Abraham (James 2:23) and Moses (Ex 33:11) where called friends of God. This title is unusual and speaks of the highest relation-ship possible between God and a human being. Now Jesus calls His disciples friends, but this friendship is not our doing, but His, which provides us with tremendous security that His affection for us will not change.

But it must be acknowledged that Jesus is not automatically your friend or nor is He everyone’s friend. This must be noted especially if one is under that impression that they are His friend because they believe that they are a good person. The religious crowd mocked Jesus for being the friend of sinners (Luke 9:29-32). But He gladly accepted that title because He said He had not come to call the righteous (He really means self-righteous) but sinners to repentance. So, the first step to being the friend of Jesus is to recognize one’s need and to turn to Him as their /Savior. Once you have done that, then you can consider the characteristics of Jesus’ friends.

When we think of friends from the standpoint of the Lord Jesus Christ, He stresses that the lines of communication are wide open. He “no longer calls us servants, for servants do not know what his master is doing.” I have heard individuals say, “I don’t have a friend in the world!” But that doesn’t have to be true you can always have a friend in Heaven who loves you.

Now read with me beginning in verse twelve, “This is My commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. (13) Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends. (14) You are My friends if you do whatever I command you. (15) No longer do I call you servants, for a servant does not know what his master is doing; but I have called you friends, for all things that I heard from My Father I have made known to you. (16) You did not choose Me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask the Father in My name He may give you. (17) These things I command you, that you love one another.”