John 15:9-17
“Friends of God”
By: Rev. Kenneth Emerson Sauer, Pastor of Parkview United Methodist Church
To what great lengths would many of us go to be friends with…say…our favorite celebrity…
…or some wealthy dignitary…
…or our boss…
…or just someone that we admire?
Many of us would go to great lengths.
Some of us may even be willing to sacrifice our moral standards…or what we know to be right…just to be accepted by a certain person.
Think of all the games that many of us played in high school…
…think of all the things some of us did in order to be friends with the so-called ‘in-crowd’.
Think of the lengths we go to in order to be friends with people…who…probably don’t make very good friends anyway!
Now, think about how much effort…comparatively speaking…we put into being friends with God.
In our Gospel lesson for this morning Jesus tells His disciples… “You did not choose me, but I chose you.”
This is a bewildering fact!
This is how great God is, and how blind and finite we are…
It’s not like we stumbled upon Jesus, and in seeing Him, we fell head-over-heals in love with our Creator…
…and ran straight for Him…
…and held onto Him for dear life…
…and begged Him to be our friend!
It’s not like that at all.
Instead, Christ sought us out…like a person searching for a lost coin…like a shepherd searching for His lost sheep…
Christ has come to us.
It is the One through Whom and for Whom this entire universe was created Who says to us: “Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with him, and he with me.”
Christ knocks on our door.
Christ wants to have entry into our lives.
It’s Christ Who has made the journey from Heaven to earth, from earth to the Cross, from the Cross to the grave, from the grave to the sky in order to be our friends!!!
And why?…And why?
In verse 9 Jesus says: “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you."
Wow!
That’s some powerful love!!!
But how can Christ love us like that—us?
We may be able to understand how Christ could have pity on us…
…or even how He could dislike us…
But, “As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you.”
Christ loves us despite everything we do which is contrary to His purpose for us!
Christ loves us despite the fact that we ignore Him…
…despite the fact that we curse Him…
…use His name in vain…
…laugh at Him…
…mock Him…
…crucify Him!!!
And He loves us in the very same way…with the same degree of intensity that God the Father loves God the Son!!!
A small boy defined a friend as “Someone who knows all about you and likes you just the same.”
And this is how it is with Jesus.
Many of us feel as if we must measure up to some kind of incredible standard before God will love us…
…therefore, many of us don’t even try.
We tend to measure God’s way of loving by the way we tend to love others or ourselves…
…and often we don’t love others unless they meet our standards…
…and often we don’t love ourselves…
…for many different reasons.
But God loves us…despite ourselves!
God loves us just the way we are!
God did not wait until we became…His kind of person…or could love Him back with the same kind of love that He loves us…
Neither does God pick and choose who He loves…He loves all of us the same…imperfections, irritating habits, bad tempers, bad breathe, full of envy, full of jealousy, murderous people that we are….God loves us all the same!!!
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.”
Last week, my brother-in-law sent us an e-mail. In it, he wrote that he feels called to go into the ministry, but he thinks that he has too many faults.
I have too bad a temper, I use curse words…etc., etc…
If everyone who is called into the ministry had to be perfect before they followed that calling…there would be no Ministers…
…there would be no Christians for that matter!
For some unexplainable reason Jesus Christ finds something lovable in us…something incredibly lovable…
…so lovable that He is willing to go to the Cross in order that we will love Him back!
No matter how we might feel about ourselves…
…no matter how we might feel about others…
…no matter how we might feel about God…
…God still loves us!!!
This is the fact that we must believe if we are to ever even think of being able to walk in the sunshine of God’s love!!!
And this is God’s hope for us…
…yes, God wants us to find self-worth, self-love, self-confidence in the fact that we are indeed loved!!!
We are indeed loved with such an indefinable love that Christ Himself can find no comparison for it, except for the comparison of the love of God the Father for God the Son!
But some people miss this fact!
And they continue through life filled with self-hatred, and with hate for their fellow human beings, and with hate for God Himself.
As one Christian writer has put it: “They shiver through life on the shadowy side of the street.”
But this is not God’s will for our lives!
In verse 11, Jesus says: “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”
Jesus wants us to experience the fullness of joy…
…and His joy at that!!!
Sure, the New Testament can be a solemn and even a stern book; it never shrinks from life’s ugly facts, it faces them head on with honesty and frankness.
Yet if we were to read it again for the first time…
…what would strike us the most is that this is the happiest book in the entire world!!!
It is teeming with joy…
…it’s message is the Gospel…
…the shout of Good News…
…as someone once coined it: “It is the breaking through of midday sunshine on a morning that has been bleak and gray.”
And Christ certainly meant it to be this way!
In truth, a person could trace Christ’s ministry by the happiness that He left behind.
Wherever He went, hurts were healed, and diseases were cured, shadows were lifted from broken minds, and souls were restored to health and strength and meaning!
Christ was the happiest person ever to walk this earth, and He desires to share His own fullness of joy with anyone who will accept it from Him.
“If anyone is in Christ, they are a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!”
“Life is actually good!”
“Life is actually worth living!”
“Life really does have meaning!”
“Suddenly, my life has gone from an angry sort of drudgery to a colorful journey of opportunities since Jesus has come into my heart!!!”
How many of us can relate to these words…or have uttered them ourselves?
I have.
Even in the Upper Room, with the thick darkness gathering around them, Christ could and did say: “I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.”
We are called to be the Children of Joy!!!
And if this definition does not fit…then we are missing something that Christ has to offer us!
Maybe we could once relate to this definition, but the cares of this world, the troubles that come our way, the worries of this life and the deceitfulness of the world have choked it out of us…
…we all must be reminded of how much we are loved…
…we all must be reminded Who’s we are…
…and to what kind of life we have been called to live.
“If you obey my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have remained in his love.”
Christ’s commands are not meant to burden us…they are meant to make us full.
They are meant enable us to continue to live in the sunshine of God’s love for us…
…they are meant…so that…well…so that our joy will remain complete.
“My command is this:,” says Jesus to us, “Love each other as I have loved you.”
This is one reason why it is imperative that we are to be involved…and not only involved…but an organic part of the loving members of the body of Christ!
We are to continue to meet with other Christians…to love them…and to feed off of their love for us.
…whether we feel like it or not!
We are to love those who love us…but we are also to love those who do not love us!
This is what Christ has done for us!
When we are ministering to the needs of others, we are also ministering to our needs.
Our very spiritual existence depends on the love we have for others!!!
Our very friendship with God depends on how much we love each other…
…on how much we put up with each other’s idiosyncrasies, on how much we overlook each other’s faults, and failures…
…on how often and willing we are to forgive each other as Christ has forgiven us.
This is maturity!
This is Christian maturity!
…To be able to look beyond the ugliness of others and see that which is lovable…
…and to think only on these things!
Jesus tells us: “You are my friends if you do what I command.”
This is what Jesus wants…
…this is why we were created in the first place…to be friends of God…
…and when our love failed…God’s love for us remained steadfast…
…therefore…
…because…
“God so loved the world…he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.”
We are called to be friends of God!!!
This is why Jesus came to earth.
This is why He has made known to us everything that He has learned from the Father…
…this is why He chose us…
…even though we did not choose Him…
…this is why He came to bring us joy…
…this is why He had to die…
…for “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.”
Jesus wants us to be His friends.
He loves us just the way we are…
…He desires to make our joy complete.
Here is a Friend indeed!!!
A friend Who’s only desire is that we love Him back and love each other as He has loved us!
Let us pray: We rejoice today that we are Your friends, dear God, and not just Your servants. We rejoice that You have chosen us for this special, intimate relationship with You and each other. Teach us to love each other and to have victorious faith, which propels us into the world to be effective, joy-filled witnesses to Your Love. In Christ’s name we pray. Amen.
